"Truth is that which corresponds with reality." - N. Geisler. This is a principle that has really been on my mind lately. I keep seeing posts online in regards to racism within our country and I find myself noticing two words used, regardless of the opinion expressed, that don't match up with reality. I've been guilty of using these words myself.
After much contemplation, I've decided for myself that I'm going to try and eliminate "white" and "black" from my vocabulary in regards to people. I would include others like "red" and "yellow", but I don't tend to use those terms anyway.
There is no such thing as a black or white man. Such adjectives do not correspond with reality. If I hold up a piece of white paper next to a "white man", it does not match. If I did the same with a piece of black paper to a "black man", it would not match. Even if I did the same with a "red" or "yellow man", it still would not correspond.
In reality, what we find is a spectrum of colors that display the glory of God's creative artistry. No color, standing alone, can actually capture the melanin hues of being made in God's image. And, if that's the case, why limit others to one color? Why limit myself to one color?
Consider my wife as another example. My mother-in-law is called "white", my father-in-law "black", but my wife isn't labelled "gray", even though that's what she would be if white and black mixed.
Even in the most extreme examples of albinism or melanism, the two terms do not match entirely. Shades of pink or purple, blue or brown, still warmly accentuate the same blood that flows through our veins.
At best, "white" and "black" are very poor and confusing attempts at describing people. We undermine our own attempts to navigate disagreements, hate, and pride as we continue to use the two most divided extremes in color as a way to refer to each other.
At worst, we use the two terms to obscure far deeper (and usually interconnected) differences between people groups. By using one of these terms, we lump together both the pure in heart and the hard of heart with a similarity in appearance that they have absolutely no control over.
I don't want to be color-neutral. All colors are not the same. I absolutely admit to noticing the color of someone's skin. As an artist, I often find myself admiring a person's color and imagining how I might portray such beauty through paint or pencil. If you were to ask my wife, she would tell you that my favorite color dances somewhere between tan and sepia, because I so frequently use it when coloring different people. Each color is as unique as every one of the individuals that might share it.
I also don't want to be color-exclusive. Labeling whole groups of people as black or white is not a justifiable reason for pride, supremacy, entitlement, or indifference. It's too broad a stroke that color-washes over individuals, ethnicities, nationalities, cultures, circumstances, and numerous sides of recorded history.
My decision is an attempt to be more color-inclusive, in that I purposefully start viewing everyone as different shades of the same color - mankind. Thus, our virtues and vices, our deeds of wickedness and righteousness, our atrocities and accomplishments of the past, are not exclusive to "black" or "white" but inclusive to all of us. Regardless of color, nationality, or culture.
Isn't this what Paul was arguing in the book of Romans for those Christians that came from a Jewish background? "... for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one..." (Romans 3:9b-10). He then presses onward in his argument and says the verse so many of us can quote. "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God..." (Romans 3:23).
I know for myself, if I were to call myself a "white man", because of my lighter complexion, I would be disingenous to the Choctaw side of my heritage. Yet, if I called myself a "red man", that would be disingenous to the German side of my heritage. I know there are other nationalities mixed in with my heritage, too. The simple conclusion is that I wear the color of mankind in my blood.
"And [God] hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us..." (Acts 17:26-27).
This decision of mine is my own to make. But I suspect it is one many of us should make. We all need to take a long, contemplative look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we really are black or white. Then, we should start looking at others and asking ourselves the same thing.
I quoted from Romans 3 earlier, but I purposefully left out the first half of verse 9. If we continue clinging to one color whether for ourselves or others, we would benefit from asking ourselves the same question Paul asked his Jewish audience.
"What then? Are we better than they?" (Romans 3:9a).
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