To my friends who are reading this article, I assume you can already tell where my heart is going with this, and if not, I also assume that your face looks like the baby at the top of the page. But for my friends, I’m sure you are saying that same old statement in your head, which you too comfortably say around me: “Nathaniel, you are not even black.” And to that, I encourage you and everyone else to have an open mind as you read my thoughts and experiences.
We are standing in the era, 150 years after slavery was abolished. They thought that giving them their freedom was enough, but it was only when the minority rose up with their voice in the Civil Rights Movement 89 years later that social segregation was outlawed. Yet, we are living in this day where we see that being black is still a problem. Not only being black, but also Asian, Hispanic, Hawaiian, Native American, and most relevant to this day and age, Middle Eastern. Though, people still look back at what happened in that courtroom the year of 1964 and think that too was just enough and I’m here to say that no it wasn’t. As long as we sit here and allow this destruction to fuel America, we are giving it the opportunity to bring our nation right back to that court room in 1964. Yes, it may seem over exaggerated, but I want you to hear my point: The more that we allow these harmful stereotypes or crimes of hate to happen, the more we give those serotypes and those crimes a reason to be a reality for minorities today.
So why is being black a problem?
The nonsensical thinking that being black is a problem is because being black means that I can walk into a church, today, with the fear that I will not be accepted simply by the color of my skin. I can remember when I was in middle school, I had never been to a church before. In fact, the most I “knew” about Jesus was that he was some guy who died and he was, in some form, a way into going to Heaven.
I proclaimed atheism up until the time some friends invited me to church and I remember having this racial-barrier issue rise up in my head as I tried to say no, because I was afraid that if I walked into that church, I would be looked at as different or that one of those hundreds of white people would fear the new black kids' influence on the church. And to think that if in that moment I hadn't gone to church, I could have potentially never heard the gospel and found the truth: there is a God so big who wants to pursue and love me regardless of my skin color. Ultimately, He called for me to be in His family.
Being black is a problem because it gives fathers, even Christian fathers, an excuse to say, “No, you can not date or marry my daughter. You cannot marry her because that is not fair to those children you will have, and let's not forget it is not fair to this family.” As if allowing a black person into an earthly family will diminish the heavenly value of our outrageously diverse family in Christ. It is not that our race is the issue, but that these hearts are the issue.
Being black is a problem because while being black I can be beaten and burned alive, and some people will say, “It is OK because he is black." So, to my friends, that is why me being the black person in your statement “It's because you’re black” is a problem. Yes, in fact, I am biracial. But I am just as much black as I am white. The color of my skin is not related to my personal desires or my behavior patterns. It is simply a color.
I had a few occurrences while growing up where parents wouldn’t allow me to sleep over or fathers wouldn’t let me go to school dances with their daughters. As I think about it now, I don’t really have the same problem with the parents as I do with my friends in those situations. While hate was on the table and segregation was being instilled, you took no stand and you said nothing.
The great activists of the Civil Rights Movement did not sit there and keep quiet. If we allow this to continue to be a problem, we will have no chance to cleanse the world of this hate. Race has waged war and death. We have the voice to allow it to wage more life and love.
John Piper tells a beautiful story of the Lord bringing his heart of racism, in the southern culture of the 1960’s, to a revelation of truth and to the adoption of a young black girl. He tells a story of going to the 1967 Urbana Missions Conference. In the story, Warren Webster, one of the mission executives there, was leading a Q&A and was asked, “Since you were a missionary in Pakistan, how would you feel about your daughter falling in love with a Pakistani?” Webster's response was, “better a Pakistani Christian than a rich, white American banker.”
It is the family of Christians in Christ that matters, it isn’t ethnicity. It isn’t race that determines who the ideal spouse is or who you can or cannot marry. I get to see that situation take place in my family. My mother's firstborn, my sister, received discrimination from our grandparents when my mother told them she was pregnant by a black man. My grandfather, raised by hatefully racist parents, did at one point look upon my sister and our race as a problem. He can now look at me, in my face, and be in awe of my successes and in love with my appearance.
“God does not, in his family, disapprove of interracial marriage. In fact, I think God blesses interracial marriage." - John Piper
The wings of humanity are diminishing as we allow this value to poison the minds of people today. So, as we stand here 52 years after the previous step toward changing the hearts of America was taken, we need to take this truth and let it rule in this Nation. This is how we lose our freedom, this is where we lose equality, and this is where the pursuit of happiness is taken away. It's in the racist comments of Donald Trump just as it's in the gunning down of white policemen. Let’s stray from seeing black as a problem and let’s begin to see being black as a solution to freedom, equality and happiness.
