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@MisterChris
i guess it sort of depends on what advancing looks like and what time frame.
For policing issues, almost certainly no in the short to medium term. The republicans will fight any meaningful attempts at police reform. And the establishment dems have no interest in it either. They will pass some token legislation to make it look like they are trying to do something. But they like the policing system the way it is. They would prefer to tone down the blatant racism, but the underlying systemic racism is working as intended.
but I do think real change is possible by holding the dem establishment's feet to the fire. Alot of the most powerful dems are in very blue districts. This allows them to get settled and hold their position for decades. The only way to get real change is to scare them badly enough that they actually listen to people. AOC removing Joe Crowley and now there have been more. Primary attempts against "the squad" failed miserably. Jamal Bowman seems to have beaten Engel, a powerful establishment Dem. Carolyn Maloney, another powerful establishment dem, is having a very tight race. Mondare jones looks like he may win in New York's 17th. It looks like the establishment candidate (amy McGrath) is going to win in a close race in kentucky. But the fact that the establishment fully back her and she brought in millions and millions and only narrowly won has still got to be concerning for the establishment dems.
The question will be how much do people turn on the establishment candidates and support people who want real change. If people continue the whole "blue no matter who" nonsense then there will never be any change because the establishment dems will have no reason to change anything.
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@Dr.Franklin
never said give guns to criminals or lunatics
no, but you want them readily available to everyone else. And with that many guns saturating the market then there is absolutely no problem for criminals and lunatics to get them. There are loopholes that let them do it legally. There are less than scrupulous gun shops that don't care who they sell to. There are random people who just re-sell their guns. There are criminals who just steal guns (since they are everywhere).
You will never be able to get guns out of the hands of criminals if there are hundreds of millions of them available.
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
sell it on the blackmarket of course, I'd rather keep it in my house and take my chances, if someone breaks in it's better to face a gun charge than a death penalty via criminal don't you think?
no, why would it be? If your choices are give a guy your stuff or go to prison for 20 years, that's a pretty simple choice.
look at the criminals getting gun charges now, as a would be first time offender I'm not concerned in the slightest based on what repeat offenders are charged and punished with.
yeah, you would definitely need stiff penalties for owners of illegal guns in order to make it not worth it for people to buy them anyway and hide them. Because if they feel like you do, that it is better to commit a crime than deal with an unlikely hypothetical scenario, then they will commit that crime. If you can convince them that they are worse off breaking the law (by illegally hiding firearms) then you remove the incentive for people to do so.
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@Greyparrot
There no way to take guns away from criminals, all your points on gun control are invalid.
of course there is. It won't be easy or fast given how bad the proliferation of guns has been. But the fact that doing something will be hard does not mean it isn't worth doing. If you control the flow of guns and keep new ones from going out. Then you step up measures to seize the guns that are out there with big prison time for being in posession of gun. You will slowly get the glut of firearms out of the market.
Even if we tried anything you propose, ACLU would just step in as usual and call it racial profiling or some bullshit.
how does controlling the sale of guns have anything to do with racial profiling?
Unless part of your gun ban proposal involves abolishing the ACLU, good luck.
this doesn't even make sense.
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@Greyparrot
When you live in a Democrat-run city with few guns. One gun is the difference between a rich criminal and a poor one.
you don't even seem to be trying to make a point any more. I explained why gun control would work. you responded with absolutely nothing.
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
Ramp up the technology. I want to make guns in the comfort of my own home. Something quieter would be nice, like a mini magnet rail gun. Coming to a download near you.
ok, but what are you going to do with it? Assuming we were able to pass sufficient guns laws, if you ever take it to a range, you go to prison. If you ever use it in self defense, you go to prison. If anyone finds out you have it (by say using it on your own property), you go to prison.
It makes it pretty pointless to do that.
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@Greyparrot
Lol, you talk as if you know the ingenuity of the criminal mind.
I understand the basics of commerce. Drugs are in constant demand because people need to frequently consume them. Thus there is a constant, high demand for them. Guns don't have that. Guns have little to no use. They can be fun to shoot. You can use them to hunt. But no one is getting high off guns. And once you own a gun, you don't need to go out and buy another one every couple of weeks because it is a product that lasts.
So there is no comparison between guns and drugs.
