Interracial Dating and the Fools Who Don’t Like It
She told me she was depressed because of the trouble her daughter was in. Something was very wrong -I had never seen her so upset – so I sat down and asked her to tell me about it.
“She’s dating a black man,” she told me.
“Go on,” I said, stirring my coffee. I was waiting for her to get to the interesting part, but she just stared at me with tears welling up in her eyes. I was confused.
“I’m so sorry for you,” said a man in the room, “it’s not that it’s bad…it’s just not something you want your own children to do.”
Call me stupid, but I still had no idea what they were talking about.
“I must have missed something,” I said, “what happened to your daughter. You told me she was in trouble.”
Was she using drugs? Had she stolen a car? I wanted to know but no one was talking. But, as they stared at me, I finally worked it out.
The problem was that her daughter was dating a black man. That was it.
“Isn’t that wrong, you know, in the Bible?” She asked me.
I almost exploded. Was she being serious? Did she really think that the Bible had a section condemning this sort of thing, but she had just never run across it? Didn’t she know that Moses’ wife may have been black? I tried to express myself but I mostly just stammered. I was so dumbfounded that I couldn’t reply.
But they were convinced that the daughter was doing something sinful. Where had this room full of “adults” gotten this poor teaching? And what possible theological implications could there be in such a thing? (Did they know that Jesus, a Semitic man, probably didn’t look like an American white boy? I guess He wouldn’t be good enough for their kids.)
The Bible doesn’t tell us how to date. It speaks very little about marriage (despite what you’ve heard). And it’s not concerned about relationships between people of different skin color.
For those of you who don’t remember middle-school biology, there’s no such thing as “race” amongst humans. The biological differences between whites and blacks are only as significant as the differences between blonds and redheads. There’s no deeper meaning to skin color and there’s no difference in our humanity. (You probably remember learning about phenotypes in school. Here’s a refresher.)
Surely, no one would hold on to outdated biological theories just to keep blacks out of their families… right? And, surely, no one would presume that the Bible is against interracial marriage – and even teach that falsehood from church pulpits – just to advance their own racist agenda.
Right?
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Adam, It is sad, but many people believe that they are above another because they are white. It sickens me to think about it. I read a great book called The Cross and the Lynching Tree by Dr. James Cone (Theology Professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York City) where Dr. Cone described the hatred that white supremecists had towards the black community. He wrote with shocking detail, the horrors that white people committed against black people. Lynchings, hangings, shootings, stabbings and much worse were carried out and were justified by simply sharing a hatred for the black community. On the flip side, as a police officer I have seen first hand that there is just as much racism flowing the other direction, black toward white and that too sickens me. With this being the case, I often think to myself that the root issue here is not racism, but it is more so the depravity of man. I have seen the same crimes committed by all races, ethnicities and economic groups. Race is a spin that media and egos tend to place on all of these problems failing to see the underlying cause- humanity. We do not have to be taught to be selfish, we are naturally. We don’t have to be taught to hate, that’s natural too. We have to be taught not to hate or be selfish. I am so appreciative of the fact that I was raised in a home that taught me about loving people in the midst of sin. If people like these would look inward at their own sin and allow God to rid them of it through forgiveness, then they would see everyone in a different light. Thanks for the post. Excellent insight.
Well, it does tell us some things about how to date, i.e. no fornication. But your point is well made.
I suspect that some of this arises from misunderstanding warnings in the Old Testament about not marrying Canaanites. But it’s pretty clear this was not a racial prescription, but a religious prescription. Anyone from any race who converted to worship the true God could marry one of God’s people, e.g. Ruth the Moabitess and Rahab of Jericho, both part of the ancestry of Jesus.
For a majority of our national history, the dominant group used “race” as an important category for understanding the world as they found it, and for justifying what they did in that world. However unhelpful the concept of race may be, it certain isn’t going to go away soon because of the importance it was given in the past.
I don’t know for sure, Mark, but I suspect that much of the racism that rooted itself in conservative Christianity in this country did not begin with bad interpretations of Scripture, but rather arose from forcing Scripture to speak to what they “knew” to be true about the world.
Just a minor corrective, the issue of “race” in the sciences is not so easily dismissed. Many biologists would affirm the validity of “races” among humans, and anthropologists as a group definitely affirm it, as they are able to identify caucasoid, mongoloid, or negroid skeletal remains quite reliably based on phenotypic variance.
Nevertheless, it doesn’t matter in this context. Let’s face it: most people who oppose inter-racial dating don’t appeal to science, and science certainly doesn’t have anything to say on the matter.
You’re right, JB, but those differences that scientists are able to find are not racial ones – they are just observable traits. They can tell how big someone’s nose was, too, but that doesn’t indicate a different race.