Outside, the air was cold. Algae were floating on the surface of the swamp. He saw footprints on the surface. The footprints were scattered and some were almost covered with the swamp water. He shifted his gaze to the ridges by the side of the swamp which was close to the bridge.
Although the book proposes what Onyeani called the ‘Spider Web Doctrine’ — an economic theory for the negroid race to employ self-reliance and ruthlessness — it nevertheless was unsparring in its boisterous indictment of the Negroid race.
I opened the door as though I was under a spell. The moonlight fell generously on her face. It was also enough to allow me to see her semi-nude body. I had always thought of her as someone with a deep-seated hatred for decent clothes.
The royal wedding reaffirmed the enduring power of spectacle, myth, and symbolism in shaping consciousness, perceptions, and attitudes on a mass scale. ~ Chris Ngwodo Yesterday our screens were dominated or should I say inundated with the flamboyance of an Empire that is largely responsible for most of the conflicts that continue plaguing our world today. An Empire that broke away from the Catholic Church and confiscated its properties because of ego, greed, and avarice. An Empire with a dark and blood soiled history of slave trade and colonisation. An Empire that amalgamated two different cultures and called it Nigeria, but wants a divorce from its European brothers. An Empire created the largest open prison in history with the phrase “non-Jewish communities” in the infamous Balfour declaration to exclude the Arabs who constituted about 90% of the population in Palestine. An Empire that has deployed the Apartheid rule and other heinous mechanisms to brutally exterminate any opposition to its expansionist land grab and dominance in America, Australia, China, Cyprus, India, Ireland, South Africa and Yemen to mention just a few. The 58 Palestinians killed by Israeli snipers will soon be forgotten, their fate ironically but harshly buried in the nauseous opulence of the same ignoble Empire that created their problem in the first place. What a wicked world! And to date, its citizens are proud of these catalogue of atrocities not because they are all bad people but because the ruling elites have cleverly ensured that the abridged history of the Empire taught in schools can only make its subjects go “Wow, God bless the Queen!”. I remember how we gathered to watch the Royal Wedding of 1981 in my house back then. The fascinated looks on our faces remain vivid. What did we know then? Like the average Brit, we had only been taught the skewed version of the exploits and magnanimity of the Great British Empire in Social Studies, so it was always going to be an awesome experience to watch the glamorous ceremony that represents its tradition. Thirty-seven years later and here we are again. Another media frenzy, another effusive adulation of idle fox hunting monarchs who enjoy an unfair and humongous slice of the people’s wealth by virtue heritage. But this time I did not watch, I couldn’t be bothered. You will be surprised at the things I won’t be caught wasting time on. I rather had a lovely and well-deserved siesta as I slept late the previous night, and only got up to watch the F.A Cup final. But my Missus watched though, she was downstairs all day and was still glued to the screen long after the live event as Sky news repeatedly played the clip. She knows my opinion of the cultural relics that have arrogated so much power to themselves over the years so she only called my attention to the follow-up analysis of the preacher’s somewhat controversial sermon. Yes! That’s my man. My MVP on the day. He was the typical Episcopal preacher. Soulful, passionate, eloquent and highly animated. He also brought along the usual African American baggage and perhaps even some excess. The theme of his address, LOVE, was most fitting for the occasion. And boy did he nail it? Swaying and gesticulating from left to right he preached to the congregation but appeared focused on the couple. He barely noticed the other people in the room including a few gobsmacked royals as he referenced the traditional African American spiritual “There is a balm in Gilead” to drive home his point. For me, that was the high point of the entire ceremony. It was gratifying to know that someone had the balls to make them shifty, and he was black too. And when I tweeted the first paragraph of this reverie a loving friend who is probably the most caring person I know replied, “Just watch and be happy. The couple is not at fault”. Of course, I’m happy for them. They are two lovebirds, their deep love for each other is very obvious. Who wouldn’t be happy for two youngsters from totally different backgrounds starting a union with the world standing in awe and a new life ahead of them? Moreover both appear to be the non-conformists among the so-called Royals and there’s faint enthusiasm that they may bring that to bear in a positive manner. Never mind fellow conspiracy theorists that postulate an arranged marriage. The Empire plans well ahead of time they say, that is why it keeps reinventing itself. Brexit had long been envisaged and what better way to cajole the puppets of the old colonies than to follow up an elaborate Commonwealth Games with welcoming a black Duchess into Buckingham Palace? We shall see. But for now, let me remain a hopeful progressive. Let me savour the remarkable union and the attendant representation of diversity in today’s multicultural world. Let me be gratified that on a day for the so-called Royals two black pearls stole the show by glowing brightly in a Royal plague. Video credit: City Dreamer Youtube
