It’s a shame that Fox News’ Megyn Kelly wasn’t on the air Thursday night to explain why she told her viewers Wednesday night that “Santa just is white,” so is Jesus, and “those are just facts.”
She left that lump of coal in our stockings, and none of her panelists even bothered to question Kelly’s “facts”—or to entertain the possibility that maybe, just maybe, when it comes to which box Santa Claus is checking (and checking it twice) on his census form—he might not check “white.”
That’s because, among other things, she didn’t bother to book Slate’s Aisha Harris for the show, even though it was Harris’ cheerful essay—about reimagining Santa as a cuddly postracial penguin—that was the inspiration for Kelly’s strangely emphatic and un-PC screed about the lineage of Jesus and ethnicity of jolly old St. Nick:
Here’s a brief reading list—or, really, multimedia syllabus—that Kelly might want to peruse when she has some free time this holiday season:
The Bible
By now it has almost certainly been revealed to Kelly that—at least in the book of Revelation—Jesus is described as having hair like “wool” and feet the color of “bronze.” She’s probably got this book at home, so it’s a good place for her to start.
The Kwanzaa Bible
Actually titled The African American Holiday of Kwanzaa, this slim volume by professor Maulana Karenga is the original book that outlines the tenets of the African-American holiday, which is cultural, not religious. In it, she’ll learn of the seven Kwanzaa principles—Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Imani and—the one she should start with—Kuumba, which means “creativity,” since her own creative spirit is probably how she came up with white Jesus.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
It’s a must-read for anyone. But in this case, Kelly should start on page 163 of the paperback version, because that’s where Malcolm X recounts how he came to understand the way that the “‘Negro’ was taught to worship an alien God having the same blond hair, pale skin, and blue eyes as the slave-master” and that Christianity “taught the ‘Negro’ that black was a curse.”
Of course, if she gets tired of reading, she can always just get the summary from the movie:
The Boondocks
Also helpful, if she’s looking to broaden her horizons, would be the oeuvre of the show’s unintentionally profound curmudgeon, Uncle Ruckus:
He Got Game
And though she may have already caught this Spike Lee classic in the theater, it never hurts to go back to one of the cinematic greats when delving into the debate over who Jesus really is:
It can’t be a coincidence that it’s a Denzel-heavy list, and maybe—just maybe—like he said, they called Jesus “Jesus” “’cause he was the truth.” And then the mainstream media got onto the story and—alas—all of a sudden he was “black Jesus.”
Which, apparently, you have to clarify so that no one mistakes him for Megyn Kelly’s white Jesus.