Joy Reid spreads claim 'Jingle Bells' is racist

Ex-MSNBC host Joy Reid, who has been working independently with her own show as of late, shared a video this week that claimed, "Jingle Bells" was written to "make fun of black people" and is rooted in racism. She shared the video on her Instagram to her 1.3 million followers.

The video, originally posted by user "Know Your Caribbean," shows a man in a sweater in Medford, Massachusetts, at a plaque where it is believed that James Lord Pierpont wrote the song in 1850. The caption in the video then reads, “This is where a racist Confederate soldier wrote ‘Jingle Bells’ to make fun of black people, and has its origins in bigoted minstrel shows that were popular at the time."

The man in the video scowled at the plaque and the captions continued to detail that Pierpont composed the song and went onto claim that the song was written explicitly to be used in performances where white people would wear blackface to “mock and caricature black people trying to participate in winter activities."

It is then alleged in the video that "laughing all the way" is a "likely" reference to a racially charged comedy skit called "Laughing Darkie." The song was patented by Pierpont in 1859, and the name of the song, previously "The One Horse Open Sleigh," was changed to the familiar "Jingle Bells," title, per the New York Post. The video went on and suggested that Pierpont "abandoned his family" to join the Confederacy in the Civil War. 

Reid, since leaving MSNBC, has made other left-wing claims, such as that white people are not able to "originally invent anything" and has compared the rights LGBTQ people have in the US to the rights they have in Iran, where same sex relationships are punishable by death.