The people most affected by laws in Democrat-run cities are the people with something to lose. That excludes criminals ready to fight a cop anticipating early release on the dime of a perverted woke Hollywood celebrity virtue signalling to their rabid fans.
the people in major cities are already paying the price for america's incredibly lax gun policy. Stricter gun laws would help to solve these problems.
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@bmdrocks21
Bordering a third-world country also makes that impossible. Can’t stop drugs, what makes you think we could stop guns?
2 things.
1) drugs are a morality and lifestyle issue. You can easily buy and use drugs in your own home and who is going to know. Guns are nothing like that. No one gets addicted to guns. No one is just using their gun inside their own home without the cops being called. And once you buy some guns, you probably don't need to keep buying guns. There are only so many guns you can use/hide. Drugs need to be constantly consumed and then you buy more, so the demand is endless.
2) because the drugs are grown outside the US and smuggled in. The vast majority of guns in the US are manufactured in the US. And then they are also smuggled out to other countries. Once you get gun laws in place to control the domestic civilian market, you can also clamp down on arms manufacturing to dry up the amount of guns on the market.
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@Greyparrot
The worst gun problems are in democrat run cities that make it easy to own a gun only if you are a lawless lunatic, a criminal, or both.
gun control cannot be a local issue. If you banned guns in your city, people can drive to the next city over and buy them. Gun control must be national policy for it to have a chance to work.
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@bmdrocks21
And a truly wrongful arrest results in a lawsuit.
why would it? all the cop has to do is say they resisted arrest. Now they can just say whoever they want is guilty.
People of color harass and assault police all of the time.
imagine that. Abused people dislike and strike back at their tormentors.
Maybe, just maybe, the way to make police like you is to not commit a vastly disproportionate amount of crime
true, and that is exactly what they are fighting to accomplish by dismantling the systemic racism that suppresses them.
Maybe stop resisting arrest and you won't get harmed or killed during an arrest?
the problem with that logic is that police will treat anything but abject subjugation as "resistance". If you dare to ask them why they are harassing you, then you are resisting in their eyes.
You can train police to be better about that, but that only goes so far. When one misstep can get killed, it is also on citizens to not create problems by not complying. Perhaps you could start by not vilifying cops to tiny children and tell them that if you act civilized and do what you're told, you'll be fine???
but that would be a lie. Police will still mistreat people of color even if they do everything right. But even if it were true that they would be fine if they did everything right, that would still be massively unfair. A white guy flips off a cop and nothing happens. A black guy flips off a cop and he gets curb stomped or pepper sprayed.
How else do you describe a group of 30 people swarming a random car on the highway, pulling them out of their car, and savagely beating them? How about looting and burning stores? Sounds like rampaging savages to me.
I have no idea what even you are describing or if it even happened.
And I don't see how that is racist. There are white people out there to. They are generally the minority of people, but when they engage in that behavior, I would use the same terms to describe them.
you consider anyone who tries to fight for the rights of black people to be savages. sounds like racism to me.
They aren't available to literally anyone. If you have some mental disorder like depression or are a felon, you can't get a gun.
of course not, unless there are countless loopholes, or a constant stream of readily available black market weapons. Alot of gun shops don't care who you are, they just want to sell their guns.
And no, they wouldn't be better off. If a group of fifty unarmed people attacks a group of three unarmed people, how is that group of three better off?
ok, but that almost never happens. But people getting shot by some civilian with a gun happens almost every day.
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@bmdrocks21
Solving what problem? Stopping the killing of nine unarmed black people per year by cops?
that is certainly part of it. But as I keep telling you, a cop doesn't have to straight up murder people in order to harass, assault or wrongfully arrest people of color.
And innocent bystanders should not be at the mercy of a bunch of rampaging savages.
so black people protesting to try to get the police to stop attacking them are "rampaging savages"? Glad to see you aren't racist....
f some random passerby in their car is attacked by a mob because it is angry about an unrelated problem, that civilian has every right to defend themselves with whatever force necessary and should be properly equipped to do so.
you are correct that they have the right to defend themselves. But having lots of armed people running around only intensifies other problems. Everyone is much better off if there weren't guns available to literally anyone.
