-
- Dreaming of a Non-White
Christmas
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- Santa, Jesus and
the Symbolism
- of Racial Supremacy
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-
-
- By Tim Wise
-
- December 23, 2000
-
- Well
it's that time of year again. Time for all good Americans to
focus on what really matters. Not family, community, or world
peace, but that national sacrament of late-stage capitalism known
as holiday shopping. Whether you do it online, or drag yourself
to the mall amidst the sea of humanity scraping and fighting
for the latest must have gizmo, rest assured that your actions
are vital to the national interest. In fact, the annual consumer
bonanza unleashed in the last fiscal quarter is so central to
defining life in the U.S., that the economy's strength in the
beginning of the following year is literally tied to how much
stuff we buy. So get out there and do your duty. Buy American.
Be American. Shop 'till you drop, and remember, this is what
it means to be a patriot!
-
- Now, being one who doesn't like to give
advice that I myself am unwilling to follow, I must say that
I too have been making the pilgrimage to the shopping centers
lately, both to purchase desired items, and also to observe others
in the process of this sociologically fascinating ritual. As
someone who regularly writes about racism, you can probably imagine
that I have long been especially intrigued by the way in which
holiday symbolism replicates notions of whiteness as rightness,
and acts to reinforce, however subtly, racial supremacy. Yet,
the full force of this process never really hit me until last
week.
-
- It was then that I found myself at the
mall, passing a line of parents and their children, waiting to
have a few seconds alone with Santa. You know Santa, right? The
big white guy who only works one day a year and yet no one calls
him lazy; the big white guy who exploits elfin labor in a sweatshop
for no pay while his wife does all the housework, and yet no
one calls him a slave master; the big white guy who invades millions
of homes on Christmas Eve, and yet no one arrests him for breaking
and entering. Yeah, that one.
-
- Though one can see a few Santas of color
in malls around the country lately, I think we can all agree
this is pretty absurd, if Santa were black, there's little question
he'd have been shot dead years ago in the vestibule of some New
York City apartment by the NYPD's Street Crimes Unit. After all,
how could the cop be sure that toy gun he was bringing to the
kid inside wasn't real? Better safe than sorry, and anyway, that
bright red suit would make him a logical target, seeing as how
red is the color favored by members of the Bloods street gang.
-
- But it wasn't this kind of irony about
a black Santa that animated the comment I heard while strolling
through the mall that day. No, it was pure racial resentment
and nothing else leading the white woman, child in tow, to say
to her friend, "don't you think it's silly to have these
Black Santas? Everybody's trying to be so P.C. I mean, come on,
a Black Santa? Everyone knows Santa is white."
-
- Her friend agreed. Everyone knows Santa
(a make believe entity for those who haven't figured it out yet)
is white. The insistence on the racial purity of this entirely
fictional being struck me as hilarious, right up there with the
folks who send get well cards to their favorite soap opera characters
when they fall ill on the shows. Ronald and Nancy Reagan are
reported to have done this once. Fantasy, reality, ah screw it,
who cares? I'm starting to realize the awful truth, white people
are certifiably insane.
-
- It all made sense though once I passed
the woman and noticed the holiday stationary and cards in her
bag. The ones with the calming, soothing face of Jesus staring
back at me. You know the Jesus I'm talking about right? The one
with the pale skin, blue eyes, and rock star good looks? Yeah,
that one. The same Jesus that has occupied the minds of Western
Christians for the last five centuries, ever since Michelangelo
was commissioned to paint his image, and used his cousin as the
model.
-
- My wife and I have received many a Christmas
card this year, and as always, the representations of Jesus that
adorn so many of them cast the Christian Messiah as nothing if
not European. Now I know my gentile friends have that song, "A
Child is Born in Bethlehem," but I never realized until
now that they had meant Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, circa 1930.
-
-
- Africa
-
- Silly me, but I always thought he was
born in that part of the world we call the "Middle East,"
which, if we were being honest, we would easily recognize as
basically a part of Africa, separated from the continent by the
man made Suez Canal. And since first century Semites were quite
a bit darker than the mostly European-derived Jewish communities
of today, the odds of him looking the way he does in churches
across America are slim and none. But don't tell that to most
of his followers, especially the white ones.
-
-
- Ancient Hebrews
-
- The suggestion that Jesus would have had
dark enough skin to qualify as a person of color is about as
blasphemous to most Christians as anything one could say. Of
course, no one wants to admit their indignation at the notion,
so they typically couch it in ecumenical platitudes like, "it
doesn't matter what Jesus looked like, it only matters what he
did."
OK, I'm down with that. Although not a Christian, I've always
thought Jesus said and did some pretty exemplary stuff. So if
it doesn't matter what he looked like, then why not make him
black?
-
- I've asked this question when giving speeches
on racism at religiously affiliated colleges, and let's just
say, there's nothing like it if you're looking to see how fast
you can get folks to start clearing their throats. Again they
insist, "no you don't understand, it doesn't matter what
he looked like, it's what he did." And again I repeat, O.K.,
fine, if it really doesn't matter then let's make him black,
just for a year. Then you can change him back again if you really
want to.
-
- No dice, and no takers. We go round and
round, as white folks check their watches and try to figure out
how they can leave the room without seeming to be rude.
-
- But let's be clear, the white iconography
of Jesus that predominates in this culture makes absolutely no
sense, except as an artifact of a white supremacist worldview.
