{"id":6792,"date":"2025-12-13T08:38:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T08:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/?p=6792"},"modified":"2025-12-13T08:38:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T08:38:21","slug":"joy-reid-sets-off-firestorm-after-sharing-video-claiming-jingle-bells-has-racist-roots-see-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/?p=6792","title":{"rendered":"Joy Reid Sets Off Firestorm After Sharing Video Claiming \u2018Jingle Bells\u2019 Has Racist Roots …See more"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Joy Reid Sparks Christmas Chaos After Calling \u2018Jingle Bells\u2019 Racist \u2014 But the Researcher Behind the Claim Says Everyone Got It Wrong<\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
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Former MSNBC host Joy Reid took issue with a popular Christmas carol, reposting a video that describes the beloved tune as racist. The now-viral clip has renewed scrutiny of the carol\u2019s past, as the academic whose research the video is based on says that wasn\u2019t her intent.<\/p>\n

In the video, a man in festive attire stares at a plaque in Medford, Massachusetts, where James Lord Pierpont is believed to have written what became known as \u201cJingle Bells.\u201d<\/p>\n

The video makes the argument that the song\u2019s early performances were used to \u201cmock\u201d Black people. It goes on to discuss Pierpont\u2019s history using racialized dialect and slurs in other works. The clip also notes that the writer later fought for the Confederate Army in defense of slavery.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis is where a racist Confederate soldier wrote \u2018Jingle Bells\u2019 to make fun of Black people,\u201d reads the first caption on screen.<\/p>\n

The video says that Pierpont was strapped for cash and wrote the original version, \u201cThe One Horse Open Sleigh,\u201d for performances where White actors in blackface caricatured Black people \u201ctrying to participate in winter activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reid, who lost her MSNBC show \u201cThe ReidOut\u201d earlier this year, reposted the clip to her 1.3 million Instagram followers, writing, \u201cLord have mercy.\u201d The video cites a 2017 Cambridge University Press paper titled \u201cThe Story I Must Tell: \u2018Jingle Bells\u2019 in the Minstrel Repertoire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe legacy of \u2018Jingle Bells\u2019 is, as we shall see, a prime example of a common misreading of much popular music from the nineteenth century,\u201d writes author Kyna Hamill in the study.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIts blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

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Joy Reid speaks onstage at the 2025 ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood Awards held at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles, California, on Feb. 27. (Leon Bennett\/Getty Images for ESSENCE)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However, Hamill has repeatedly said her work is being misrepresented and that she never claimed \u201cJingle Bells\u201d was written as racist mockery. She maintains her research focuses on the performance history of the song and where it originated, not on Pierpont\u2019s intent in composing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never said it was racist now,\u201d Hamill told the Boston Herald in 2017, adding that she was not looking to dictate what songs are sung at Christmas.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joy Reid Sparks Christmas Chaos After Calling \u2018Jingle Bells\u2019 Racist \u2014 But the Researcher Behind the Claim Says Everyone Got It Wrong Former MSNBC host Joy Reid… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6793,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6794,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6792\/revisions\/6794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}