On White Jesus
Growing up, I thought all the people in the Bible were white people until I watched an episode of “Good Times” (Season 1, Episode 2) where the ‘militant midget’ Michael, showed his mom a passage from the Bible that demonstrates
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Jesus’s physical appearance had no resemblance to the blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus on the cross that greeted us in church, filled the pages of our ginormous King James coffee table Bible, decorated our walls in tapestries and paintings,
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and depicted in movies and other forms of media.

About a year or so ago, I posted a tweet that stated, “All the women of the Bible are women of color” and some people were really upset, saying things like “white is a color too”,
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assuming I was making a racial comment rather than one of actual and obvious fact. I was like, yeah white is a color, but there are literally no white Americans in the Bible. The funny thing was that they felt “left out” by that statement,
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and didn’t see how what they were feeling translated to people of color who have never seen images of people in the Bible that look like them, even when characters in the Bible are clearly of African or of some other ethnic heritage.
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American Christian culture has historically portrayed our Savior, not as a man of Jewish heritage through the formation of the nation of Israel, not as one whose lineage goes back to Ur of the Chaldeans through Abraham,
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nor even earlier to the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers through Adam, but as one who is highly westernized and white. You can imagine how this image of Christ furthers the notion of christianity as a "white man's religion",
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and not one in which Jesus came into the world culturally-cloaked but not culturally-bound.

This ethnocentric portrayal of Jesus is unnecessary since the Bible gives us guidance about Jesus's physical appearance, both from the vantage point of His ethnic and cultural roots,
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but also in the vision that John received in Rev 1:12-18. White portrayals of Christ also entrenches the effects of systemic racism in our society. @JemarTisby said that this kind of portrayal of Jesus "denigrates the image of God in black people and other people of color".
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Sure, there are depictions of Jesus from various ethnic perspectives (Korean, Ethiopian, etc), but as America prides itself on being a melting pot of sorts, this continuing practice, especially among Christians is disturbing and devoid of theological accuracy.
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We can do better. As believers, we must demonstrate fidelity to the Scriptures, depicting biblical figures accurately from their ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
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