I just read an article where a Black woman back in the1970s(?) in Washington D.C. reacted negatively to a picture of Jesus depicted as a Black man. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/12/black-jesus-christmas-story/676925/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
I remember those pictures and my sister and I bought one, had it framed, and we presented it to a small rural church that my mother attended when she was a child. The members were not educated, they were elderly, and none of them had a problem with the picture and it was on the church’s wall until it closed. Not one of those members had a problem accepting the depiction of Jesus as a Black man. Which if we read the Bible through our own eyes and not the lens of the white supremacist…Jesus was not white. He was from what we today call the Middle East. In ancient times, as I’ve said before, the area was just a part of the continent we have named Africa. Jesus was not depicted as white until the Italians painted him as a white man with blond hair. Before, as with the pagan gods, Jesus and his mother were depicted as Black. There are still statues (the Black Madonna) in existence today that depict them as Black.
It continues to surprise me as to how brainwashed we are. How self-hatred is ingrained into our very being. Because it is so ingrained, most of us would deny it. But we react viscerally when we encounter images, etc. that do not support that innate self-hatred. We can overcome our self-hatred, but only if we acknowledge it. And who wants to acknowledge that they hate the image they see in the mirror?
How could any Black person…thinking Black person…want to go to a heaven created and populated by white people? For me, it doesn’t compute. and it didn’t compute with our elders. I remember the a capella songs sung by the mothers and deacons of the church that began the church service. In not one of them did we sing we wanted to see a white person in heaven. We wanted to see our relatives…those who looked like us. I ask it again…what happened to us as we adapted to the urban life?
Did we think God was white? I would say we did because that’s the only depiction we saw. The United States is a white, racist society and only a white male could be god in their society. And that god was advertised as benevolent, even though the Bible depicts God as vengeful and wrathful. Hellfire and damnation were the consequences of failure to please God. Is it possible to understand that a people’s god is no different from them? That their god is the expression of the worst of them? It has to be because they created their god to justify, perpetuate, and sanction the worse they could do to themselves and others.
What did I think? I didn’t. You know how you see something and it doesn’t really make an impression? Growing up, until integration, I didn’t know any white people and pictures of them made no lasting impression. That’s why pictures of the Black Jesus didn’t cause any existential trauma…not for me or my siblings. Plus, we didn’t have pictures of Jesus, MLK, or the Kennedys on our walls. Now, those pictures were on the church fans and there was the song Abraham, Martin and John. Now, that I looked it up, I do remember Moms Mabley singing the song. I lived in the South and that wasn’t the version I heard on the radio.
What was on the walls of my childhood home? Nothing much. My mother mod-podged and mounted a picture of a Black woman…I think it was a card someone sent to her. Other than that, I think landscapes and there were the ceramic spoon and fork that were hung on the kitchen wall. (This lack of memory is a result of being very very nearsighted.) Part of the nothing much was the difficulty in hanging anything on plaster walls. Plaster disliked being pierced by nails and reacted by cracking and crumbling.
Nothing new under the sun…The Color Purple is now a musical movie. First, there was the book, then the movie, then the musical play, and now the musical movie. I read the book and sat through the movie. I’ve never wanted to revisit the characters. However, it appears there is an audience for this iteration of the book as I have read that it had a fantastic opening day.
Maybe because it’s a downer with a cathartic ending? People like to feel uncomfortable and then feel the relief that everything turned out well.
Sometime in the 1950s, my mother went to a county fair. At the fair, she won a set of ruby red dishes. She gave those dishes to her mother. When my sister and I were helping my aunts pack up my grandparents’ home after their passing, I guess I said I wanted those dishes because my aunts gave them to me. Some pieces had been broken over the years and I set out to replace the broken dishes. At the time, 1980s to 1990s, the square ruby red plates, saucers, and cups were hard to find. It took me a while, but I found a complete set of square ruby red plates, cups, and saucers in an antique store that I would not have known existed, but for my work travel companion who also loved antiquing. This Christmas season, I found a ruby red bowl that I bought only so I could get free shipping. It turned out to be a beautiful addition to my collection. By the way, I have never collected the Avon ruby red glassware. It never appealed to me.
This picture was taken five years ago. That was the last time I decorated any tree for Christmas. I didn’t think it was that long ago!
Another stray thought. Some time ago, I met a mother of three children who went to college, may have been a two year college, was studying to be a minister, married twice…she didn’t know that a prune was a dried plum. I had her look it up because she didn’t believe me. (This happened before the era of smart phones.) Was life so hectic, even then, that we never stopped to read the labels on the foods we bought? If I remember correctly, she knew that a raisin was a dried grape. I have a hazy memory of us talking about the cereal commercial that depicted a grape turning into a raisin.
Makes me think…what were her children being exposed to. I took my niece to museums, Civil War battlefields (talk about that in another Post), plays, concerts, zoos, antique shops, etc. Her mother took her to Disney World…no way was I going to Disney World in the summer! All I’m saying is…we tried to provide her with experiences and it saddens me when I hear persons her age say their parent(s) never took them anywhere. It also saddens me that she never felt she fit in with her Black peers. That was not our intention. That she felt loved, protected, and secure was our goal. More on this thought in another Post.
Let us all look forward to new experiences in the coming year that will enrich us and the communities in which we live!!!
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