Fox News’ Megyn Kelly made headlines last week when she asserted both Jesus and Santa Claus are white. Everyone from Jon Stewart to Bill O’Reilly to Saturday Night Live has commented on the claim, and now MSNBC’s Touré is getting in the action… a mere five days after the controversy began.
“I don't understand this debate on whether Santa is white or black,” Glenn said on radio this morning. “Is this where we're at? We have to know whether Santa's black or white? I mean, umm, you really want to have this conversation? Introduce me into the conversation because I've got an opinion on it… Not one that anybody really wants to hear. Everyone will regret opening up the door of ‘Is Santa white or black’ with Glenn Beck… Anybody want to have that conversation?”
After several minutes of reassurance from Pat that Glenn is probably better off keeping this particular opinion to himself, they played Touré’s puzzling logic on situation:
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TOURÉ: …I, for one, am glad Santa's black because I don't want my kids worshipping some old white dude who flies in to give them stuff. Thinking a benevolent white man gives them stuff every year is good training for a life on welfare. Talk about creating a culture of dependency.
“Hang on just a second. Did he say that the government giving people welfare creates dependency in the black neighborhoods,” Glenn asked. “[But] only if it's administered by a white guy? Otherwise it's completely okay?”
But Touré wasn’t finished:
TOURÉ: …But to be insistent that he's not black and can't be black strikes me as an attempt to perpetuate white supremacy and to posit that whiteness is somehow normal and central while blackness is other or different. So many black kids know how Harris felt as a child when she craved icons that told her she belonged, that she was not an outsider.
“He is right on this front. I, not being a black man… can't speak with authority. I will just tell you that, you know. I have black friends, and my black friends have told me their childhood really sucked because there were no history books. There was nothing that was telling them of good, strong heroes that happened in this country. Why were those books erased? Why were the books about great American black men who stood up, like, for instance, Booker T,” Glenn asked. “Who's been writing the history books. Oh, I remember. It's the progressives. Progressives… Do you know history?”
Touré ends his analysis on a truly hypocritical note, seemingly contradicting the statements he made about creating a culture of dependency. But, then again, apparently that culture is only bad when it is created by a white man:
TOURÉ: ...The way you know that Santa isn't white is because race is fictional. It's not a biological reality. It's a sociopolitical construct, existing on the immutability of the race of someone who's able to tells me you're afraid of something, afraid perhaps of a black man being a deep part of childhood. But you do know there's already a generous, benevolent black man in your children's lives who lives in a place that some people think is magical, who has given something to each and every American, whether they've been naughty or nice. You know who I'm talking about.
“He's doing to people what you said was bad, [what] you said was making people slaves on the welfare state and dependent,” Glenn observed. “I'm sorry. I'm confused.”
“Apparently it's bad from a white man, but it's okay from a black man,” Pat clarified. “You'll accept it then, and you don't mind their dependency on it.”
Based on his comments, Touré seems to pro-welfare when he supports the president in power and against welfare when he opposed the administration. Ironically, Glenn actually shares some of the same views as Touré – except his opinion is consistent across presidencies.
“We've been with you on that: That the Great Society – done by another racist progressive, Johnson – was nothing but a plan to make every black man, every white man a slave. Now that we have another president coming in and doing the same thing, and it doesn't matter his color. I'm consistent. I'm still saying what you apparently were saying just based on race,” Glenn concluded. “Whether it was Johnson or this president, this whole idea is nothing but a way to enslave people. Whether it enslaves white people or black people doesn't really matter.”