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@bmdrocks21
So the solution to mob violence is to be unarmed and let a group of fifty people beat the shit out of you and burn your house down?
no, the solution to mob violence is actually solving the problems that lead to this kind of violence. Arming more people so you can better suppress these people is not a solution. It only intensifies it.
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@ILikePie5
so the solution to the police being unaccountable and abusing their power is to hand guns to anyone that wants one, including lunatics, untrained idiots and criminals. That is just a fantastic plan.Nice strawman
I'll grant that isn't precisely the argument being made, but it is pretty close. The idea is that since some people might riot and fight for their rights, we need to heavily arm people. And historically, the right hasn't really given a shit who they are arming.
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@Dr.Franklin
remember a few years ago, it was "the cops will protect you!"
so the solution to the police being unaccountable and abusing their power is to hand guns to anyone that wants one, including lunatics, untrained idiots and criminals. That is just a fantastic plan.
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@Greyparrot
For every COVID-19 death recorded since January, TWENTY new babies were added to the American population.
how are these 2 numbers in any way related. You can make that same argument about anything. People die from cancer, but there are way more babies born so we should just stop treating cancer?
The comparison doesn't even make any sense.
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@Greyparrot
You don't know what he is not. You can just make a guess based on your give-a-fuck racial meter.
No. Historians make the most logical deduction that can be made. He most certainly was not the blonde haired European a lot of Christians depict him as. Depicting him as european is just obviously not accurate and racist.
But again, I repeat that I do not think that it is worth tearing down statues for. I'm just saying I can see where they are coming from.
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@Greyparrot
Like I said., why the FUCK do you care about the racial DNA of Jesus?
I don't. Not in the slightest bit. The point is that christians depicting him as something he is not, very much do. And that is a part of a fundamentally racist philosophy.
But again, I'm not agreeing with the people who say everyone should teat down statues of white jesus. I think it is kinda silly. I'm just saying I see their point.
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@ILikePie5
He’s probably one of those people who believe Jesus was a Muslim prophet or something, that’s why he’s so adamant on not depicting Jesus in any other way
I'm not even 100% convinced he even existed. But if he did, he was probably just a con artist, like the dozen or so other "messiahs" that were wandering around the middle east doing the same "miracles" jesus was reported to have done. The only thing that made jesus any different from the other "messiah's" was that the cult around him was successful following his death.
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@Greyparrot
Again, why is the DNA purity of one's skin so goddamn important to you?
why do you keep bringing up DNA purity? I have never mentioned that. That is some nazi kind of stuff.
Why is it so important to you to mount a scientific crusade to conclusively match the DNA of Jesus to a certain skin shade?
i never said that. In fact I explicitly said I do not agree with trying to force people to tear down statues of white jesus. I said I can understand their point.
Exactly what power does a CERTAIN shade of brown skin hold that enhances your perception of Jesus? What are the properties of genetic melanin that fascinate you to care so much?
It isn't about "enhancing my perception". It is that distorting the reality of what jesus was (assuming he actually existed), so that he is your race, is racist. If you can't appreciate jesus' message coming from the man he was and you feel the need to make him white in order to listen to him, you are probably a racist.
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@Greyparrot
What do you want, a photo? 23 and me DNA scan?Why is DNA purity so important to you?
I have never spoken about DNA purity. So yet another straw man. I am talking about portraying people of color as if they are white.
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@Athias
Are there no Caucasians in the Middle East?
sure, I have never seen any evidence that jesus was one of them though.
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@Swagnarok
I said it, yes. Because it is true. Because it is absolutely true.
no it really, really isn't. America is a free country. You can blaspheme all you want. It doesn't hurt anyone. While racism definitely does hurt people.
But neither can you elevate people over God.
of course you can. Because america has freedom of religion. If I choose to believe there is no god, then I am perfectly free and justified in doing that.
(Also, you're defining "racism" in such broad terms that at least some of what the phrase covers is morally trivial. If it only covers the bad stuff then making Jesus white can't be racist; if making Jesus white is racist then some racism is unimportant.)
no. because racism isn't a single event or thought. It is a pattern of thought and behavior. You don't become a racist by carrying out a racist act. The racist act just shows people that you were already racist. Small racist things help to build and support a mindset that white people are superior, or that other ethnicities are scary and shouldn't be trusted.