-
- First off, the earliest representations
of Jesus, Mary, and Christ's disciples appear in the catacombs
of Rome, where offshoots of the Jewish sect known as the Essenes
buried their dead. All of these portrayals picture a dark-skinned
Jesus. In addition, many years after his death, the Roman Empire
under Justinian II, minted a gold coin that pictured Jesus. This
coin, which is displayed in the British Museum, shows a man with
clearly non-white facial features and tightly curled hair, consistent
with the description of Jesus offered in the Book of Revelations,
wherein it is noted he had hair like wool, feet the color of
burnt brass, and resembled jasper and sardine stones, both of
which were brown in color.
- Roman coin of
Jesus
-
- Now I don't much care about the scriptural references myself, and far be
it from me to insist on the infallibility of the Bible. But if
the folks who swear that every word of it has to be accepted
as literal don't also accept these descriptions, which clearly
contradict the imagery on the Christmas cards and in the nativity
scenes one sees everywhere at this time of year, then they are
nothing if not hypocrites.
And don't forget, according to Biblical lore, when Jesus was
born, Herod sent search parties out to find him and slay him
as an infant. To hide the supposed Christ child, his family absconded
with him to Egypt, and if there is one thing we can be pretty
sure of, it's that one would not have been likely to try hiding
an Aryan baby and family in pre-Arab Egypt, of all places.
This was, after all, a society comprised mostly of medium-to-dark-skinned
Africans, as evidenced in their own hieroglyphs, visible in the
tombs of Senwosret (Sesostris) I, and Ramses III, among others,
and as made clear by the stone likeness of Narmer the Pharaoh
of the first dynasty that has survived to this day. Indeed, the
Egyptians had referred to their country as Kemet (the Black land)
for thousands of years, and themselves as "Kemetcu"
(the black humans).
-
-
- King Narmer
-
- The "father" of modern history,
Herodotus (1), himself acknowledged
as much when he said that the Egyptians, like the Ethiopians
had "thick lips, broad nose, wooly hair and are of burnt
skin." Elsewhere, he actually referred to them as "black."
Although there had been various incursions by lighter skinned
folks into Egypt before the birth of Christ, namely the Persians,
Assyrians and Greeks, it would only be with the Arab conquest
in 639 that any real lightening of the nation's color scheme
would take place. If Jesus had been white, Mary and Joseph would
have put him on a slow boat to Iceland, not trekked to Egypt
where finding them would have been like shooting fish in the
proverbial barrel.
Of course, for some this will all seem absurd, maybe even sacrilegious.
But if you really want to see absurd, go pick up Volume I of
the Robert Maxwell Bible Stories Series for children, which I
assure you, is sitting on a table in your pediatrician or gynecologist's
waiting room right now. There you will find Adam and Eve depicted
as if the Garden of Eden had been in Norway, despite the fact
that Biblical scholars all agree the Garden, whether viewed as
a literal place or as a fictional metaphor, was bordered by two
rivers, the Biblical description of which only fits that of the
Tigris and Euphrates, or perhaps the Blue and White Niles, none
of which, last time I checked were in Scandinavia.
In fact, to the extent "black" skin cannot come from
"white" skin (as the absence of melanin is a recessive
trait), and to the extent geographic dispersal would not have
been likely to darken previously fair-skinned persons to the
extent we see the "blackest" on the planet, since by
the time they could get that dark, third stage carcinoma would
have long since killed them, there is only one possible conclusion
to be reached, namely, anyone who accepts the Biblical account
of creation must believe that "Adam and Eve" were absolutely
coal black. Only from those original persons, of the darkest
human shade imaginable, could lighter-skinned folks possibly
come. Science virtually precludes it from working the other way
around.
Some may ask what the point of all this is though frankly, it
ought to be obvious. So long as our culture pictures Adam, Eve,
Moses, Jesus, Mary, the Apostles, and even God "himself"
as fair-skinned, despite the obvious preposterousness of such
representations, we will continue to plant the seeds of racial
supremacy in the hearts and minds of millions.
After all, to believe that divinity is white like you leads one
to easily assume that others are somehow less complete, less
than human. If God supposedly made man in his image, and God
is always portrayed as a bearded white guy (kinda like Santa
without the suit), how hard a leap is it, especially for children
whose introduction to religion is always nine-tenths forced propaganda
anyway, to assume that persons of color are somehow not full
and equal "children of God?" Not to mention the sexist
aspect of the male sky, God imagery, of course, which is a whole
different can of worms.
So now that I have managed to piss everyone off, here's wishing
you all a very merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa,
Resplendent Ramadan, Super Solstice, and Terrific Tet. Now get
out there and shop! And take that damned Swedish-looking angel
off the top of your tree for God's sake.
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- Notes:
- 1. The History
of Herodotus [Multicultural Education Links]
-
-
- Tim Wise is the Director of the newly
formed Association for White Anti-Racist Education (AWARE) in
Nashville, Tennessee. Mr. Wise is also a commentator with ZNet.org,
a community of people committed to social change. He lectures
across the country about the need to combat institutional racism,
gender bias, and the growing gap between rich and poor in the
United States. Mr. Wise has been called a "leftist extremist"
by David Duke, "deceptively Aryan-looking" by a member
of the Ku Klux Klan, and "the Uncle Tom of the white race,"
by right-wing author, Dinesh D' Souza. Whatever else can be said
about him, his ability to make the right kind of enemies seems
unquestioned.
-
-
- This article was
published courtesy of Tim Wise.
- Copyright ©
2000 Tim Wise. All rights reserved by the author.
-
- This article was
revised by Tim Wise in November, 2002
- Graphics were added
in February 2003
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