Evangelist Alveda King: Dismantling the Generational Lies Behind Racism

Trump is a racist? We need to be colorblind? The races need to unite? Sound familiar? Currently the racial tension among the human family is at fever pitch. Here at home in the USA, tempers are flaring and emotions are boiling over the “skin color war.” Can we take a timeout, please?

Acts 17:26 clearly teaches us that we are one blood/one human race. Yet, for thousands of years, skin color wars, religious disputes and class and caste disputes have divided the human family. For the purpose of this article, let’s address only the skin color factor, which breeds the lie of separate races and racism.

In the realm of sociology, colorblindness is a concept based upon ignoring or pretending not to see the color of a person’s skin. Color blindness is a premise describing a desired ideal of a society where racial classifications do not exist to limit a person’s opportunities. In seeking such race-neutral policies proponents seek to promote the goal of racial equality. This ideal was promulgated to Frederick Douglass in the 19th century, and to supporters of the 20th century Civil Rights Movement as well as in international anti-racist movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

The challenge to these efforts is that while well-meaning, abolition-minded citizens were genuinely seeking to bring unity and equality to all people, there were those who were seeking to actively and aggressively continue the racial and social inequities that would provide superiority to various people groups, communities divided by skin color and other socioeconomic factors.

The goal of 1960s civil-rights legislation in the United States was to replace racial discrimination with a race-neutral standard. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s central hope was that people would someday be judged by “the content of their character” rather than “the color of their skin.” This dream has never truly been realized because the skin color issues keep getting in the way.

Interesting Dot-Connecting Facts:

• There is only one human race; as human beings, our race is defined by our red blood and not our skin color.
  
• We should be judged (not identified) by the “content of our character” rather than our visual, easily discerned physical characteristics such as the color of our skin which we can see with our natural eyes.
  
• Colorblindness is a medical, soulish or spiritual condition requiring healing. Jesus gives sight to the blind.
  
• There is no such thing as “interracial marriage” or biracial sexual connections between humans.
  
• Upon conception or fertilization, the baby created from the sexual union is a human being because the parents are human beings.
  
• The first known black queen of England was born on May 19, 1744. She became Queen Sophie Charlotte, wife of King George III; and bore the king 15 children. Queen Sophie was of African descent; allegedly directly descended from a black branch of the Portuguese royal family (Alfonso III and his concubine, Ouruana, a black Moor).
  
• Queen Charlotte reigned for 60 years. In many historic portraits, her features were white-washed with paint to conceal her African ancestry. This practice, akin to disfiguring images such as the Sphinx and Roman coinage, became common by the 19th century for many other portraits of famous black people throughout Europe and Asia.
  
• Queen Sophie Charlotte’s birthday, May 19, not so coincidentally coincides with the date—May 19, 2018—Duke Harry, Duchess Meghan and the royal family chose as the wedding date for another black woman to be married into the royal family.
  
• Royals Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have succeeded the only previous Duke of Sussex: Prince Augustus Frederick, the sixth son of King George III and uncle of Queen Victoria, who was given the title in 1801. He was a supporter of the abolition of the slave trade and expressed disregard for the legal restrictions placed on Jews.
  
• In the United States, practices such as redlining, discriminatory lending practices and color-selective benefits are all part of a form of generational racism that receives a blind eye. For example, Veterans Day celebrates the GI Bill legislation that helped millions of returning veterans go to college and buy homes in the great postwar suburban land rush. Unfortunately, America often turns a blind eye to the seamy side of this story, which is how a largely disproportionate number African-American veterans—because of their skin color—were intentionally denied many of the benefits of the GI Bill. Practices such as these laid the foundation for what is known as “white privilege” in America today, where blacks are still subjected to racist conditions in the justice, education, health and economic systems.
  
• Census data, Social Security numbers and zip codes are still used today to selectively control predatory lending practices, with people judged by the color of their skin rather than the contents of their bank accounts. (See: “African-Americans and the G.I. Bill,” “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” and “White Privilege.”)
  

Colorblindness is a passive form of racism. If you can’t see color, you can also ignore the racist effects that are often amplified by active racists.

See skin color, embrace skin color. As human beings, we are all created in living color.