Three Types of Biases Against Dark Skin

Bias type 1: Inter-racial bias against dark skin

The race that has been on the receiving end of this particular type of bias has invariably been the African race. By African we mean individuals of African ancestry or lineage whether they be the current inhabitants of the continent, or recent immigrants like us guys or (by African we also mean) those of our brothers and sisters who centuries ago were against their will transplanted from the motherland by the slave traders to far away regions such as the Americas, Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba and yes even Mexico where there exists today the so-called “Afro-Mexicans.”.
The perpetrators of inter-racial bias are of course non-African races such as the Caucasians, the Arabs, the Asians, and the Latinos.

(1) What have been the expressions of inter-racial bias in the past? Have those expressions carried forward to the present? If so how do those expressions look like today?
(a) One expression in the past has been setting up a divide so the African doesn’t rub shoulders with the non-African
Examples of divides in the past include:
(i) The Jim Crow laws of segregation. These laws were operational for a good 100 yrs (between 1880’s and 1960’s).

(ii) Another example of the divide were Color bar policies of the Boers in pre-1994 South Africa, pre-new South Africa
Here is a sampling of some of the segregation laws
–Nurses: No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in a hospital in which Negro men are placed
–Buses: All passenger stations operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races.
–Education: The schools for white children and the schools for Negro children shall be conducted separately
–Intermarriage: All marriages between a white person and a negro are prohibited

–Telephone Booths: The Corporation Commission is hereby vested with power and authority to require telephone companies…to maintain separate booths for white and colored patrons
Has the segregation of yesteryear carried forward to today? Yes and No
No because:
–The Jim Crow laws are now unlawful. For example The 1954 judgment of the supreme court in the Brown vs Board of Education completely outlawed school segregation.
–The Two races can intermarry if they want to
Having said so we are still forced to answer “yes” to the question: “Has the segregation of yesteryear carried forward?” because the America of today is not yet fully integrated?
How do I know?
–There are white neighbor-hoods and black neighbor-hoods
–The are white churches and black churches
–There are black TV channels (like BET) and there are channels that feature white people for the majority of the time. Listen to a statement made by a teacher in response to a a young afro-mexican’s desire to one day be an actress in her favorite television soap opera called La Madrasta: Juana Iris Reyes Silva, the name of the young afrom-mexican, how are going to ever be an actress in the La Madrasta? There are no black people in the La Madrasta!

(b) Another expression in the past has been infliction of pain– sometimes deadly pain– on people of color

(i) A famous example is slavery. Any of you watched the movie “Roots?” Its been a while since I last watched it; but I still remember the bloody lashings of Kunta Kinte by his master after the failed escape attempt, I still remember the sad agonized faces of families forcefully separated because a member of the family had been sold to a new master their husbands and children
(ii) Another past example of a colored people pained is the Tuskegee scandal in which hundreds of poor black men with syphilis were left untreated so that researchers could observe the course of the disease
(iii) Lynching. Do we know of more current examples of racially-based violence against people of color? You remember the story of James Byrd Jr, Jasper county,Texas, June 1998. Here is the police report: On June 7 1998, at approximately 9 AM, the body of a black male,minus the head and right arm, were discovered on Huffy Creek Road in Jasper County, Texas.” I don’t need to continue.
How about the atrocities currently being committed with impunity by the Janjaweed Arabs against African Sudanese in Darfur.
(c) Another expression of inter-racial bias against dark skin is racial slurs (gestures, depictions, labels)
Examples of racial slurs would be “Nigger”and “Nugu”
How about the label “black.” I don’t know about you. Me, I have a serious problem with the nomenclatures “black” and “white”. First of all we Afros are such a rainbow of colors that to use the label “black” is at best misleading and at worst mischievous. Moreover I am yet to come across an African who is truly black. I am pretty dark-skinned myself. But the last time I ran a color identifying machine on my skin, the results came back “charcoal” not black. If I was black, the machine could have said so. It did not. It labeled me charcoal. Here is my hunch about the terms black and white. They are not really color terms. They are more like value terms with “white” designating clean and pure and “black” designating dirty and evil.

(d) Last expression of inter-racial bias that I would like to mention is of a textual nature
Not many are aware today but this text [(Gen. 9:18 ¶ The sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. Gen. 9:19 These three were the sons of Noah; and from these the whole earth was peopled. Gen. 9:20 ¶ Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard. Gen. 9:21 He drank some of the wine and became drunk, and he lay uncovered in his tent. Gen. 9:22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. Gen. 9:23 Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father’s nakedness. Gen. 9:24 When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, Gen. 9:25 he said, “Cursed be Canaan; lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers.” Gen. 9:26 He also said, “Blessed by the LORD my God be Shem; and let Canaan be his slave. Gen. 9:27 May God make space for Japheth, and let him live in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave.”)] has been interpreted in the past to suggest that the African’s dark skin is a consequence of Noah’s maledictive utterance “cursed be Canaan.” Listen to the following remarks by Wahb Ibn Munabbih (d. ca. 730), a South Arabian convert to Islam:” Ham the son of Noah was a white man, with a handsome face and fine figure, and the Almighty changed his color and the color of his descendants in response to his father’s curse. He went away, followed by his sons, and they settled by the shore, where God increased and multiplied them. They are the blacks. Their food is fish, and they sharpened their teeth like needles, as the fish stuck to them. Some of his children went to the West (maghrib). Ham begat Cush ibn Ham, Canaan ibn Ham and Fut ibn Ham. Fut settled in India and Sind and their inhabitants are his descendants. Kush and Kanaan’s descendants are the various races of blacks: Nubians, Zanj, Qaran, Zaghawa, Ethiopians, Copts, and Berbers].

