The Color of Racism

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu exposed her deep seeded racial prejudices after her assistant mistakenly sent out invitations to her “Electeds of Color” holiday party to the entire city council, including the “electeds of non-color”. What she is saying to those elected white people, you are not worthy to celebrate Christmas with because your skin is white. That sentiment is antithetical to what the Christmas season is all about. Excluding someone from a Christmas party because of their skin color goes against everything that Christmas stands for – love, forgiveness, unity, self-sacrifice. She has destroyed the meaning of the holiday she is celebrating.

In response to this controversy, Mayor Wu said that it was “truly just an honest mistake that went out in typing the email field, and I look forward to celebrating with everyone at the holiday party that we will have beside this one as well. It is my intention that again we can be a city that lives its values and creates space for all kinds of communities to come together.” So, she believes that the only thing she did wrong was mistakenly sending out a racially exclusive party invitation to the people who she excluded from the party. In her mind, her mistake was letting the excluded know that they were excluded, it was not having a racially exclusive party to begin with. If the party was right to have, then why was it wrong that everyone found out about it? Why did she have to keep it a secret?