Unapologetically Changing Series: Race in America, Part 3

I’m gonna be honest today, ya’ll. I’m tired. And then I see this story.

Harvard University sued over allegedly profiting from what are believed to be the earliest photos of American slaves

Just this morning I had a conversation with my 15-year-old son about a dilemma he was faced with. He wanted to skirt around it and put in minimal effort to the situation. I, as the blunt mama that I am, looked at him and said, “Grow a pair and be a man. Do the right thing, kid.” I’m sure some of you will critique my parenting approach but often being blunt is the only parenting strategy that works with a teenage boy.

Why is it so difficult sometimes for humans to do what is morally and ethically right? I am not surprised that no one in the Harvard administration has stood up and said absolutely not. No more profiting from forced photos of a slave. I would imagine there are decades of red tape and paperwork surrounding these photos and copyright and etc. But there comes a time when you have to say, “Grow a pair and do the right thing.”

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Slavery breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that people ever thought they could own other humans. It breaks my heart that people are still sold… today in 2019… in our own country.

Robert Kraft prostitution scandal exposes depth of modern slavery, sex trafficking industry

Doesn’t it just make you sick?

I believe in Jesus. (Don’t run away if you don’t believe in Jesus. I want you to stay and read.) I believe in the Jesus who loves everyone. Everyone.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about slavery recently and something that I read recently made me want to throw things… like spit fire angry. What I’ve been reading I don’t remember ever learning in history class in high school or college. I wish I would have learned it and that I would have learned it with human compassion strung throughout the lessons.

Here’s what I learned… Anglo Christians used Jesus to justify owning slaves bought from Africa.

Tony Evans explains many of the myths Anglo Christians adopted as truth in his book Oneness Embraced. In his book Evans sites a passage from Dr. William Banks, author of The Black Church in the United States.

The Portuguese and Spanish were the first Europeans to deal in the black slave trade. Rationalizing that it was God’s will to bring black heathens into contact with Christianity, even if it meant a lifetime of enforced servitude, their ships carried slaves to labor in the Caribbean colonies as early as 1517. With the approval of their governments and the Roman Catholic Church, the sellers of flesh maintained that “christianized” slaves were better off than free heathens.

Dr. William Banks, The Black Church in the United States

This needs to be in the history books. No question.

Evans goes on to say, “Thus, early in the exploration and development of the New World, the capture of slaves was done under the pretext of Christianizing the slaves. Because the ‘savages’ needed ‘true religion’ to replace their paganism, it seemed justifiable to bring them to the New World with its strong Puritan heritage. Never mind, of course, that this ‘noble end’ would dismantle African families, orphan African children, often destroy the continuity of African culture, and frequently make African women the victims of rape.”

This information is probably no surprise to my friends of color. But to my white friends who love Jesus this may be new information. And let me tell you there is so much more historical information that we were never taught and we should have been. I hope you will do your due diligence and do a little bit more research into this topic.

So here we are in 2019 and there is still this inferiority myth, as Evans calls it, that exists. It started hundreds of years ago and it hasn’t been destroyed yet. The myth tells my black son that in order to be worthy he should have white skin like his parents. The myth tells my beautiful black friend that she’s not worthy of going after a certain job. The myth tells white people that they deserve…

I’m calling it evil and I’m calling it out. This inferiority myth must be destroyed and it starts with us, friends.

Because I believe in Jesus and because I have a sense of decency, I believe we are all freaking equal and worthy of the same opportunities. (For Pete’s sake Jesus wasn’t even WHITE. Ya’ll know that? There’s no way geographically that He was white. AMEN to that.)

Martin Luther King Jr. said in his last book, Where Do We Go from Here, “Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a mass effort to re-educate themselves out of their racial ignorance….[They] believe they have so little to learn.”

I agree 100 percent with King. The one piece of that statement I would challenge today in 2019 is that it’s not that whites believe they have little to learn, it’s that most whites are oblivious and don’t realize there is a library of information on race in America that they don’t know and that they need to learn.

So here’s your door you need to walk through, white friends. As a white woman I am telling you… I am educating you… that there is much you probably don’t know that you need to know. Will you start learning? Will you start tearing down walls that have been built by centuries of myths? Will you be the person that says in your community, “enough”?

Do it for Renty if for no one else. Renty was forced to take nude photos as a slave and made a mockery of and supposedly people are still profiting from this. Renty was a man. A human. Someone who bled just like you and me, who felt emotions just like you and me, who had dreams just like you and me. Take some time and learn a little bit of what no one ever taught you for the sake of the dignity of those who lost it at the hands of ignorant and miseducated white people. It will open your eyes to oppression that still exists and it will challenge your heart.

I am thankful for some wonderful friends of color who have spoken truth into my life and have opened my eyes to so much that I just didn’t know. While there is still much I don’t know, I am a better person because of this constant education and I think you will be too.

One more thing, if you love Jesus and are white, will you own these sins of our past with me? Will you stand up and say we are sorry this was done in the name of Jesus? Will you move forward with a spirit of unity and not disunity? We must.