Guilt by Melanin

"Guilt by melanin." I read that phrase recently -- can't remember where. I was really struck by it. Melanin, I'm sure you know, is that which determines our skin pigment. (Technically, melanin is the dark pigment, but you get the idea.) We've arrived, it seems, at this point where you can be declared guilty because you are white. That's the main theme in the "reparations" debate. "You're white. That means that you are guilty of your parents' sins of racial slavery from the 18th and 19th centuries." There's no question. There's no doubt. There is no trial, no exoneration, no "innocent until proven guilty." The trial is simple. "Are you white?" If yes, GUILTY! In a recent interview with a black¹ female dean of Union Theological Seminary's Divinity School, Kelly Brown Douglas, we learned that you cannot follow Jesus if you're white. Guilty. (Tragically, that video begins with the white pastor of the place admitting he's white and explaining "My pronouns are "he" and "him.") In a tweet in April she said, "Just because you look like a white American doesn’t mean you have to act like one. The first step on the road to recovery is to own one’s whiteness and realize how it keeps you from your true identity as a child of God." (Can you imagine if someone wrote, "Just because you look lik a black American doesn't mean you have to act like one"?) Recently respected InterVarsity Press published a book titled Can "White" People Be Saved? The Amazon offering says, "No one is born white. But while there is no biological basis for a white race, whiteness is real." Guilty.

It's not just the far left here. Prominent Southern Baptist pastor, Thabiti Anyabwile, talking about Martin Luther King Jr., has said, "My white neighbors and Christian brethren can start by at least saying their parents and grandparents and this country are complicit in murdering a man who only preached love and justice." In this case he obviously wasn't suggesting you can't be saved if you're white; you're just complicit in murder.

I remember years ago I was talking with a (black) coworker and brought up Jesus. "Oh, no," he said, "I want nothing to do with your Jesus and your Christianity. That's a white man's religion." A response that had me dumbfounded. Jesus wasn't white. There is no racial component in Christianity. I had no idea what he was talking about.

Many in America (and elsewhere) today have decided to import into our morality, our racial views, and, most importantly, Christianity itself an anti-white racial component. Guilty by melanin. If you're white, you're guilty. The means by which you get saved from this is to stop being white. Now, obviously they don't mean that you have to change your skin color. You just need to change your background, your upbringing, your religion, your culture, your society, your friends and family ... well, everything, I guess. Because you're white. But that's not racism, right?

How is this any different than James' concern over showing partiality on the basis of wealth (James 2:1-9)? Seems basically the same to me. Showing partiality to rich people over poor is just as bad as white people over black, black people over white, or Americans over other nationalities. These have no place in Christianity. Neither does "guilty by melanin." Nor "guilt by Y chromosome." Or "X chromosome." Or ... you get the idea. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream of a time when people would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Keep dreaming.
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¹ I have recently started to rebel against the "African-American" term for "black," but not for the reasons most might think. I don't care about the "hyphenated American" concept and have no opposition to "African-Americans." I am simply trying to be more inclusive, since not all blacks are from Africa. There are blacks from the Caribbean Islands and blacks from Australia (also known as "aborigines") and blacks from many other places due to transplant and such. Labeling all black people in America as "African-American" excludes all the rest, including those who don't live in America. I'm trying to be inclusive.