Sean C. Capparuccia
I just love it when archeologists come out every so often with a discovery that points back to a biblical truth. They may not always acknowledge that truth, but the discovery does. Like the discovery of human footprints alongside dinosaur footprints. I thought that was awesome! It lays to rest the false idea that dinosaurs lived millions of years before humans (although many just cannot get past the evolutionary paradigm so these facts are tossed aside.) And it upholds God’s Word in Genesis in the creation account. And I totally believe that God, in His mystical wisdom, covers up many of the proofs of our ancient past with the sands of time and the rubble of dying civilizations only to be found at a later date to re-ground people in their past and point them back to Himself. God is cool like that.
And in the midst of the utter turmoil going on in our Western society right now we are asking many questions and, quite often, answering them according to our own narrative or the narrative of those with whom we align. For example, Black Lives Matter. Well, it would appear that while there is a group of people chanting “black lives matter” there is a larger group of people saying, “They certainly do, but don’t all lives matter?” Which leads to more questions: are they saying only black lives matter? Do they believe that white lives do not matter? Are red and yellow and lighter brown lives even in the running?” By saying “all lives matter, are they completely disregarding the lives of blacks as if black life was not included in the term ‘all lives’? A post by American citizen Rommell Thompson states a rather cogent contemplation, “I’m a Black-Man & I’m here to tell you ‘BLM’ movements separate us more than it does unite us. LIVES MATTER PERIOD!!!!!!”
The more I listen to the incessant claims of “racism” the more I am convinced that humanity is teetering on the precipice of an irrecoverable spiral because the delusionary thinking might very well be altering the minds of society. (One aspect of this delusionary thinking, by the way, is the almost exclusive focus on black and white to the near exclusion of other peoples. Even when the term “people of color” is used to mean all those over and against white people it is a false dichotomy.) All of this is a scary thought but one that plays right into God’s Word. We have to ask the better question: what is God trying to show us?
The Race Delusion
Merriam-Webster defines ‘race’ as “a group of persons who come from the same ancestor.” That seems easy enough. But this also begs a deeper question, such as, how far back should we go for this “common ancestor”? I mean surely there are a great number of whites and blacks that will find common ancestors just going back 6 generations. People fall in love regardless of skin color; women are raped regardless of skin color; consenting adults “do the deed” in the heat of a moment regardless of love or skin color. That’s reality and I say again, many people, with quite contrasting skin colors, have fairly recent ‘common ancestors.”
The second definition for ‘race’ given by Merriam-Webster is “a people having a common language, culture, and body of traditions.” I remember a three-week trip our family took to England. We had a wonderful time, and I think the greatest part of the trip was seeing the “old-ness” of that country. Where America can trace its history back 400 years,
England goes back thousands. Near Dover, Kent, there is a Roman lighthouse which dates back to 43 AD. With mixed emotions one touches those ancient stones and wonders at how many generations have passed by that stolid structure. With equal wonder, I was amazed at how many such old and ruined structures still stand in England. There is no push by people to remove the past no matter how tainted the past may be. (How many slaves did the ancient Romans have?) But I digress.
When we arrived back on American soil we were greeted at the Atlanta, GA airport by one of the most welcome sights any traveler could see: a young “African”-American girl with a big smile and a deeply Southern twang who said, “Welcome to America.” My wife was nearly beside herself with emotion at being home and being welcomed by one of our own. Because you see, according to Webster’s definition 2 of ‘race’, this girl was indeed one of our race. We spoke the same language on more than one level. Our skin color may have been closer to the majority of British people we saw, but so far as commonality goes, we were probably closer to this young woman. Yet there is more to commonality than simply skin color and national origin which I will touch upon further below.
Two True Common Ancestors
Whenever the discussion of race comes about it is almost always, always couched in terms of black and white, at least in the United States. Then as the discussion heats up and someone inevitably points out the obvious omissions, the “other races” are brought in to play. What about the Asians and the Hispanics? Are they a part of this discussion? You know, I almost never hear talk of the Middle Easterners, the Indians, the Inuits, the Mongolians, the Tibetans, or the Egyptians (who are African by the way), etc.
