White Christmas, White Christ?

My 1st semester in college I had a low-resolution printout of a very Black Jesus hanging up over my bed in the dorms.  This was long before the word "woke" entered the common lexicon or the paranoid Republican image of colleges as bastions of "liberal brainwashing" existed. Tumblr and Twitter weren't even a gleam in their creators' eye and America wasn't divided along party lines--at least not to such an obnoxious degree.  I don't really know WHY I thought it prudent to plaster this polarizing symbol over my head, eyes affixed on entering guests like a judgy 2-D peeping tom in a Toga. 

But it started many a lively--and frustrating--discussion.  The number of people who would stop what they were doing to point, laugh & tell me with self-assured certainty that "Jesus wasn't BLACK!" as if they'd just had a Biblical revelation of their own was surprisingly high, even for Bumfuck Nowheresville, USA.  Not sure what I expected but I've always been a contrarian so I was up for the debate.  Needless to say the pic did the heavy lifting when it came to weeding out bad potential friends.  

Something like my Black dorm Jesus

Historical Jesus vs. Whitewashed Christ

It's not that I believe Jesus was a Black African man.  But he most certainly wasn't Irish white either.  And that's exactly how every church from Svalbard, Norway to Patagonia, South America portrays him on their stained glass windows, printouts, billboards & websites. White Jesus is utterly ubiquitous throughout this planet... inescapable.  And nobody questions the historical/geographical accuracy of this depiction--or the racist intentions behind it.  Perhaps white Jesus serves a dual purpose:  Like those Nigerian romance scammers who leave the glaring grammatical errors in their messages on purpose--"If we make Jesus white it'll weed out the critical thinkers & leave behind only the lowest-hanging fruit who will be easy to manipulate & steal from." Kinda like how my Black Jesus weeded out the racists for me.    🤔

In any case, making a Middle Eastern Jew (what we'd refer to today as "Mizrahi," though that term wasn't coined until the founding of Israel so it didn't apply to Jesus at the time) pasty white w/ straight, sandy blonde hair & crystal blue eyes takes a psychological toll on other races over time.  How could it not?  The truth is that Jesus was a Galilean Semite & would've resembled a modern-day Arab or Middle Eastern (Mizrahi) Jew--the kind whose ancestors never left the Middle East & attained the silvery blonde hair and blue eyes that many Ashkenazi Jews have today (think Jerry Springer, Lisa Kudrow, Gene Wilder & Barbara Walters).

While we can't know with 100% certainty what he would've looked like, it's likely he had some combination of the following features:  dark, coarse short hair (likely "woolly-textured" as described in the Bible); olive brown skin, a short/closely-cropped beard, wide-set nose, dark brown/black eyes & a broad face.  How do we know?  Because photos exist from 3rd Century Synagogues of Jewish men and we have skulls/other bones going back even further from that region as well.  This gives a pretty good idea about his head shape/facial features.  Long hair in men was hugely frowned upon in those days in that region--Paul of the Bible had not-nice things to say about it & wouldn't have likely said them if his savior had sported lengthy locks. 

Expert recreations of historical Jesus' likely appearance (via the BBC)

Origins of the White Lie (and Why It Matters)

So where oh where did the popular image of Christ as a hippie-haired white dude with rosy cheeks come from?  It was born & bred by the people who brought you colorism & refer to blonde, blue eyed people as "All-American" and consider women with those features to be the standard of beauty. The same folks who made a national holiday celebrating Christopher Columbus & made Mother Teresa a saint & rallied around Hitler to throw Jews in ovens & kept apartheid alive from 1948-1994 and...

...you get it. 

It comes from Eurocentric WHITES, the most egregious historical revisionists to ever trod the planet.  Specifically Byzantine-era Romans who sought to portray Christ as a younger version of Zeus.  And that explains all the Biblical togas--Greeks & Romans LOVED a toga.  That was just OG white Jesus though:  an infinite number of variations on this theme have emerged over the years & more are born daily.  Whites can't fathom a non-white god/savior because, like most white-privilege-y things, they (we) have never had to think about it.  Not only a non-white savior, but one who was supposedly born/raised in an all-white country & was inexplicably NOT white.  That's the BS they're feeding us with white JC.  

"What does it matter whether Jesus was Black, white, purple or polka-dotted?  He's the son of GOD!!!!1!!" the suddenly-colorblind whites inevitably ask (it's always "purple/polka dots" for some reason).

