Biblical scholars, theologians and people who have common sense are dragging a right-wing celebrity you’ve never heard of who claimed that white privilege didn’t stop federal law enforcement officers from killing a popular protest organizer from Nazareth who died with his hands up after a confidential informant named Judas snitched on his fellow gang leader.
Wait...You didn’t know Jesus was gang-affiliated?
Yeah, he ran with the Disciples.
Eric Metaxas is a Trump-loving Christian radio host who also authored the Donald the Caveman series, a collection of MAGA-themed children’s books that includes Donald Drains the Swamp, Donald and the Fake News and Donald Builds the Wall. Apparently, the only thing Metaxas hates more than Mexicans, Black Lives Matter and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is equality (The villain of one of his books is “an angry little girl who looks a little bit like AOC”).
The Washington Post reports:
Now Metaxas has stirred controversy with a tweet contending (or assuming) that Jesus was White. His claim was made in reaction to news that the United Methodist Church is partnering with Robin DiAngelo, the author of “White Fragility,” to produce a video series on “Deconstructing White Privilege.” Metaxas’s response read in full: “Jesus was white. Did he have ‘white privilege’ even though he was entirely without sin? Is the United Methodist Church covering that? I think it could be important.”
Metaxas has subsequently attempted to place his claim about Jesus’ ethnicity into context. But there is no context in which this statement makes historical or theological sense. In attempting to debunk the idea of white privilege, Metaxas employed a traditional affirmation of white supremacy.
There are admittedly no physical descriptions of Jesus in the Gospels. Traditions about his appearance, including the beard, arose more than a century after his death. But there is no doubt that he was a Jew from what we now know as the Middle East. The white, European Jesus of Western imagination is a fiction produced by those who could not imagine human perfection in any other form.
That’s right. A man who has authored dozens of books for actual adults seems to believe that there’s no way his lord and savior could be anything other than a white man. He wore Birkenstocks, for Hissakes!
I’m pretty sure this is why Jesus wept.
Of course, the seminary scholars of social media kindly gave a lesson in history and religion to the Ph.D. graduate the National Institute for God’s Gospel According to White Heaux-Asses on Twitter (NIGGAWHAT):
No, Jesus wasn’t white.
If he was Caucasian, those racist innkeepers would have given Joseph and Mary a room instead of forcing Mary to give birth in a musty-ass manger. King Herod would never enact that heinous maternal health care plan on the white citizens in the Roman Empire. I bet Pontius Pilate would have sentenced Jesus of Iowa to three years of probation, tops, and white people would have given better baby shower gifts than gold, frankincense and myrrh (I think. If I’m being honest, I don’t know what frankincense or myrrh is. The internet says its an incense and I’m pretty sure the white people of antiquity used patchouli, potpourri or Febreeze until the Glade plug-in was invented.)
And despite what Shaun King would have you believe, he wasn’t Black. While many people cite John’s description in Revelation of Jesus having hair that was “white like wool, as white as snow” and feet like “fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace,” Jesus probably wasn’t prematurely gray and his feet might have been dirty (he wore the original Yeezy slides), we also remember that the book was about a dream.
Plus, if Jesus was Black, he’d probably show up to a cookout empty-handed causing my Aunt Marvel to tell him that he could have at least brought some aluminum foil. Plus, when Jesus fed 5,000 people with two pieces of fish and five loaves of bread, a Black savior would have at least manifested some hot sauce. There is also a glaring omission in the Bible of Jesus talking shit to Matthew and Simon on the Spades table, which must have happened if he was hanging with your homeboys all day (and you know Jesus always had the big Joker).
Thankfully, Metaxas later clarified his position on Jesus’ ethnicity...kinda:
However, it is understandable why Eric Metaxas assumed Jesus was white.
Jesus must be white. How could any non-white person allow white people to commit so many historical atrocities without recompense or their repentance? How could a Jesus who cared about all people create a man who spewed hate and lies like this?
Either Jesus is a blonde, blue-eyed man who only cares about white people...
Or Eric Metaxas is fucked.