If Santa is white, then Jesus was Latino

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

There’s an old joke that says Adam and Eve, the original biblical humans, were Latino. It’s especially funny for grammarians and semantic geeks, and works only if told in Spanish. It goes like this:

Adán y Eva son latinos por que la biblia dice que cuando estaban en el paraiso Dios les dijo:  Si comen de la fruta prohibida, Perez serán.

It’s a play on the Spanish word for “perish.”

So to follow that logic, Adam and Eve Perez, humanity’s biblical progenitors, were Latino. That would make every living human being Latino as well.

That makes as much sense as saying Jesus was white.

Among Latinos I must make a distinction – which Jesus am I talking about? I have a cousin named Jesus Maria, Tito to family, Chuy to friends. And an uncle Jesus, Jesse to everyone. I’m not talking about them, or any of the millions of Jesus, Chuy’s or Jesse’s that populate the Latino world. I’m talking about the Jesus of the Christian New Testament. The one that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly was recently discussing with the guests of her morning television program.

The specifics of her statement are by now well known: She was discussing an article Aisha Harris wrote for Slate in which Harris wrote about how Santa Claus depicted as a white man made her feel uncomfortable when she was a girl.

Two soundbites from the discussion quickly rose to digital infamy: “Santa is White,” and “Jesus was white.”

A storm of criticism followed. Kelly answered her critics by claiming her comments were meant as a joke. “Jesus was white,” big yuk, right?

I get the joke. If Adam and Eve can be Latino in a joke, Jesus can be white in a punch line as well. And why not take it a step further?

How would Jesus of Nazareth fill out a U.S. Census form?

White, non-Latino?

Other?

According to the U.S. Census white people are those “having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.” So technically, according to the Government, yeah, Jesus was white.

But according to some historians, Galilee, the area where Jesus was born and raised, was a crossroads of races and cultures. So it’s also likely that he was what modern ethnographers would call mestizo. Still Middle Eastern, still white by Census standards, but with a slight twist.

Latinos can relate. White by government standards, but given a chance to  self-define as something else. All the while with a nagging feeling that somewhere, a gaggle of bureaucrats is chuckling and elbowing each other … “but they’re still white, get it?”

It’s as funny as Adam and Eve being Perez.

Maybe that’s why I’ve yet to meet a white guy named Jesus … wink-wink.

[Photo by swirlspice]

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