SantaCon Is The Ultimate Expression of White Privilege

The media and blogosphere has been burning up over the last few days over Megyn Kelly's stupid and racist assertions about the whiteness of Santa Claus and Jesus.  I can't come close to skewering or analyzing her statements as well as others, so I thought I'd focus on another manifestation of whiteness this Christmas season: SantaCon.

In case you don't know about SantaCon, it is a St. Patrick's-type event where drunken revelers dressed in Santa costumes spend a Saturday bar hopping as a mob, leaving a trail of puke, piss, and disorder in their wake.  It appears to be a way for monied twenty and thirtysomethings to transform Christmas into a time for the kind of stupid drunk partying they loved in college.

Now, you would normally think that a mob of disorderly drunks might be countered by the police, but no less a personage than NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly has given SantaCon his approval.  That's right, the same guy who gives fiery justifications for stop and frisk is openly supportive of roving, drunken gangs of former frat boys.  Evidently being a black or brown person going about your daily business is reason enough to be harassed by police, but if you're white you can cause disturbances and paint the streets yellow with your urine to your heart's content.

Can you imagine the reaction of the police if 30,000 people of color in Santa suits descended on lower Manhattan, roaming from bar to bar acting in an obnoxious fashion?  It would be called a "wilding" and the cops would be sent in to break it up immediately.  30,000 predominately white people can do that, and the police actually openly support it!  Beyond the whole frat-boy groupthink party culture element of SantaCon, its reliance on white privilege leaves a bad taste in my mouth.