Posted 12:46 PM by Alfred

Aloha and good morning all. Well you may be surprised but I have a deeper subject than the Clippers' draft possibilities in my little noggin today. I am currently reading the autobiography of Malcolm X, which is a fascinating book by the way. The movie doesn't do justice to what to most of the gnarly shit this guy went through in his life.

Anyway, I'm in the part of the book where he's really getting into the whole Black Muslim / Elijah Mohammed thing. As you may (or may not) know, Malcolm X got really into this movement, which was still very small (this was during the late 40's early 50's) when he was in prison. Anyway let's get to the point. Malcolm is in a bible class in prison shortly before his release. The teacher of the class is a blond, blue-eyed, white guy and he's talking about Paul, the apostle. Malcolm asks the guy, wasn't Paul black? Cuz Paul was one of the Hebrews of the time, which were black. The teacher thinks about it and tentatively agrees. Then Malcolm goes further and says well wasn't Jesus a Hebrew too? So wasn't Jesus black too? The teacher shuffles and compromises that Jesus was brown. Anyway the reason this got me curious and thinking is that, if we have serious evidence that Jesus was black or brown (it seems he definitely wasn't white) then why, 50 (Fifty!!) years later, is there a white Jesus hanging in almost every Christian church in this country. Not just here, I've been to Catholic churches in deep Mexico, and there's a white Jesus hanging in there, too. Even here in Hawaii, where Whites are a minority to the Polynesians and Asians, we honor a white Jesus in almost all of our churches.

Now this just got me thinking, if so much has changed in this country, if civil rights, etc., has come so far, how come we're not ready to honor a more accurate rendition of Jesus. What does this mean regarding the mindset of not just the people of America, but the people of the world, regarding race? Why is this an issue that's rarely even discussed? It's something that seems is common knowledge, but it's been kind of brushed under the rug. In other countries around the world, are the Jesuses white, black, asian, polynesian, what? I don't know but I suspect they're mostly white. And one more thing to stick in your pipe & smoke: I think that we will have a black president in this country years before, decades before, we have a black pope in the Vatican. Before we even have a brown pope. What all this means I don't know. My specialty is talking about stuff I only have peripheral knowledge about and stirring it up for discussion. It's up to you to decide how it affects your thinking, if at all.

Now before I wrap this little entry up, I'm debating with myself if I should indicate here what race I am. Does it matter? I like to think that for matters of pure discussion, it has no relevance. However, the mindset we carry with us is a product of the way we were brought up and the lives we have led, and although times have changed, race is a large factor in the things that happen to us. So you may as well know, I am white. What that means for purposes of discussion, if anything, is up to you to decide. I just hope I've sparked a few brain cells out there.

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