Another group of people whom I think are most often overlooked are the bi- or multi-racial. According to the 2020 census the percentage of Americans who self-identify as multi-racial is 10.2% (nearly 34 million people.) According to Wikipedia.com, the most common mixes of people are “between European and African (mulatto) and Amerindian and European (caboclo or mameluco). But there are also African and Amerindian (cafuzo) and East Asian (mostly Japanese) and European/other (ainoko or more recently, hāfu).” The term “Amerindian” applies to Latin and South American people. So, in a nutshell, that’s whites and blacks, whites and Latinos (browns), blacks and browns, and Asian (yellow) and white. Again, these are the more common mixtures of people due to the simple fact that these people groups come into most contact with one another. In other words, Asians do not typically flock to South America.
Below is a collection of pictures of various people which I pulled off the Internet. These pictures represent 1) only a fraction of the ethnicities in the world and 2) a tiny fraction of the available skin colors in humanity. But I thought it was interesting to at least try to show the vast difference in colors that we probably see every day but don’t notice. And I thought it was interesting to see how skin color sometimes does not reflect one’s ethnicity or “race.” For example, the third picture is actress Halle Berry, a very famous “African”- American. Looking at her picture, though, she could definitely pass for a Hispanic or a white lady from Florida or something. The last picture is a Native American who could also pass for Hispanic or a Middle Easterner. The sixth picture is a Middle Easterner, a Pakistani, who looks fairly East Indian to me. Very interesting indeed are the two guys in pictures 4 and 5. They are actually both the same guy, one with hair, one without. And the Asian lady? Well, she really is Asian. Pictures 1 and 2 don’t leave much to the imagination either – black girl and white guy.
So, we all readily see that skin color has a wide degree of variance across humanity. Skin color is determined by a set of genes that regulate the process of melanogenesis, or the production of melanin, the pigmented substance which gives skin its hue. It is also responsible for hair and eye color. The more melanin a person’s body produces the darker their hue. In addition to genetics, ultraviolet radiation from the sun also plays a role in skin pigmentation. In areas where there are higher amounts of UV radiation, like near the equator, people generally, over time, tend to have darker skin. Areas nearer to the geographic poles have much less UV radiation and therefore the people indigenous to those areas are lighter.
I reiterate the above statement that melanin gives skin its hue. Hue is another name for shade. In any color, the absolute darkest you can get is black which is actually the highest concentration of all colors. By contrast, on the other end of the spectrum is white which is the absence of any color at all. That is pure black and pure white, neither of which occur in the human genome. All humans are a shade – or hue – of brown as shown in this chart. If you don’t believe me, “white” person, put your arm up against a white sheet of paper. Are you still white or a shade of brown? And you, “black” person, compare your skin color with a black notebook or something and you will find that you are not as black as all that but a shade of brown. Portuguese – a shade of brown; Italians – a shade of brown; Vietnamese – a shade of brown; Scandinavians – a shade of brown; South Africans – all shades of brown.[i]
Who’s Black?
I am really hung up on this race issue, because it really comes down to this: are there truly separate races? Obviously, there is not since people of different “races” can have a child together and thus dilute both of their “races” assuming they were pure to begin with. Did they thus create a new “race”? Of course not! Now, in the early 1900’s in America there came about what is called the “one drop theory.” As you can imagine, this was a racist sentiment that proposed that if it can be proven that someone had just one drop of Negro blood, they were considered Black. According to the U.S. Census report of 1923,
the term ‘white’ as used in the census report refers to persons understood to be pure blooded whites. A person of mixed blood is classified according to the nonwhite racial strain… a person of mixed white … and Negro … is classified as … a Negro … regardless of the amount of white blood (Bureau of the Census 1923). By 1924 the term one drop rule was also being used in state legislation. For example, in 1924, a Virginia Act for “Preservation of Racial Integrity” defined a white person as someone with “no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian.” And the Virginia legislature in 1930 defined as colored anyone “in whom there is ascertainable any negro blood.”[ii]
The modern person should scoff at this, I hope, but the enlightened person should also see an interesting twist in this idea. Originally this dumb idea was used to keep the white “race” pure from the melatonian impediment. Now it is used by those melatonian-enhanced people to grant special favor to themselves. Whoa! Hold on, there, what do you mean by that? Well let’s look at former President Barak Obama who marked “Black” on his 2010 Census form. Is he black or only 50% black? Why did he not mark “White” since he is a whole 50% white? And Halle Berry, mentioned above, famously remarked that though she is only half black she identifies as a black person. And she considers her daughter, who is 25% black, to be black saying, “I feel she’s black. I’m black and I’m her mother, and I believe in the one-drop theory” (emphasis mine.)[iii]
