National Public Radio is sometimes unintentionally funny. Propped up with tax dollars from average americans who have more sense than to waste their time listening to liberal twaddle, NPR delights in its reputation for appealing to a highly educated audience.
I thought of that audience this morning when looking at NPR's Web site. One page described "Dreaming of a Black Christmas," a commentary heard last week on the News & Notes with Ed Gordon program. There NPR's highly educated fans learn:
"This time of year it's hard to avoid the figure of old Saint Nick. With very few exceptions these Santa's are white. Commentator Carole Boston Weatherford says she'd like to see a little more color in the complexions of the Kris Cringle candidates."
Kris Cringle? Isn't his last name Kringle with a K? and then we have "these Santa's are white." Just between you and me, although tossing in an apostrophe every so often may make you look highly educated and even grammatically correct, it isn't always required.
Commentator Weatherford (or Commentator Boston Weatherford, if you prefer) thinks that some black parents don't take their children to see Santa Claus in stores and malls because he's almost always white.
"Could it be that we can't bear spending our hard earned money so that some white man in a red velvet suit can take credit for putting toys under the Christmas tree?," she asks. She suggests a black Santa might make the process more palatable and laments a lack of them, even in predominantly black urban areas.
I understand the lady's view. Santa Claus is a secular symbol and what he looks like isn't a matter of dogma. Seeing the jolly elf should be a time of unbridled joy, and if kids are comfortable hopping on the knee of someone who resembles them more, so be it. Santa Claus should be highly customizable.
She may also be right about there being a dearth of black Santas, but that doesn't appear to be the case everywhere. In suburban Chicago, the very successful Evergreen Plaza Shopping Center has a black Santa. I saw him on TV the other day and my only beef is he seems a tad scrawny for the role.
Dreaming of a black Christmas isn't a new concept. Especially not in the Chicago area. In the late 60s. Jesse Jackson took the idea out for a ride.
a 1969 Chicago Tribune article related that Jackson had announced his second "Black Christmas" boycott of white merchants. Claiming that a similar boycott had cost white stores up to $40 million in 1968, the Reverend Mr. Jackson said the move was "the affirmation of black people that we intend to control the theological, the psychological, and the material aspects of Christmas."
He cautioned blacks from "running downtown and over extending themselves by falling for cheap gimmicks." Not that he's an authority on cheap gimmicks or anything.
He also proclaimed that his "Black Christmas" initiative would, according to the Tribune, "include a parade and the appearance in Negro areas, hospitals, and jails of ‘Soul Saint,' a black Santa Claus."
In their 1985 book "Jesse Jackson and the Politics of Race," authors Thomas Landess and Richard Quinn write of the Soul Saint "who, according to Jackson, came from the South Pole rather than the North Pole and lingered along the equator sufficiently to take up wearing a dashiki of black, with yellow, red and green trimmings — the colors of the flag of Ghana. Henceforth, the Soul Saint would preside over the season of Christmas, a black figure whose gifts were not toys or sugar plums but ‘love, justice, peace, and power.'"
Can you see a child of any color at Christmas time asking not for toys, but for a generous serving of love, a dollop of justice, a piece of peace and some power on the side? No wonder Jesse's idea went over like a case of New Coke.
It wasn't his finest moment, but he picked himself up and moved on to bigger and better things. Playing into white guilt and fear, he now pulls down megabuck "donations" from corporations like IBM, General Motors, aT&T and, naturally enough, Coca-Cola.
So we haven't heard much dreaming of a black Christmas from the Rev for a while. But if his Wall Street angels ever stop subsidizing him, don't be surprised if he trots out a black dashiki with yellow, red and green trimmings.
Being the Soul Saint would be a step down for the man who said, "Great things happen in small places. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville." But we know he'll do practically anything to keep hope alive.
This appears in the December 29, 2005 Oak Lawn (IL) Reporter. Mike Bates is the author of Right angles and Other Obstinate Truths.
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