Seeing as this is an internal affair of the church the opinions of atheists are not relevant here. Nor is any atheist in a position to draw credible moral judgment upon its practices, especially if his judgment is based on contrived secular values not found in Scripture.
lol so your argument is, "you don't believe what I believe, so you don't have a right to have an opinion on our racism?" That's a kind of closed minded view.
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@ILikePie5
The effect wasn’t to piss of people lmao.
but that is the effect it is having.
A copy of the statue was in Boston for over a 100 years.
so? Something has existed for awhile so it should continue to exist? Slavers made that argument too.
What? I’m literally showing you how racism is less today than 1876-1964 because an African American would never get elected from the South then but easily would now.
so you think the fact that people hate "commies" more than they hate black people means they aren't racists?
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@Swagnarok
Even if that's true, "racism" is not this magic existential evil, this unforgivable offense like Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit
wait are you arguing that racism is less evil than blasphemy? Strongly disagree.
one could argue that God Himself caused that in the first place via the events of the Tower of Babel and the dispersion/division of humanity into tribes. Did God sin?
well, since the christian god doesn't exist I don't see how it is relevant.
I will ask you, what positive good would it do to frame Jesus in a less relatable albeit more historically accurate way?
I am arguing that portraying him that way is racist, which it is. I'm not arguing that I agree that statues of white jesus should be torn down. I have said that several times now.
Because as I said, that's not a mere hypothetical: in some parts of the world it's already happening and has been happening for a long, long time.
well Christianity is a cult that has lead to the deaths of millions of people. So i'm really not concerned about people turning away from it.
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@ILikePie5
It wasn’t a slave lmao. It was a freed slave. This what I’m talking about. The intent was to commemorate emancipation. That’s what the broken chains show. It’s your burden to prove that intent was incorrect and that it was racist. It isn’t a white savior. It’s a savior. White people freed the slaves.
ok, but if the effect of the statue is to piss off the people who are supposed to like it, that makes it a really shitty statue. Showing black people kneeling at the feet of a white man is a shitty design.
Really? A black Democrat never got elected to the Senate from the South after the end of Reconstruction and before Civil Rights Act. Now a black republican would get elected over a white liberal in southern states.
ok, so people also have learned to hate other "tribes" as well as other races. Whoo!! progress!! lol
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@Swagnarok
That whole rant is completely irrelevant. Jesus was middle eastern. He wasn't white. But white people prefer to think of him as white because of racism. Try and justify it all you want, it doesn't change it.
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@ILikePie5
So intent means nothing? What happened to context?
intent matters too. But if you use that intent for bad purposes (or in this case a racist design) then it is still bad. The people who enslaved black people also thought they were doing what was best for them. Their intent was to help them, while they enslaved them. I don't know who designed that particular statue, but the message is pretty clear. The white savior standing over the helpless slave. It is the white savior trope.
Less racists in 1920 than 1820. Less racists in 2020 than 1920.
I'm not sure that is true. Racism has become less outwardly acceptable. So people hide it better.
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@Greyparrot
White man's burden is bad if the right does it and it's good if the left does it.
The problem is that "left" doesn;t really have any meaning. you are probably referring to neo-libs, who are actually right wing in many respects. Just not as right wing as republicans.
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@ILikePie5
You’re the one who didn’t read. Lincoln statue was a commemoration of liberation not racism.
I'm sure the white person who designed it thinks that. Black people who see it certainly disagree.
Teddy Roosevelt didn’t enslave people. He saw both white and blacks as people and believed that racism would eventually go away through generations which it slowly is.
Racism is still extremely prevalent. It hasn't gone away.
You’re the one spreading false narratives not me. You’re the one who mentioned white subservience, not me.
How do you not get this. Statues of white saviors standing over subservient black and native people is a problem.
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@ILikePie5
Yup so white people need to give reparations, give welfare, give them free sports for college to enrich them right?
do you see what you are doing? We are talking about statues of black men kneeling at white people's feet. You then switch topics to try and make it about something completely different. It is a common tactic for people on the right. It shows me that you don't actually have a coherent argument, so you need to change topics and distract.
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@ILikePie5
So the white man’s burden doesn’t exist right?
