'I don't know either. Race as we talk about it is dumb and fabricated. It's more useful to discuss ethnicity.'

Yes, a made up social term, which never-the-less has done huge damage and divides people to this day. It has no basis in biology.

So since race has important social effects, it is important to include race representatives in our major cultural observances. A black Santa may mean a huge amount to some children (i don't suppose that all children, all the time will care)

Most of the time nobody really gives a crap. As for historical palestinans, they could be entirely black, given the amount of travel available at the time. Just as likely as a white skinned person - as opposed to the far more likely brown skinned palestinian.

I don't see what problem a christian should have with black religious communities promoting Jesus' message among their community with a black messiah figure - the god part is probably a bit more important than the details of the human part... You should be more annoyed by atheists who claim there is no god part - but that seems fine...

Some people on this thread seem to not have a very clear idea of the tribal history/ethnicity of the world. "White" does not mean European. There were caucasians in Central Asia, India, Iran, Iraq… and still are today--of various tribal ancestries. The Celts that we think of as being Irish/Scots/Welsh/Bretagnes were much more widespread in historical times, for example. Check out The Dying Gaul at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Gaul. And my Iraqi students today are mostly very light-skinned--No olive about it. And it's not because "Europeans" went over and mingled with them. Caucasians were and still are quite prevalent in much of Central Asia and the Middle East. That said, it makes absolutely no difference what color Jesus was. Color probably wasn't a big deal in Israel at the time, just as it is not a big deal in some countries today.

@Invictus,
"They wouldn't have looked at people's ancestry at all, since the census was just to calculate population and how much tax could be rung out of the masses. "

They were only about taxes, but in the Roman Empire there were certain taxes that applied only to certain ethnic groups.

Santa - white because he comes from the North Pole and everything is white up there, even the penguins.
Jesus is from the Middle East and was probably the same shade of colour as all of his other Arab mates, brownish, probably with gingerish hair because his dad was called Joseph so must have Celtic roots, and they are all ginger.

"What I was getting at is that Megyn Kelly correctly characterized Jesus and Santa as "white" (and thus that your charge that she didn't is incorrect)."

I'll rephrase my point, then--

Yes, there's no arguing Santa came from "white" regions and thus has a, shall we say, "default setting" of white.

That being said, if someone wanted to change that default setting...would it really matter?

Does it MATTER if Santa's white or not? Megyn Kelly being that adamant seemed to be implying that she thought it was, she seemed dead set against a black Santa...

And while there's no arguing the character's originally white...is that whiteness essential to his character?

Sometimes race is--again, you can't really have a white Othello or white Slave Jim--and sometimes it isn't, or is less so.

You can have a Black Hamlet...it's set in Denmark, his play, and it was written by a white man for a white audience, so of course he has a default setting of white...but unlike Othello, of all the things that DO matter to and trouble Hamlet, race ain't one of them...

So you could make him black and keep the integrity of the play intact, albeit with a few odd lines and an obvious anachronism, which is going to happen anyway in any update (and which Shakespeare wasn't always opposed to putting in there himself.)

Sherlock Holmes is a whitey, and there's maybe a bit more of a case for him to be white...whereas the Danish setting for Hamlet really doesn't matter too much, the Victorian setting really does matter for Sherlock Holmes, and it informs the character and his attitudes a bit more, so between that and the fact the Great Detective was proudly British at a time when that basically meant being white, it'd be harder to make Sherlock Holmes black, and probably impossible to do so in-period.

Still, if you wanted to do a "Sherlock"-style modern-day update for the character, you could try and have a black Sherlock Holmes...I don't think that'd work very well, and at that point you're arguably cheating and giving a character based on the original rather than the original Sherlock Holmes himself...but you could at least try if you had a spectacular black actor.

So there are varying levels to which race matters for a character...

So taking Santa as a character--it really doesn't matter what race he IS, even if he WAS originally and at his roots is white, yes?

No need for Megyn Kelly to be so adamant he remain white?

Can you talk about any fucking issue without dragging in irrelevant Shakespeare references?

You canst not say he did it, never shake your gory locks at him

Invictus - Haven't you figured out Obi likes to posture and make himself feel smarter by using Shakespeare and Sherlock references and being long winded in his response. He doesn't understand the relationship between brevity and wit.

So obi, we should also have a female santa claus!

And a handicapped one and a paedophile Santa (oh wait, we may already have those in the mall).

What the fucks the big deal. I am white.

http://ih0.redbubble.net/image.11444189.6053/sticker,375x360.u3.png

Fox hates black people. So does Krellin.

Moving on.

Who cares? Does it really bother anyone if some guy wants Santa to be black? It doesn't affect my life in the slightest or any of yours?

Obviously it does

SantaClausowitz, what do you think of this dude who says you're white?

Who cares what that honky says.

"That being said, if someone wanted to change that default setting...would it really matter?"

We'll just ignore that you moved the goalposts now that you were decidedly proven wrong. And no, it's not a big deal to change the character, just as it's not a big deal to point out that it's a change. This is a non-issue that you're trying to blow up to be some big thing, as usual.

For someone that I would assume to be a Christian, it's kind of funny to put Santa and Jesus in the same context like this, as it naturally brings to mind the following analogy.

Santa is a lie that we tell to children to get them to behave
Jesus is a lie that we tell to adults to get them to behave