Now it is true that we the Africans are descendants of Ham. You remember how the flood wiped out the whole of humanity except for some pairs of animals, Noah, Mrs Noah, and their three sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth. These three sons, according to verse 19 [These three were the sons of Noah; and from these the whole earth was peopled] are responsible for the re-population of the flood following the initial holocaust. Being the progenitors of the post-diluvian generation, every people group in the world today can trace its genesis to one of these three sons. The Jews trace their genesis to Shem via Abraham. The Caucasians trace their genesis to Japheth. We the Africans have Ham as our forefather.
It is also true that Ham, our forefather, performed the despicable act of staring at his father’s nakedness and then choosing to gossip about it rather do the noble thing of covering his dad. However the pericope never states that Ham was cursed. The person who was cursed was Canaan. Look with me at Gen 10: 6 [Gen. 10:6 ¶ The descendants of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan]. Who was Canaan? One of Ham’s four sons. So the person who was cursed in Gen 9 was not Ham, but Canaan, one of the sons. We African are descendants of Ham through Canaan? No! No! No! We are descendants of Ham through Cush. Being non-Cannanites ourselves we fall outside the scope of the curse and therefore could not be a cursed people.

We stated at the beginning that there are three types bias against dark skin. We’ve covered one already,viz., inter-racial bias against dark skin. Here is the second type

Bias type 2 is intra-racial bias against dark skin
We mentioned earlier that Africa is a rainbow of colors meaning the continent is marked by an array of skin colour—an array ranging from very fair through medium dark to very dark. Well it turns out that this otherwise positive aesthetic attribute of ranging shades of skin color—this otherwise positive attribute turns out to be sore point at which one set of Africans expresses bias against another set. Usually it the fair-skinned people who are the expressers of the prejudice, while the target of the prejudice are their dark-skinned brethren.

How does intra-racial bias express itself?
This particular expression is better illustrated than described. You are driving in the company of someone else. You spot a Sudanese around about park lane. You are not a luo. At least not a light-skinned luo. You point out the location of the Sudanese to your partner and what do you say?”cheki ule mu Sudanese,nimumweusi jo!”
Change of scene. You arrive at church and let’s say you have never met Kiprono. Someone points out Kiprono to you and says “that’s pastor’s boy!” You say “really!” He’s so brown!”
Judge for yourself whether or not the tone with which the Sudanese was described betray a mindset that considers dark skin as abberational and the tone with which Kiprono was described betrays a mindset that places more premium on light skin.
A less mild and more serious expression of intra-racial bias is snobbishness. Sudanese folks have visited us once in a while and its amazing how often they float during the post service fellowship time. We snob them. The question is why? Is it because they are too dark?

The third and last type of bias against dark skin is autobias
Here a dark-skinned individual expressed dissatisfaction with the color of his or her skin and wishes he or she were lighter-skinned. The level of dissatisfaction at times deepens to the point of bleaching the skin or utilizing a chemical like Ambi to lighten the skin color.

To recapitulate there are three types of bias against dark skin: inter-racial, intra-racial and autobias.

In finishing what is the biblical response to bias against dark skin.

First, bias against dark skin is ultimately a slap on God’s face for the simple reason that the object of the bias (viz., the skin) happens to be traceable to God’s creative work. The scriptures trace back to God the formation of not just the kidneys (we are used to reading Ps 139:13 as [For it was you who formed my inward part]; the literal reading though is “for it was you who formed my kidneys.” So the formation of kidneys is traceable to God. Also traceable to God is the formation of bones and sinews bones. Look at the last half of Job 10:11 (Job 10:11 … and knit me together with bones and sinew). More relevantly traceable to God is the formation of (let’s read the first half of Job 10:11 [Job 10:11 You clothed me with skin and flesh…] Church if God is responsible for clothing us with the skin, it is not at all imaginative to conclude that he also clothes us with skin colour—even dark skin colour. So to those who express autobias we say: your dark skin is not an accident. God designed it to be so. So quit trying to change what God has designed. Instead, embrace it. To the practitioners of the other two types of biases we say: If dark skin colour is God’s doing, to express prejudice against His product is a slap on his face.

Second, bias against in-born dark skin betrays a preoccupation with looks in a away that the Scriptures don’t. The Bible, for sure, makes references to looks. Thanks to the Bible we know Sarah was good looking, so was Rebekkah and Abigail and David. Thanks to the Bible we know that King Eglon was fat. There are a total of 30 people whose looks are described in the Bible. But how many people in total are mentioned in the Bible? Approx 3000. So what is the percentage of people whose looks are described compared to the total number of individuals mentioned in the Bible? 30/3000×100=1%. bias against in-born dark skin betrays a preoccupation with looks in a away that the Scriptures don’t

Thirdly, bias against in-born skin betrays a manner of assessing individual worth that is quite alien to the Scriptures. One thing is clear in the Scriptures: the substance of an individual rests not on appearance but in the heart. [1Sam. 16:7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”]