

When Aisha Harris was a student at West Woods School — and later Hamden Middle and Hamden High schools — she felt different because she was often the only student of color in her classes.



At a student in the Talented and Gifted program, she often didn't see any other students of color in any classes except for physical education and a few others, she said.



In 2004, she wrote about her experiences in the Hartford Courant. And she continued to write — now as a columnist for Slate. And it was one of her pieces that set off a firestorm of debate: should Santa be depicted as white?



It was that piece that caught the attention of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, who brought it up to a panel of guests on her show last week.



According to Kelly, Santa is white. Period.



With that comment, Harris, who moved to Hamden when she was in fourth grade, was brought into what became a nationwide debate on the appropriateness of Kelly's comments.



Harris appeared on CNN's Reliable Sources Sunday to defend her piece.



"It kind of reinforced my point, actually," Harris told Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter. "The fact that Kelly and some of the other guests on the show were insisting that Santa is white just spoke to the reason why I wrote the piece — a lot of people out there automatically assume that Santa must be white, and it's laughable that he should be anything else."