In 2018 the story of Caucasian Rachel Dolezal, a civil rights activist and N.A.A.C.P. president in Spokane, Washington, came out revealing her as a fraud. According to the N.Y. Times, Ms. Dolezal, a.k.a. Nkechi Amare Diallo, posed as a black woman and purportedly
received nearly $8,850 in public assistance from Washington State after she had falsely claimed she had little income and needed financial help… During the more than two years she received public aid, Ms. Dolezal reported a single source of income: $300 per month in gifts from friends. But investigators with the state’s Department of Social and Health Services found that she had deposited nearly $84,000 into her bank account during that same period, according to court documents.[iv]
Senator Elizabeth Warren, (D. Mass), for a long time claimed to be Native American. When she was finally called out on the floor for it, she agreed to a DNA test. When she released the results of that test it showed that “she has a small but detectable amount of Native American DNA. The report concluded there is ‘strong evidence’ she had a Native American ancestor approximately six to 10 generations ago” (emphasis mine.)[v]
And of course, there are countless other examples of this. The question is why? Let’s look at it from two angles. One, these people do, in fact, legitimately have blood from another “race” and they are proud of that heritage and would like to show it. Even blood from “six to 10 generations ago.” I am proud to be 25% Italian. Why? Because my dad is 50% Italian and my grandfather was 100% Italian and they came to the great United States of America in the 1930’s (so no, my family never owned slaves.) And they came to the U.S. because it afforded them more freedom than Italy did. So, yeah, people may have pride in their heritage.
The other reason one may claim a distant ethnic heritage, or make one up, is that there is some benefit to it. Obviously, Ms. Dolezal benefitted more from being black than white. It is questionable how much Mrs. Warren benefitted although she claimed Native American status on her state bar application which may or may not have given her a “leg-up” for some reason. In my case, Italians were some of the most heavily discriminated-against people in this country when they came here. As a matter of fact, the single largest mass lynching ever to occur on American soil was on March 14, 1891 in New Orleans. A mob formed and murdered 11 Italians for the alleged – though proven false – murder of a police officer. Did you get that? My people, the Italians, were the victims of the largest lynching in history. Do I even get a cookie for that? No. Some might say, “Well you weren’t directly related to those victims.” Hmm; let’s let that sink in for a moment…
In 1961 President John F. Kennedy signed the first executive order (E.O. 10925) instating the use of affirmative action “by instructing federal contractors to take ‘affirmative action to ensure that applicants are treated equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.’” This, in effect, created the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. This order was followed in 1967 when President Lyndon Johnson added “women” to the lineup up those who should be affirmed.
In the Journal for Homosexuality, Dr. Joseph Sartorelli, DPhil MS, argues that “while affirmative action programs exist for a number of groups, little serious consideration has been given to the establishment of such programs for gay men and lesbians.”[vi] Given the two points above (pride in heritage and benefit), we can wonder how this would play out in the realm of laws and economy? Point one is nullified as no one, technically, has a truly gay ancestor; point two would produce a number of “fauxmosexuals” defined as “a person who pretends or falsely represents him/herself as a homosexual to either: a) gain attention from the opposite sex [or]
b) make money and short fame.”[vii]
Let us revisit the statement above about the young man in pictures 4 and 5 being the same guy. His name is Vijay Chokal-Ingam, and he is an American whose parents are from India. After high school he wanted to go to medical school but could not get in until he had the idea to pretend to be black. So, he shaved his head and got in. Same grades; same test scores; same everything except ethnic background. In an interview he stated,
Racism is racism, whether you call it affirmative action or apartheid or whatever… We shouldn’t discriminate against people based on their race… I was very fortunate, I grew up in an affluent family, I grew up in one of the wealthiest towns in Massachusetts. My mother was a doctor, I never got any financial aid at the University of Chicago and somehow schools … were willing to consider me one of their affirmative action candidates [as a black man] … There are people who are significantly disadvantaged in this country, and affirmative action that is based on socioeconomic status, that’s fine. If you want to give advantage to people who have been discriminated against, that’s great. However, I think it is the ultimate form of racism to assume that everyone who is black or Hispanic is disadvantaged.[viii]
He hits on an important point: if aid is given on the basis of the color of skin, isn’t that racism? If an advantage is based on ethnic heritage, isn’t that racism? Folks, come on, that is the exact definition of racism because we have to look at the other side of the coin. To give one the advantage is to give another the disadvantage; therefore, we are disadvantaging one because of the color of their skin. In other words, it makes no sense to fight racism with racism; we fight racism with anti-racism which is the abolishment of “race.”
