Saturday, May 29, 2010

Jesus Blanco y Negro

I was offended when I walked past a black church and I saw a depiction of the Last Supper with a black Jesus and black apostles of varying hues. I guess I was more taken aback than offended, but either way I thought it was bothersome without being able to articulate it. In the Malcolm X movie with Denzel Washington there is a scene where he talks about Jesus Christ being described in the Bible as a person with dark features and kinky hair, ergo he's black according to a certain Black Liberationist (Supremacist?). I really didn't think that meant that he was black. People think Egyptians were black too because they come from Africa, but they are definitely not black. There were black Egyptians and even black Pharaohs (from Nubia), but the majority wouldn't what I consider to be "black." (I especially bristle when people claim that Cleopatra was black just because she lived in Africa. She came from the Ptolemic line of Macedonians. It would be equivalent to insisting that Charlize Theron is black just because she happens to be African American.) So a black Jesus by that logic is a similar thought process or so I think. But then I thought of how I had to grow up with super Anglo Jesus who had milky white skin to match his pure soul. And I thought that was even more bullshit, so I let the black Jesus slide for now.