"I'm glad I'm not colored"
“I'm Glad I'm Not Colored”
Do those words make you cringe?
They should.
But they were not spoken from a racist heart of hatred and discrimination. In fact, they were not spoken at all. They were the clear thoughts of a small child [not yet five-years-old], as she held onto her mother’s hand and looked down the hillside at the “colored” school (I use the vernacular of the time). As she watched orderly lines of uniformed children file along the breezeway outside the classrooms, she felt relief that she had not been born colored.
That was in 1960. And that tiny girl was me, living in the British Territory of Bermuda. Such was the impact of that sight I still remember it to this day. Over sixty-years later, it is emblazoned upon my memory as if it were yesterday.
Such was the cultural climate of the times, that a child barely past babyhood could grasp the concept of caste and understand that to be born colored was a terrible disadvantage. And though I did not have the ability, as yet, to judge the rightness or wrongness of the concept…as much as I could, I understood the implications.
As I mentally uttered words of relief at not being born colored, not one smidgen of racial hatred influenced my childish thoughts. I was simply being honest with myself. It was just the way things were.
Long before I reached adulthood, I realized, along with most other reasonable people, that a belief system like the one in 1961, a hypothesis that made me so very glad I was not colored, was very, very, wrong.
Yet, that terrible paradigm had already existed, and thrived, for thousands of years. At one time, it was even touted and preached from pulpits as "God's Design for humanity."
Our good God was blamed for the horrors of chattel-slavery. Our loving Heavenly Father was not only blamed for humanity's hatred and prejudice against one another, but evil was touted as good.
As was the case with the Civil War that ended slavery, good people, both black and white, finally became fed up with the oppressive system of Jim Crow against black Americans. Led by Martin Luther King, Jr., the Civil Rights Movement was all about ending tyranny against black Americans, but, in the end, all Americans benefitted from the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made it illegal to discriminate based on race color, religion, sex, or national origin.
The Civil Rights Movement led to changes in the American legal system that forced cultural change. Not perfect. Not where we want to be yet. But progress has been, and is being, made. It is a tragedy the human heart is so wicked it takes legal repercussions to force people to do what is right. And yes, we know that even then, many still won't.
Prejudice against people of color exists in evil hearts. It always will. And it's a sad fact that changes in laws happen faster than changes in human hearts. Even so, we must acknowledge that social progress has been made. With my own eyes, in 1960, I witnessed black and white children still not attending school together in Bermuda. In the U.S., the issue of schools got settled and had finally begun to be implemented in 1957, albeit through much adversity to the black students and communities.
Despite the progress, that we must admit has been made since then, the caste systems of race and class are still very much alive and well within American and Christian culture.
As Christians, we must never forget that hatred and prejudice are every bit as much a spiritual issue as they are social issues. We must never forget who the real enemy is. Satan. Yes. He uses flesh and blood to accomplish his bloody purposes. He would turn us all against each other, if he could. But our enemy is not flesh and blood. The enemy of our souls is always busy about the business of perpetuating evil, along with preventing and undoing every bit of good that we, through the power of the Word and Holy Spirit of God, can accomplish.
That Great Dragon, the Roaring Lion, is not toothless. He uses people and laws, as well as mighty spiritual beings and weapons, against us. But though the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, they are MIGHTY through God to the pulling down of [enemy] strongholds, casting down [evil] imaginations, and bringing our every thought into the obedience of Jesus Christ.
God is love. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. In Christ there is no racial caste system.
And this brings me to another caste system in the home of the brave and land of the free, and throughout the world.
As I was writing my book about gender equality and autonomy of the sexes, I found I couldn't write about women’s issues within the Christian community, without extensively researching, referencing, and writing about the issues of slavery, abolition, Jim Crow, and civil rights. In The U.S., the two movements of abolition and women's rights were impossibly intertwined, as will be the content in the rest of this article.
You see, one movement [abolition] led to the other [women's rights]. As "abolition women” were turning the world upside-down, they found they were hindered in their advocacy [of immediate emancipation] by social mores that forbad women to speak in public. I write about this in some detail in my book. The backlash from men who viewed these women as threats to their gender and color-based power system, was brutal. And, as previously mentioned, it was preached from pulpits that chattel-slavery was not only scriptural but part of “God’s Glorious design” for humanity. The Southern Baptist Convention was formed out of the split from Northern Baptists, over the issue of slavery.
Most pastor's, today, would not dare to preach that white supremacy is "God's Great Design." Even if they believe it, most know better than to say it. Yet male supremacy, is preached louder than ever, and lauded by complementarian leaders, as "God's Great and Glorious Design" for men and women. They even use the same language as the Confederate South did during the Civil War.
When I heard one complementarian admit that when he was a boy, he felt that he had dodged a bullet in not being born a girl, I understood exactly what he meant. I remembered my young self, watching the children on the breezeway at the colored school.
This young man was shockingly transparent about his relief at not being a girl. Though he was fully committed to the complementarian paradigm of God’s “glorious [hierarchical] design” for men and women, he did not try to dress it up to look like something glorious for the women. He knew better.
He had no trouble admitting to the low status of women, though he didn’t bewail it for them as he would have for himself.
In the continued [current] climate of racism and sexism, his words were logical. They made perfect sense. Hearing them, as an adult, I could process my memory of Bermuda and the colored school. I had long-since grasped the wrongness [as I could not have done, then] of a race-based caste system that had such an impact on a child of such a young age. The complementarian caste system that reigns over women and girls in churches, today, the system that causes little boys to feel relief that they were born as boys and not as girls, is just as wrong.
Is it any wonder that the trans-gender issue is one of the primary issues of the day?
Just as in times past, some black people chose to “pass” for white, because life was better if one was white, the sexual revolution of today isn’t about having sex, it’s about what sex one wants to be. A hierarchical caste-system that produces such dissatisfaction [with either sex or race] cannot flow from the heart of God nor can it be found within the clear teaching of scripture.
God planned for and knew each one of us before he formed us in our mother's wombs. He doesn’t make mistakes. Our Creator not only planned for each of our existences but planned our race and our sex as well. Every human comes into this world with the intrinsic value of having been made in the image of God and called to manage this earth’s resources together, as autonomous equals.
Knowing that fallen humanity would quickly come into agreement with the hierarchical systems of the adversary [who goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour]. God still made one female and another black, one male, and another white, etc.. Whoever and whatever we are, it is the will of God that we are who and what we are. We are here to serve our Creator, and, like the Psalmist, to serve our generations, each in our turn.
Hatred, prejudice, and caste should not be, and especially should not be so among the brethren.
Jocelyn Andersen is a Bible teacher, blogger, and the author of several Christian books, including, Woman Submit! Christians & Domestic Violence and Woman this is WAR! Gender, Slavery, and the Evangelical Caste System. She is a regular contributor to Adorning His Bride Magazine and a member of AWSA (Advanced Writers & Speakers Association). Her work has been featured in magazines, newspapers, radio, and television. She can be contacted through her website www.JocelynAndersen.com.