Yeah, I might ask you the same question.  What DOES it matter?  Why get so bent out of shape over Black Jesus while rushing to the defense of white & spotted Christ?  (And Heaven help you if you refer to any deity, messiah, prophet or holy person as "she").   Easy.  Because you're prejudiced & refuse to worship a God who is not made in your image, that's why.  To that I say:  Just think how the world's majority, who just happen to be non-white, must feel.  Also: facts matter, always.

I think it's the submission of non-whites regardless of religion to this insidious form of spiritual abuse & psychological warfare that baffles me most.  As long as historical accuracy is out the window, why not make Jesus, Mary, the disciples & all the other Biblical characters' look like the majority in your country/region, if only to make them more relatable?  Might as well since the Anglos have no such qualms tinkering w/ their savior's appearance.  A Melanesian, Japanese, Indian or Namibian Jesus is no more historically inaccurate than a Caucasian/Eurotrash-Jesus, so WHY has the whole world swallowed this colonialist "white" lie with no pushback?  (We could debate the impact of Christianity itself on various indigenous groups & races but this is a blog, not a novel).  

It seems that once again, Europeans are the only people with the audacity & narcissism to turn a beloved historical figure into a clone of themselves.  A Middle Eastern Jewish man who preached to dehydrated shepherds in the desert sun & traveled on foot from Jerusalem to Demascus, Egypt & beyond is made to look whiter than the angels & cherubs in a Renaissance-era painting.  That takes a lot of chutzpah, alright, but it should also make you question what else they are whitewashing or covering up.  Not just in the Bible or regarding matters of race but in general:  history, current events, medicine, politics, economics, tech advancements & more.  To tamper with the most recognizable figure on Earth in such a blatant way is a big fucking deal that shouldn't be downplayed.



Black Jesus Comes Home

One of the most surprising "full circle" moments I've had happened a couple Christmases ago when I went to visit my octogenarian grandparents--both conservative evangelicals from a tiny Southern town--at their house.  And what do I see perched on the mantle but a nativity scene--and not a single white wise man in sight.  They were all varying shades of brown, one Black. 

"Where'd you get THAT?!" I asked, pointing at the Black one.  

"Your great-grandma painted those a very long time ago" she said proudly.  (Said great-grandma was a full-blooded Seminole Indian artist who died in 1981 so I never met her).  My mind flashed to all the Black Santas, Jesuses & wise men I'd ever seen in my life... a disappointingly short list.  It dawned on me that I'd NEVER seen a non-white figure of this kind in anyone's home except a Black person's... even in this "woke" era of inclusivity & diversity.  Was there something they weren't telling me about my family history?  If Jesus & the other Biblical characters are depicted as white everywhere now, how much worse was it in my great-grandma's time?  She didn't just pick these up at some bargain bin store either, she made a conscious decision to paint them that way in a time when she faced judgment for her own interracial marriage.  And my grandma held onto them & displayed them prominently all these years later.
 
"Don't turn your back or you'll be missing a Black Nativity-man" I said with a wink.  She smiled.

If my great-grandmother had the wisdom & insight to paint her wise men the correct color in a racist, backward place like this before the Internet Age, surely more people should be questioning (& rejecting) white Jesus in the current year.  They should be questioning a lot of the things they take for granted as true.  Maybe we'd be further along as a species & stop repeating the same avoidable pain cycles if they did.  Just because your parents, religious leaders, coaches, teachers or favorite politician said it doesn't make it true.  Even if your entire religion or culture said it, check for yourself.  The truth is self-evident; propaganda, stereotypes & lies require constant repetition. 

Wishing everyone a white Christmas sans the white Christ.  🎄  Just for fun, here are some paintings of the various white Jesuses (Jesii?) I've found 'round the www.  I haven't lol'd this hard in a long time:

  

1959 oil painting Christ is sooo over your lame puns, Janice.

Standard white JC, likely painted during Michael Landon's "Highway to Heaven" era.

Drunken fratboy Jesus who turns boxed wine into pee & just farted on your cat.

Yeah, Modern Jesus sees your internet search history. I don't judge. That's my old man. 

Peak white Jesus with ginger hair.  Don't get no whiter'n that.

Hobo Honkey Jesus beggin' for change. For "food." Definitely not bath salts.

Rainbow-washed Jesus.  It was inevitable.  At least he's the right color?

Okay, whose sex-starved Christian auntie did this?!