The concept certainly does. White people used it to explain why they needed to "help" natives or black people. They then used that excuse to enslave, murder and commit genocide.
Statues showing natives and black people kneeling at white men's feet fit into this concept.
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@ILikePie5
Looks like I hit a nerve🤡🤡
how do you figure? I explained quite rationally why they don't deserve statues. I'm not upset at all.
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@ILikePie5
I can’t help you if you don’t recognize the nuances of this Hitler analogy.
you haven't given a single reason it is a bad analogy while i have explained why it is a good one. It might be you who doesn't understand.
Context does matter. The black man was a freed slave kneeling and it was meant to celebrate liberation. Slavery was outlawed by white people lmao. There’s no “white savior.” It’s just “savior.”
you honestly don't see why a statue of black people kneeling at the feel of white people is racist? Really? The idea that white people needed to take care of black people was one of the underlying principles of slavery. They were "savages" that needed white men. So building statues showing this in action is pretty bad.
As for Roosevelt, he was one of the most Progressive Presidents. Every President in those times, if they were alive would be considered racists. Literally everyone was racist back then. Roosevelt wasn’t a slave owner. It has nothing to do with slavery because it was banned lol
The statue shows a native american and black man in subservient roles to the white man. It's kinda racist. The context of the statue is important.
I never said that they never committed treason. Your hatred would warrant every single Confederate be hanged. It was a way of life. You and I would’ve fought for our way of life if we were in their position.
Their way of life was kidnapping and enslaving enslaving people and working them to death so that they could be rich and powerful. When that wealth was threatened, they committed treason leading to deaths of over half a million people for the sole purpose of keeping those people in chains. They were traitors and slavers. They weren't heroes. They don't deserve monuments.
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@ILikePie5
Hitler is a terrible analogy for a multitude of reasons
not really. They are both assholes who killed for money and power. Neither deserve monuments. Seems pretty apt to me.
So why are their statues being taken down? Oh wait slippery slope right?
depends on reasons and the statue I suppose. One statue of Lincoln, it was because the statue had a black man kneeling at his feet in subservience. The classic "white saviour" trope. There's that teddy roesevelt statue with him on a horse leading 2 half naked black slaves. That one is also super racist.
It isn't just about who the statue is of, the context matters.
Confederates were pardoned by Presidents Lincoln and Johnson to heal the nation. Sure they were traitors, but they no longer are. They are simply Americans like you and I are. They fought for their livelihood like you and I would’ve without hindsight bias.
Being pardoned for a crime doesn't mean you never committed it. They are traitors. They betrayed their country to protect their wealth and power. There is nothing about that that deserves a monument.
No. Anyone should be able to take a Confederate flag to a public place. It’s called the first amendment.
That's not really what this topic is about, so I'm not going down this rabbit hole.
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@ILikePie5
Hitler has nothing to do what this. Washington was a slave owner.
He is an example of an important historical figure that does not deserve a statue and should not be forgotten. Exactly like the confederates.
Washington was a slave owner. Jefferson was a slave owner. They were all racist if considered by modern times.
The difference is that Washington and Jefferson weren't traitors to their people who fought a war against their own people just so that they could keep millions of people in slavery.
You’re literally advocating for the banning of the Confederate flag because it’s racist. People are burning the American flag because it represents racism. Should the American flag be banned too?
no, because the US flag is the flag of a country. The Confederate flag represents a group of traitors who were fighting for slavery over a hundred years ago. They only existed for a couple of years. I agree that people should have the right to protest (including burning flags).
If people want to buy confederate flags and put them in their own homes, they can go for it for all I care. But when it comes to public places, they don't need to display their racism there.
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I am talking about people who pull down monuments. You know, the root subject of this forum post? Stay on point, yeah?
monuments are not history. They are a commemoration. They are celebrating a specific event or person. You can teach history with no monuments. So saying destroying monuments is destroying history is bullshit. No one is destroying history. They are destroying monuments to traitors and slavers. We can still teach about them in schools without building monuments to them.
There are no monuments to Hitler in this country, either. Why bring him up?
because your argument seems to be that if you don't build a monument to someone, then you are destroying history. Hitler doesn't get any statues, but everyone is still taught what he did. Similarly, the confederates don't deserve statues, but we should still teach people what they did.
