Black Santa shows we still tiptoe around race

Last week a Foster Quad bulletin board posed an amazingly annoying and ignorant question: can Santa Claus be a black man?

My fellow columnist Andrea Zimmerman addressed this issue last week. She found the question as ridiculous as the rest of us.

I agree that the asking of the question revealed the racism still evident in our society, I didn’t agree with her answer.

She said “why not?” Why can’t Santa be anything but white?

The answer is simply no. No. Absolutely not. Not possible. Completely absurd. Get over it.

Let’s move on.

I’m not being racist for refusing to consider this possibility. It’s not racist to assume that Santa Claus is white.

The idea of Santa is based off of historical figures, such as Père Noël of France, who descend from countries mainly consisting of white people.

But the actual race of Santa is not important.

What’s important is understanding why people feel it’s necessary to pose such stupid questions.

Racism is not gone in this country.

But an overwhelming majority of our current society does frown upon it.

More than ever, people believe in equality between genders, social classes and races.

We believe in a world that’s free and fair, and so we develop laws for voting, programs for equal housing, affirmative action policies and so on.

But now even those don’t seem to be enough.

Now we need university committees and programs that think of ideas to make it look like minorities are being treated well.

We are afraid of being viewed as racists.  

Universities try to promote their diversity like they do the aesthetics of their campus.

I don’t care how diverse a university is, just like I don’t care how many flower gardens and water fountains it has.

I care about the academics, and I want the university to care about mine.

I want to know that I was accepted into a university because of my grades and hard work, not because my father is African American.

And I want to know that the people I am learning with are here for the same reasons.

“You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race ... and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”

Those were the words of President Lyndon B. Johnson when he first enforced Affirmative Action in 1965.

Affirmative Action was intended to be a temporary way to level the playing field between white people and minorities.

I think its expiration date has come.

A lot has changed since 1965.

The playing field has been leveled drastically.

We need to stop manufacturing equality and handing it out.

Just be equal. Just be fair.

­— lnbanks@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Lexia Banks on Twitter @LexiaBanks.