Anti-racism
On what grounds, then, can we abolish “race”? On this ground alone: there is only one “race” and we are all a part of it. The biblical narrative tells us that all humanity is descended from the original parents, Adam and Eve. Even if one disbelieves God’s Word and thinks we all came from some single-celled protein which got hit by lightning (a mathematical impossibility) then we still all came from one source. But I am writing to Christians and Christians hold to Christ’s Word so Adam and Eve stand.[ix] In Acts 17:26, Doctor Luke tells us that, “God has made of one blood all the peoples of the earth.” I think that verse should be placed on billboards all across the globe to remind people of what is really written in their conscience. In Adam and Eve was the DNA that encompassed the whole spectrum of colors of skin and every conceivable possibility of human existence.
Then, of course, there is the Noahic Flood which wiped out all but eight human beings from which, again, we have all descended. In Genesis 10 we have the first table of nations. In this chapter we are shown how the nations of the world came into being through dispersions and the migrating of the three sons of Noah (and their wives, of course) – Shem, Ham, and Japheth. For a thorough exegesis of Genesis please see the commentary by James Montgomery Boice.[x]
In a nutshell the nations came about thus:
Shem, Middle Eastern regions: Semites (and Hebrews), Assyrians, Arabians – Middle Easterners.
Ham, migrated south to Africa: Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya, Turkey and to the east: Sinai, China, Asia
Japheth, migrated north: Indo-Europeans, ie., Germany, Britain, Galacia, Russia, Medes, Persians, Greece, Spain, Italy, etc.
Again, these three brothers, sons of Noah, all descended from Adam and Eve, contained within their DNA all the genes necessary for producing every kind of people that there is today. And guess what? So do you and I! So why do we have such marked physical differences? This has already been answered above in that geographical location and its relation to the sun, plays a role in our developing physical characteristics – over long periods of time. We could call this micro-evolution, or adaptation. A Norwegian “white” person would absolutely burn up in the equatorial sun. So far as other characteristics that seem to be analogous to various people groups, they happen through many, many, many generations of interbreeding. This should not be confused with inbreeding, but simply the fact that similar people kept to themselves for various reasons. The biblical record tells us that after the tower of Babel where God “mixed up the common language” and people could no longer understand each other, they went away from each other in groups. Among these new tribes who were now distinguished by a common language amongst themselves, there was distrust. The tribes, or nations as it were, stayed to themselves. In some places there may have been geographical boundaries that kept them separated. Whatever the reason, for a long period of time each of these new nations was allowed to develop by themselves. Even today there is very little interbreeding between different peoples except in America and a few other places whose borders are wide open. This is why Chinese people are extremely homogenous, as are most groups in Africa, India, and other places where people do not generally leave the country or few people come in. In these places, the genes stay more or less isolated although in each of these people there is still the potential for producing all of the other human characteristics! Genes are amazing. But this should all serve to show us that there is only ONE race. In the scientific system of identification – biological taxonomy – we have the classifications kingdom, phylum, class, family, order, genus, and species into which all living organisms can be placed. All humans are of the species sapiens.[xi]
Here is one place where archaeology has proven the biblical record. Scientists have for a long time said that all humanity can be traced to Africa, the cradle of humanity. Some say East Africa, some say south Africa in the Botswana region. Others believe the birth of civilization to have taken place in the Middle East. The truth is, due to the drastic and sweeping changes to the earth due to the catastrophic and global Flood, we do not know where this original place is.[xii] Yet we DO know that all humanity can be traced back to one place, and thus, all the way back to two people!