I grew up in a Christian home, where a photo of Jesus hung on my bedroom wall. I still have it. It is schmaltzy and rather tacky in that 1970s kind of way, but as a little girl I loved it. In this picture, Jesus looks kind and gentle, he gazes down at me lovingly. He is also light-haired, blue-eyed, and very white. The problem is, Jesus was not white. You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise if you’ve ever entered a Western church or visited an art gallery. But while there is no physical description of him in the Bible, there is also no doubt that the historical Jesus, the man who was executed by the Roman State in the first century CE, was a brown-skinned, Middle Eastern Jew. This is not controversial from a scholarly point of view, but somehow it is a forgotten detail for many of the millions of Christians who will gather to celebrate Easter this week. On Good Friday, Christians attend churches to worship Jesus and, in particular, remember his death on a cross. In most of these churches, Jesus will be depicted as a white man, a guy that looks like Anglo-Australians, a guy easy for other Anglo-Australians to identify with. Think for a moment of the rather dashing Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. He is an Irish-American actor. Or call to mind some of the most famous artworks of Jesus’ crucifixion – Ruben, Grunewald, Giotto – and again we see the European bias in depicting a white-skinned Jesus. Does any of this matter? Yes, it really does. As a society, we are well aware of the power of representation and the importance of diverse role models. After winning the 2013 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in 12 Years a Slave, Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o shot to fame. In interviews since then, Nyong’o has repeatedly articulated her feelings of inferiority as a young woman because all the images of beauty she saw around her were of lighter-skinned women. It was only when she saw the fashion world embracing Sudanese model Alek Wek that she realised black could be beautiful too. If we can recognise the importance of ethnically and physically diverse role models in our media, why can’t we do the same for faith? Why do we continue to allow images of a whitened Jesus to dominate? Jim Caviezel in Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ. IMDB Many churches and cultures do depict Jesus as a brown or black man. Orthodox Christians usually have a very different iconography to that of European art – if you enter a church in Africa, you’ll likely see an African Jesus on display. But these are rarely the images we see in Australian Protestant and Catholic churches, and it is our loss. It allows the mainstream Christian community to separate their devotion to Jesus from compassionate regard for those who look different. I would even go so far as to say it creates a cognitive disconnect, where one can feel deep affection for Jesus but little empathy for a Middle Eastern person. It likewise has implications for the theological claim that humans are made in God’s image. If God is always imaged as white, then the default human becomes white and such thinking undergirds racism. Historically, the whitewashing of Jesus contributed to Christians being some of the worst perpetrators of anti-Semitism and it continues to manifest in the “othering” of non-Anglo Saxon Australians. This Easter, I can’t help but wonder, what would our church and society look like if we just remembered that Jesus was brown? If we were confronted with the reality that the body hung on the cross was a brown body: one broken, tortured, and publicly executed by an oppressive regime. How might it change our attitudes if we could see that the unjust imprisonment, abuse, and execution of the historical Jesus has more in common with the experience of Indigenous Australians or asylum seekers than it does with those who hold power in the church and usually represent Christ? Perhaps most radical of all, I can’t help but wonder what might change if we were more mindful that the person Christians celebrate as God in the flesh and saviour of the entire world was not a white man, but a Middle Eastern Jew. This article was written by Robyn J. Whitaker, Bromby Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies, Trinity College, University of Divinity and was originally published on The Conversation.
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