“I’m not racist, but …………”‏

“If you take the skin off, we’re all the same color on the inside” -some random audience member of a Maury episode

I live in the South. In the Piedmont of North Carolina to be exact. The title of this entry is a statement you hear A LOT down here. I was raised by people that use that statement A LOT. I was threatened by my parents to be kicked out of their house for dating a brown person. Asians and Hispanics were ok, but not brown.

I’ve read a lot of anti-racist articles and blogs, from people that weren’t SURROUNDED by racism. I am 100% ANTI-RACIST. This would include dating/marriage/one night stands, you name it. I hate racism and it unsettles me to my core. I cringe when I hear someone say “I’m not racist, but I don’t date black people,” or, “I’m not racist, but I would be bothered if my kid grew up and married outside of their race.” What do you think that is? Partial racism? Racism has no gray area. If you would not date someone just because of the color of their skin, that is racism, and YOU are a racist.

I grew up in Southern Baptist churches. After graduation, I never regularly attended another baptist church, and don’t plan on it. There is a difference in spirituality and religion. Religion tends to be more black-and-white, rule-based, or taking the scriptures as literal. Spirituality tends to be more along the lines of “being led by the Holy Spirit,” because once you accept him, you know from WITHIN your heart what is right or wrong. You don’t need misquoted, misinterpreted bibles verses to tell you how to be.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Hebrews 8:10, ESV

I used to go to this little Baptist church that had a legalistic preacher. He was STRICT, and I liked him for it. I looked up to him, and took notes on every message he preached. That was until the day he preached an ENTIRE SERMON on how intermixing of races is WRONG. That entire message, my heart rate was faster, I know my face was blushed red, and I was appalled. I was in the eighth grade and 13 years old. It was an impressionable age, but not so impressionable that I would have believed something that so BLATANTLY goes against the most important, basic, overall MESSAGE of the entire BIBLE. (That would be LOVE, if you’re not familiar..you know, God is love.) This message was 100% purely unbiblical, carnal, EVIL hatred. And I knew it. I stopped going to that church regularly after that.

In that disturbing message, he quoted a bunch of verses from the old testament, when God was telling the Israelites not to intermix with the Egyptians, because they did not believe in God Almighty. It really had nothing to do with their RACE. Later on, when I would ask my Grandmother (who is very racist, as is most of my family to this day, sadly) where was the bible verse to back up not intermixing with other races, she would quote this one:

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? 2 Corinthians 6:14

Well, if that isn’t the most idiotic thing I had ever heard! It really makes me sick to think that there are a great number of people with the same mindset that most people had in the days of Martin Luther King, Jr. His dream, to this day, has not yet come true, because of this horrid hatred by these ignorant people.  And they wonder where the blessings of God are for America, completely BLIND to the fact that they ARE the PROBLEM, Harboring hatred in their hearts.

Racism is racism. If you would treat someone of another race ANY different than you’d treat someone of your own race, whether it be dating, the way you talk to them, the way you THINK of them, the stereotypes you’d peg them in unconsciously upon first glancing at them, being upset if your child is dating them, ANYTHING, then you are racist. Period.

And, if you are a CHRISTIAN, and racist, that is a problem. You need to re-read the bible, the part about JESUS, and see how he treated people of other races (The women at the well) and then look at his Apostles and Prophets, and how THEY treated people of other races, ( Like the Good Samaritan, he helped out a person of an ‘inferior’ race'(widely believed at that time)) and then re-evaluate your own beliefs.

I am a non-denominational Christian, and I do not see color, or race, or SEXUAL ORIENTATION, or disabilities. I see people. And, as a Christian, it is my job to love those people, and treat them all equally, with Respect. Love is what being a Christian is all about. If you hate, then you’re not a very good Christian. That’s just all there is to it.

Oh yes, everything I said about race also holds true for Sexual Orientation, and I will address that in a later entry.