Are Black People My People?

By: Slow to Write Topic: Racism

On my layover in Amsterdam between my flight from Ghana to Canada, a black man stood beside me at the airport’s arcade. I asked him a question, but he looked bewildered. I repeated the question several times until he finally said, “I do not speak your language.”

I was speaking in Fante, but he replied in English. I was 10 years old, and it was my first time outside of Ghana. He was the first black person I met who wasn’t Ghanaian. We had the same skin colour, but we had different languages, nationalities, cultures, and ethnicities.

He wasn’t one of my people.

White supremacists, woke people, and some versions of Christian nationalists, however, say otherwise. They maintain that black people are my people.

Earlier this week Stephen Wolfe, the author of The Case for Christian Nationalism, said:

“Christianity—as the true religion affirming what is true, good and beautiful— commands you to love all but to prefer your people over other peoples.”

In reply, I said

“If he means Christianity commands me to prefer Christians over other people, he’s right. If he means Christianity commands me to prefer people with my skin colour over other people, he’s shamefully wrong.”

His preceding and subsequent social media posts suggest he was referring to people who share our skin colours, not people who share our faith. This, of course, isn’t the first time Stephen Wolfe and his group of so-called Christian nationalists have made concerning comments about “race.” Some of these Christian nationalists have embraced a soft version of kinism that is akin to Big Eva’s soft version of critical race theory.

Earlier this month, one of their own produced a “White Boy Summer” video that positively featured Nazi Germany propaganda and white nationalists. One of the people featured in the video is a former pastor who said:

“Why do they keep insisting that belief in racial superiority and inferiority means we’ve denied salvation to inferior races? 19th-c. Southern Christians believed in white superiority, and were more zealous and successful in evangelizing blacks than any “anti-racist” today…In charity we ought to expect this: Christians who humbly recognize their own superiority thereby recognize their special duty to seek the good of their inferiors. This is basic obedience to the fifth commandment.”

Many Christian nationalists celebrated the video. However, this is because some of them were just undiscerning about its racist agenda. However, when Doug Wilson shared his critique of the video, Stephen Wolfe replied:

“A better tactic would be friendliness to these young rightwing guys.”

He’s forgotten that friendship with the world is enmity with God. (James 4:4) With that in mind, we should remember that enmity with wokeness isn’t the same as friendship with God. If we’re not friendly with leftwing racism, we shouldn’t be friendly with rightwing racism.

Therefore, just as I reject race essentialism on the Left, I reject race essentialism on the Right.

In reply to critical race theory a few years ago, I said:

“My skin colour is the least significant thing about me. If I woke up as a white person tomorrow morning, it wouldn’t change who I am. I would be the same person—except I would pack sunscreen in my bag instead of cocoa butter.”

Those words apply to this race-centric version of Christian nationalism. Since my skin colour doesn’t shape my identity—black people are not my people.

In some cases, my skin colour is the only thing I have in common with many black people. My native language, culture, nationality, ethnicity, and religion—the most important things about me—are completely different from most black people in the world.

Civil wars have happened all over Africa because there are over 3,000 tribes who have fought for dominance or survival on the continent. It’s asinine to suggest these tribes are the same people because of their skin colour. Surely, the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda do not believe their skin colour makes them the same people.

This is also true in other parts of the world. Though they share a similar skin colour, the Tamils and Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka do not believe they are the same people. In the same way, Germans and Slavs share the same skin colour, but they are not the same people.

This is one of the reasons why I reject white guilt. Since white people aren’t a collective, monolithic group, they shouldn’t be blamed for the actions of people who share their skin colour. Meaning, White Americans are not responsible for the genocidal actions of white Nazis, and white Americans today are not responsible for the racist actions of some white people in the past.

However, you can’t support white pride while condemning white guilt. White pride is just as foolish as white guilt. 

Black people are not my people, and white people are not your people either. That doesn’t mean Ghanaian Canadians and Jamaican Canadians do not have more in common than white Canadians. It also doesn’t mean Irish Americans have more in common with Dutch Americans than black Americans. 

It also doesn’t mean it’s wrong for us to be more compassionate towards people we relate to better than others. For instance, there is nothing wrong with a white person who is most compassionate towards poor white people in Appalachia, just as there is nothing wrong with black people like me who are most disturbed about the rates of fatherlessness and abortion in inner cities.

However, it would be wrong if I suggested the Bible commands me to prefer black people over white people—or black babies over white babies. After all, if that were the case—then missionaries who travel to other ethnic groups, other nations, and other peoples to preach the gospel are fools, right?

It’s disturbing, but some people suggested that when two white American missionaries were killed in Haiti.

The Bible commands us to love Christians, our church members, our families, and our nations in specific ways. But it doesn’t command us to prefer people with our skin colour over others.

Black people are not my people, and white people are not your people either. Unlike our ethnicities, nationalities, and religions, our skin colours do not shape our core identities.

The colour of our skin cannot make us a people. The blood of Christ, however, makes us a people.

1 Peter 2:9 says: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God.”

That is why I can call some white, Christian nationalists my people—though they might not say the same about me.

Slow to Write

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