Black Lies Matter

Traditional Ethiopian portrayal of Jesus..

The inevitable call has come, from Shaun King, a media heavy in residence at Harvard, with ties to Black Lives Matter: smash all the images of Jesus and Mary. Smash all the stained glass windows.

This, of course, was the target all along: God.

The premise, of course, is that Jesus is always portrayed as “European,” and this is racist.

"Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been."

"In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went? EGYPT! Not Denmark. Tear them down."

This is nonsensical on its face. He refers to statues. How can one really distinguish, in an unpainted statue, whether the figure portrayed is from some European country or from a Hellenized area of northern Palestine? A slight difference in skin tone? We do not even know whether the skin tone would be different.

And on an unpainted statue?

Why did Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt, and not to Denmark? It may have had something to do with Denmark not yet existing. Egypt, on the other hand, aside from being the country next door, had the ancient world’s largest Jewish population outside Palestine. Two of Alexandria’s seven districts were Jewish—traders, mostly, no doubt, often coming and going. I think the holy family indeed had a decent chance of blending in.

Not that other Egyptians looked very different from either Palestinian Jews or European Greeks. There were a lot of Greeks in Egypt too. Cleopatra was Greek.

You would think a Harvard man would know such things. That would have been so, long ago.

The conventional image of Jesus comes from fairly early models. There is at least some warrant to think it is accurate. And he could indeed probably pass for a modern Lebanese, say.

If there are some blond Jesuses, racism is an implausible explanation for it. Rather, this is a natural consequence of the artists being themselves European, having only European models to work from, and having little idea or reason to care what a Palestinian of the First Century looked like. Black hair is rare in Northern Europe. For the same reason, in Ethiopia, Jesus is distinctly African in appearance. 

Our Lsdy of the Gate of Dawn, Vilnius, Lithuania

There are no comparable ancient standards for portraying Mary, and her images are far more variable. Mary is often portrayed in Europe as blonde or a red-head--just as she is shown with Asian features in Asia, or with indigenous features at Guadaloupe, her most popular shrine. A non-racist might nevertheless have noticed that even in Europe, “Black Madonnas” are given special veneration. There are famous examples, sites of major pilgrimages, in France, Belgium, Czechia, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, Russia, Sweden; rather white countries, on the whole. Perhaps most famously at Częstochowa in Poland and at Montserrat in Spain. Whatever reason this is so, it cannot be due to any notion of white supremacy or anti-black racism. 

Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The real problem for King and his acolytes can only be, not that these beautiful works of art show Jesus or Mary as European, but that they are beautiful works of art. Worse, they are beautiful works of art made by Europeans. Worse still, they imply some fundamental truth and the moral law.

Make no mistake. What we are seeing in America now is the battle of good and evil. And all the racism is on the side complaining of racism.