The Origin of Anti-Blackness in Christianity
It is a subject that few modern Christians would want to discuss, certainly not in the hallowed settings of a Sunday service or prayer meeting, but it is there, staring at our faces, daring us to challenge it, at the risk of being described a reprobate.
No more.
There is a new breed of Christians who are willing to challenge the status quo, the accepted norm, built on racism deeply imbibed into "white people's" traditions and psyche.
Let's get right to it.
Jesus was not white, and neither was Abraham or the Jews for that matter.
Shocker!
Modern Christian and Catholic doctrine and symbology have cynically erased the "black race" from their place in history, simply based on racist ideologies and pseudo-scientific theories. These include the false ideology of Ham's curse, and falsely attributing the color of one's skin to darkness and light, good and bad.
David M. Goldenberg, in his book, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam, confronts the racist attitude that fueled the North Atlantic Slave Trade and explores the preceding centuries up to 800 B.C.E., in order to trace how anti-blackness developed and progressed to justify slavery of Africans. The interpretation of the curse of Ham was a key ingredient in this culture of anti-blackness.
According to Goldenberg:
"Ham is not the only biblical figure who was supposedly marked by a change of skin color. So was Cain, the son of Adam, according to some writers. Several authors in antebellum America refer to a then-current idea that Cain was smitten with dark skin as punishment for killing his brother, Abel. To some, this was the unspecified mark that God put on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him (Gen 4:15). "
So herein lies the question for all clear-minded people:
Would God put a curse on black people in the form of melanin in their skin that actually protects them from the sun and is actually beneficial to them?
Of course not, the answer is a no-brainer.
Genetic science and anthropology prove that the black race was the original man, the true Homo Sapien. Black people have it inherent in them to create people of other races through mutations and adaptation, but not the other way around.
Thus, different skin colors and their origin has been linked to the evolution of genes originating in Africa.
"While the dark skin of some Pacific Islanders can be traced to Africa, gene variants from Eurasia also seem to have made their way back to Africa. And surprisingly, some of the mutations responsible for lighter skin in Europeans turn out to have an ancient African origin."
The team also found variants of two neighboring genes, HERC2 and OCA2, which are associated with light skin, eyes, and hair in Europeans but arose in Africa; these variants are ancient and common in the light-skinned San people. The team proposes that the variants arose in Africa as early as 1 million years ago and spread later to Europeans and Asians. “Many of the gene variants that cause light skin in Europe have origins in Africa,”
This study clearly disproves the racist origin theory of black skin as some form of a curse and the attributes of Europeans such as the pale skin, eyes and hair as some form of a unique blessing. These physical characteristics have their origins in black people and dwells within their genetic makeup.
Anthropology also proves that humans originated from Africa, and spread throughout the world, to Australasia, Europe and the Americas in several waves of migration.
The biblical narrative, contrary to the racist doctrines, also supports this fact.
God created Adam (Hebrew for "son of the red earth") from the soil. Adam had a particular color, implied in his name.
Adam was not white!
Adam was likely what we would call black, also. Hence, all the descendants of Adam, including Cain and Ham had to be already black.
Knowing these truths, the question one would ask is why the modern church perpetrates the false notion that the biblical characters were somehow white in their symbology and doctrines?
This also leads to another fact; the Jews were not white either.
But let's expand on that in the next installment.
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