Christian iconography doesn’t matter to Black Lives Matter booster and hard-left activist Shaun King — that is, if it happens to portray Jesus and other biblical figures as white.
In fact, he wants it destroyed.
Obviously inspired by the cultural revolution claiming statues coast to coast and fearing descent into irrelevancy, King expressed the above in two Monday tweets, making news in the process. The first one reads:
Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down.
They are a form of white supremacy.
Always have been.
In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went?
EGYPT!
Not Denmark.
Tear them down.
— Shaun King (@shaunking) June 22, 2020
Then, to be sure everyone knew he was applying his “Taliban rule” to all Christian iconography, he followed up with:
Yes.
All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down.
They are a gross form white supremacy.
Created as tools of oppression.
Racist propaganda.They should all come down.
— Shaun King (@shaunking) June 22, 2020
King, a left-wing journalist who co-founded the “Real Justice PAC” — a group aiming to help elect hard-left, criminal-enabling prosecutors — is an opportunist (he has been accused of fundraising corruption) and obviously wants attention. But since he has gotten it, and because his words can affect our cultural revolution’s direction, they should be addressed.
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Twitter respondents were quick to do so, too. Some pointed out (one tweet below) that it’s customary for cultures “to portray prominent religious figures to look like the dominant racial identity,” as History.com related, quoting University of Iowa religious studies professor Robert Cargill.
Odd take. What do you think of the Mexican depictions of the Holy family? Or others? pic.twitter.com/skZyxY15Sh
— Eric Wearne (@eric_wearne) June 22, 2020
Another example:
There is a long beautiful history of people depicting Jesus looking familiar to their place and culture. Jesus is not about race, and saying to tear down depictions that occur in a European-dominant context is as racist as removing them from any culture. pic.twitter.com/C1wFSr1xXr
— MrSubsidiarity (@MrSubsidiarity) June 22, 2020
And yet another, which is identified as a portrayal of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus:
Is that Chinese supremacy? Asking for a friend. pic.twitter.com/UXx2q5ncnX
— Nelly ? (@NellyHusz) June 22, 2020
Of course, this all makes sense. We don’t know Jesus’ precise appearance, and to Christians the point is not His race but nature and purpose: that He is God and man and offers salvation for all people.
As for Western portrayals, American Thinker adds perspective, writing that “Christian iconography as we know it developed in a white world that had no sense of Jesus and Mary as historical figures and did not traffic in race. Instead, the medieval world divided the world into religious categories (Christian, Jewish, or Muslim) and regional categories (the British region, the French region, the Spanish region, the Italian region, etc.).”
So, in reality, King and his cultural revolutionary subjects are the actual “racists” here, for implicit in their prescriptions is that every group can have its culture-specific Christian iconography — except whites.
Some on Twitter (example below) also corrected King on the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt.
Dude, I have no issue with saying Jesus wasn’t white, but Mary and Joseph didn’t take him to Egypt to “blend in”, they took him there because it was out of Herod’s jurisdiction.
Have you tried reading the book?
— The Angry Philosopher On Drugs (@OfficialAPoD) June 22, 2020
Moreover, first century Egypt was a demographically heterogeneous land that was part of the Roman Empire; note, too, that it wasn’t even Arab at the time (Egypt became so after the seventh-century Islamic invasion).
Yet even if it had been, there’s an irony here. As another Twitter user responded:
Hmmm. I’m half-Arab myself. My dad was Palestinian, and he grew up in the Holy Land till 1948 when he fled to Egypt at age 10 (his mom was Egyptian) with his family (hey, just like Jesus!). I married a Jewish man. Both my husband and I (Jew and Arab) sure do look white. So…?
— Leila Miller (@LeilaMillerLCB) June 22, 2020
Then, because seeing is believing, there’s this:
This is a pic of a group of people in Lebanon today from Nassim Nicholas Taleb. We have a fair sized Syrian/Lebanese community in my neighborhood, went to school with many. No darker than your typical Italians. pic.twitter.com/4uGzjdyWXP
— Brian Cartwright (@blcartwright) June 22, 2020
Little known is that, anthropologically speaking, there are only a few racial categories (but a multitude of ethnicities), and Arabs — along with Persians and even most Indians — are classified as “Caucasian.” Moreover, since Jesus was a Semite, He would have presumably fallen into this category, too.
Of course, it’s true that the American, man-on-the-street conception of “white” relates to Caucasians of European descent. This brings us to how King is also no stranger to creative racial classification.
After all, the light-complected racial activist has been accused of lying about his race for personal gain, as the Daily Mail reported in 2015. And while he “identifies as ‘black or biracial’,” according to Gawker, critics have mocked him as “Talcum X” and have cited the pictures below to buttress their case.
Just a female Rachel Dolezal pic.twitter.com/qIntXDBHUB
— WRpeach (@WRpeach) June 23, 2020
I can’t confirm or refute King’s claims, and aside from the picture in the lower left-hand corner (which is him), I also can’t confirm the authenticity of all the above photos. But I do prefer the matter-of-fact honesty of, let’s say, golfer Tiger Woods. He calls himself “Cablinasian” in recognition of his entire heritage: Caucasian, black, American Indian, and Asian.
(As for King’s insistence I believe his racial identity, it’s just a bit too much like 1984’s “How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?”) The bottom line is that a complaint about (an allegedly) swarthy Jesus being portrayed as white is most ironic coming from a white-skinned man portraying himself as black.
It may seem funny, too, but what’s no laughing matter is that King just further tips the cultural revolutionaries’ hand. Their civilizational “innovation” was never just about toppling Confederate statues, and it won’t stop with Christopher Columbus or even the Founding Fathers. If they attain enough power, the white Christian iconography would surely go — to be followed by all Christian iconography. For insatiable hate burns all, and destroyers will destroy.
This should be borne in mind by anyone inclined to listen to what a King of lies says about the Prince of Peace.
Photo: imamember / iStock / Getty Images Plus