Would Irving Berlin Be Able to Publish “White Christmas” Today?

If you wish to go to extremes, let it be in sweetness, patience, humility, and charity. (St. Philip Neri)

The doctrine of DEI—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—requires, first and foremost, that all humans be categorized by their extrinsic circumstances, so much so that, even outside of DEI, this has become a common practice in the whole of our society. One’s melanin content, country of national origin, sexual preferences, religious beliefs, gender/sex, and economic status are the basis for these categorizations. Within those categories are many sub-categorizations and exceptions, as exemplified in the most common question regarding what constitutes a “person of color.”

A person from Asia or the Middle East may be very dark-skinned, for example, yet is considered “white” while a light-skinned person of Mexican descent may constitute a “person of color.” Similarly, a black African who emigrated to the U.S. in the past twenty years may not be as “Black” as an African American whose family has been here for 200 years. What constitutes assignment to and membership in each of these categories is very subjective, yet the application of such subjective classification is treated as unquestionable and unassailable truth.

A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, “You are mad! You are not like us!” (St. Anthony the Great)

The Social “Sin” of Cultural Appropriation

Subsequently, there has developed a prohibition against “appropriating” elements of a classification to which a person does not belong. Thus, a non-Chinese person should not wear traditional Chinese clothing, a non-Mexican should not doff a Mexican sombrero, and one who is not a member of a native tribe should not use attire worn by those tribe members even if the purpose is to honor or celebrate those cultures. Similarly, hairstyles should solely be limited to those people belonging to the culture in which those styles originated. Everyone must stay in his or her lane (even if those lanes cross or frequently change course).

Indignation is a terrible incentive to sin. It disorders the mind to such an extent as to leave no room for reason. (St. Ambrose)

This thinking is invariably applied to creative endeavors. Should actors who are not gay or transgendered, for example, be permitted to play roles written for members of those groups? Should writers create stories about people with whom they do not share ethnicity or gender? A currently dominant opinion is that they should not, as inferred in a recent critique of the musical West Side Story:

But ultimately, “West Side Story” borrowed the aesthetics from what these four Jewish men (composer Leonard Bernstein, choreographer Jerome Robbins, writer Arthur Laurents, and lyricist Stephen Sondheim) perceived to be a Puerto Rican identity — thick accents, dark skin, motivations for violent interactions — to tell a highly theatrical Shakespeare tale, not the other way around.

After all, how can singers and songwriters rightfully publish songs about cultures of which they are not a part or in a style that is of another culture? The currently popular view, linked above, is that they should not do so.

The Jewish Composer of “White Christmas”

All of this came to mind over Christmas. The world’s best-selling and most popular Christmas song, and indeed the best-selling song of all time, is “White Christmas” as sung by Bing Crosby. It was written in 1941, just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and quickly became the most requested song for members of the Armed Forces overseas. The song’s melodic, sentimental call to return to the Christmas of our childhoods, “… where the tree-tops glisten, and children listen, to hear sleigh bells in the snow,” continues to bring us joy to this day.

Yet the song was written by a man who never celebrated Christmas, let alone an American Christmas. Born in what is now Belarus, Israel Beilin’s earliest childhood memory was watching the Russian military burn his home during one of its anti-Jewish pogroms. Shortly after immigrating to New York with his parents and six siblings, his father died, and all of the children were required to make money in any way they could to continue living in the tattered rooms of their Lower East Side tenement.

Young Israel began to sing for money in bars and on street corners. Eventually, he wrote a song that was to be mistakenly published under the name “I. Berlin.” He subsequently anglicized his first name, and Irving Berlin never looked back.

Conclusion: Our True Worth

How poor we all would be if Irving Berlin, a Russian-born Jew, was never able to publish “White Christmas,” or “Easter Parade” as well. How poor we all are when we define the capabilities and dreams of humans based upon our own limited, and frequently false, perceptions of them. Thank you, Israel Beilin, for “White Christmas,” and may God bless you.

 Our true worth does not consist in what human beings think of us. What we really are consists in what God knows us to be. (St. John Berchmans)