Have you seen this meme before? It’s making the rounds again.
I’m not going to correct everything that’s wrong with the associated lists, but there are a few big things that need correcting. For example, the depiction of the historical Jesus (and I will come to the problem of historicity in a moment) as “Middle-Eastern brown skinned,” as if this makes Jesus nonwhite. We’ve seen this before with the terrorism paint chip meme (see Everything Progressives Say About Mass Shootings is Wrong).
But MENA (Middle Eastern and North African), which includes many Jews, are white (See Jews are White. So Are Arabs; Almost Everybody in the Bible is White; Race, Ethnicity, Religion, and the Problem of Conceptual Conflation and Inflation). White people (Caucasians) have historically dwelled across North Africa and much of Eurasia for thousands of years. Progressives have in common with Nazis the desire to narrow the white race to a small exclusive group in Northern Europe, albeit the motivation of the respective projects lies in opposite directions.
In fact, there’s an attempt by Democrats to significantly revise the 2030 census and federal surveys, introducing a new checkbox for MENA. Advocates for MENA groups (i.e., Islamists) applaud the checkbox because MENA are white and they don’t want to be. Rashida Tlaib said to bureau director, Steven Dillingham, “So Director, are you aware that people like me who are Arab, Middle Eastern, North African have to indicate that they are white on the US Census?”
The Census Bureau says the addition of a MENA box (and a combined question about race and ethnicity) could decrease the number of people who identify as white for the national head count. How big a decrease? We know that more than three-and-a-half million people listed a MENA origin in the 2020 decennial census included those who first identified as white.
So, although Jesus is probably not a historical figure (in his 2014 On the Historicity of Jesus, Richard Carrier has it at best 3:1 against existing), it’s almost certain that if he were then he’d be a white man.
It’s important to point out that the picture on the right hand side of the meme is as much the product of the imagination as the picture on the left hand side. Both are inventions. But if the man on the right were real and attending a high school in the US South in the 1970s, while some of his peers might wonder about his ethnicity, they wouldn’t see him as nonwhite. Because he’s not. He’d be down at the rock quarry around a bonfire drinking PGA punch out of a red Solo Cup wisecracking with all the other white boys who look more like the picture on the left. They’d be leaning against their muscle cars passing the joint without any thought of DEI.
Here’s another important correction to make, this characterization of Jesus as a man seeking justice through restoration and so forth. Somebody must have missed the memo, but those who do not accept Jesus as lord and savior are destined to burn for eternity in a lake of fire. That doesn’t sound like liberation from oppression but it’s opposite.
The Jewish Gehenna, the common concept of Hell, is mentioned several times in Revelations. Some might object to that book—to be sure, it’s a bit mad. But Mark has Jesus saying this (9:43): “And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched.” Even those who call Jesus Lord are not guaranteed salvation (see Matthew 7); a man has to fulfill the will of Yahweh, which is to believe in Jesus as Lord. To put it in terms a woke progressive can relate to: affirm the delusion or be canceled.
Which brings me to… Nonviolent? Jesus was nonviolent? I wonder how the money changers in the temple felt about brown skinned Jesus meek and mild on that day he rampaged through the courts, overturning tables, referring to the scene as a “den of thieves”? They probably weren’t saying, “Damn, is that man ever nonviolent,” as they were being chased from the premises with a whip Jesus had fashioned from cords.
I understand the intent of the meme. It’s designed to stick it to the southern white conservative Christians progressives loathe with such undying passion. But I wonder if the meme-spreaders are like I am, struggling to imagine a southern white conservative Christian man looking at this meme in despair. Said no southern white conservative Christian ever to a fellow Christian of the rainbow sect: “Oh my, you really got me with this one. What will I ever do now that I know Jesus isn’t white?”
freedom and reason 