What we now have, in so far as the tell-tale physical differences in human characteristics, may well be called breeds. But that would make us all sound like animals which we are not. So, we are all one race. This is further proved when a man and woman of different groups (for lack of a better word) marry and produce a child. That child takes on the characteristics of both mother and father in varying degrees and at the same time exhibits characteristics that are less like those of its parents. This is why close inbreeding is dangerous and outlawed in laws both in modern times and in antiquity. When parents of close genetic material produce a child, certain characteristics tend to be exaggerated and mutations become more apparent. One classic example of this is in the royal Habsburg family in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Rulers of Spain, as well as The Netherlands, Belgium, and parts of Germany, the royal family feared losing any of their power, so they opted to keep their breeding within the family. After 16 generations of inbreeding this practice finally took its ultimate toll and the Habsburg’s lost the coveted throne. In particular, it was in King Charles II, born in 1661, that it finally came to an end. The generations of inbreeding culminated in the psychological and physical deterioration of Charles. He was illiterate and dependent. His jaw was so misshapen that his teeth did not meet and therefore he could not chew his food properly. He was lame. In addition to this,
there was combined pituitary hormone deficiency, a disorder that made him short, impotent, infertile, weak, and have a host of digestive problems. The other disorder was distal renal tubular acidosis, a condition marked by blood in the urine, weak muscles, and having an abnormally large head compared to the rest of the body.[xiii]
But, thankfully, in countries with millions of people there is no need to breed incestuously. So, a tall light-skinned person with brown eyes can find another tall light-skinned person with brown eyes – totally unrelated – and have children (that may or may not be tall or have brown eyes… but will probably be light-skinned, though.) In the case of a place like China, one could find a host of mates that look very nearly like themselves and still keep a viable gene pool. Or they could just fall in love with someone regardless of physical characteristics. That’s just how it works.
So, just to recap thus far what we have learned:
1. The term “race” is not used properly in modern terminology. It is a myth used solely to create “racism.”
2. The terms “white” and “black” are technically incorrect as we are all shades of brown.
3. All people contain all of the genetic material necessary to create all shades, shapes, and sizes of all people.
You see, then, that the basis for all “white supremacy”, “black supremacy”, Arian supremacy, even Latvian supremacy is based on a lie. According to the Bible, and our scientific knowledge, there is no “race” that is supreme over another; in fact, there is no such thing as separate races. But there is such a thing as different ideologies and worldviews and some of those ideologies are purely sinful. And THAT, my friends, is the problem in the world; not the color of your skin, but the color of your politics and the bent of your theology!
“Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you” (Romans 12:3).
[i] Algerians, Bolivians, Cubans, Danes, Egyptians, Flemings, Germans, Hondurans, Indonesians, Jews, Kuwaitis, Latvians, Mexicans, Norwegians, Omanis, Polish, Qataris, Romanians, Tunisians, Ugandans, Vietnamese, Yemenis, & Zambians…….. you guessed it, ALL shades of brown.
[ii] http://sociology.iresearchnet.com/sociology-of-race/one-drop-rule/; accessed 4 July 2020.
[iii] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-the-eye-the-beholder/201104/the-one-drop-rule-how-black-is-black; accessed 4 July 2020.
[iv] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/us/rachel-dolezal-welfare-fraud.html; accessed 4 July 2020.
[v] https://www.factcheck.org/2018/10/the-facts-on-elizabeth-warrens-dna-test/; accessed 4 July 2020.
[vi] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J082v27n03_10; accessed 4 July 2020. This was merely from the abstract as I did not feel the $44 fee to read the whole paper was necessary.
[vii] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fauxmosexual; accessed 4 July 2020.
[viii] https://pittnews.com/article/113150/opinions/columns/qa-vijay-chokal-ingam-affirmative-action-racist/; accessed 4 July 2020.
[ix] I realize that some believers in God try to synthesize theism and humanism in support of evolution and I believe they are gravely mistaken given the overwhelming scientific evidence for creation and against evolution. For this I refer the reader to the website answersingenesis.org, and to the book “Evolution Handbook” downloadable for free at https://evolutionfacts.com/Handbook%20TOC.htm.
[x] James Montgomery Boice, Genesis: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998).
[xi] Some have further divided humans into the subgroup sapiens to delineate modern humans – Homo sapiens sapiens (very wise man) – from Neanderthal humans – Homo sapiens (wise man). While this is debatable, it does not alter the fact that all humans are in the same species. Not to be confused with equus asinus sapiens (wise ass).
[xii] See https://answersingenesis.org/genesis/garden-of-eden/where-was-the-garden-of-eden-located/
[xiii] https://allthatsinteresting.com/charles-ii-of-spain; accessed 5 July 2020.
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