That’s Problematic? Not My Problem
18th December 2017
Jim Goad is triggered.
I’ll bet you didn’t realize that “Jingle Bells” is an unabashed celebration of white supremacy and that “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” inadvertently celebrates the bullying of a closeted homosexual.
What’s worse, I find your willful ignorance on these issues to be highly problematic.
According to the pelican-faced Kyna Hamill of Boston University:
The legacy of ‘Jingle Bells’ is one where its blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history….Although ‘One Horse Open Sleigh,’ for most of its singers and listeners, may have eluded its racialized past and taken its place in the seemingly unproblematic romanticization of a normal ‘white’ Christmas, attention to the circumstances of its performance history enables reflection on its problematic role in the construction of blackness and whiteness in the United States.
As far as I can tell, she thinks the song would have been more accurately titled “Slave Bells Ring.” She appears to be arguing that behind every “Jingle Bells” lies Emmett Till’s bloated corpse. Remind me not to buy her a Christmas card.