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@ILikePie5
This is a slippery slope dude. Y’all were saying it will only be Confederates. Now we see statues of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt get defaced and taken down.
The slippery slope arguement is such a sad argument. I'm sure nazi's would make the same arguement. "you can't ban statues to hitler because tomorrow it will be someone else". It is pathetic. The confederates were traitors to their nation who fought to keep people in chains. They do not deserve monuments.
If the Confederate flag is offensive to you but burning the American flag isn’t the maybe you need to reconsider your stance.
The confederate flag is a symbol of racism and oppression. Flying it is an insult and is really racist. Some people also see the american flag as a symbol of racism and oppression. I have no problem with people burning it, or any other flag.
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@TheUnderdog
How was I doing that? I said middle easterners are classified as white by the UN and many middle easterners look white. Jesus is easily in this group.
you are attempting to rationalize depicting jesus as european as possible. He wasn't. He wouldn't have looked like a European. But countless depictions of him show him that way. that is racist.
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@TheUnderdog
If you need a break, I understand. I can wait a little to respond if you want.
I have no interest in discussing your attempts to rationalize racism.
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@bmdrocks21
And are you going to condemn people saying Jesus was black or do you only attack whitey for an irrelevant difference in depiction?
if you look back at my previous replies, you will see I already did. If you need to depict someone as your ethnicity in order to listen to their message, you are probably a racist.
Oh really? Show me the Polaroid.
lol, so you think Jesus, a middle eastern man, was blonde haired and blue eyed? And no one though to mention the fact that he looked like literally no one else?
And you’d realize that Jesus’ message, not his depiction is what actually matters. Don’t think Jesus would care that pictures aren’t exactly replicas of His appearance.
no, he preached that you should treat everyone as you would treat him. So using him in a racist way would probably sicken him. But alot of things christians do would probably sicken him.
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@fauxlaw
Thus candy-striped history buffed by pol-corr. Not a valid filter. History was what it was. Who made you the arbiter of what constitutes a good history, or a bad one. It was. It behooves us to make it better, but once you start destruction of it, where do you stop?
what are you even talking about? No one is destroying history. No one is talking about forgetting history. We are talking about building statues to glorify specific parts of history. There are no statues to hitler in germany, but no one has forgotten him. You don't need to build statues to traitors to remember them.
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@fauxlaw
George Washington was a slave owner. So was Tom Jefferson. Pity to eradicate their memory for that when they were so much more than that. Would you want to be remembered for just one thing? I didn't think so. We all have flaws. Pointing them out to one another accomplishes nothing.
ok, but being a traitor to your nation so that you can prevent millions of people from ever knowing freedom is a pretty huge problem in your record. Lots of people owned slaves, I don't think that by itself is a reason to take down monuments. But if you fought and killed people to prevent the freedom of others while pretending you were fighting "for freedom", then you don't deserve a monument.
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@ILikePie5
Probably the only nation in the world where monuments erected to heal the nation after a Civil War are the cause of division
civil war statues were not erected to heal the nation. Most of the statues were not put up in the years following the civil war. They really started to be built during the Jim Crowe era of segregation.
The war ended in 1865. Most statues were built between 1890 and 1950, with the biggest spike being between 1900 and 1920. They were built as monuments to racism. The confederates they depict fought to keep the blacks enslaved. And the during the Jim Crowe era, white people will still trying to keep the blacks down.
Why should america keep monuments to long dead traitors who fought so that others would never know freedom?
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@fauxlaw
Some people have no respect for an unchangeable era, even yesterday. George Santayana was correct. Forget history, be condemned to repeat it. Therefore, those who attempt to alter history by it erasure will do the very things they condemn. The pattern has been so since history began.
no one is suggesting we should forget history. But remembering and glorifying are very different things. You don't have build statues to traitorous slavers in order to remember what they did.
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@bmdrocks21
God was made in the “image of man”, so it is pretty logical to make him look like you.
in the sense that he should have 2 arms, 2 legs and a head? Absolutely. In the sense that you feel the need to make him Caucasian when he very clearly wasn't because middle eastern people are scary foreigners, no it's not particularly logical.
But even with all of that aside, Jesus could have been any race, not necessarily even Middle Eastern, because he was the “Son of God” literally. And, since Christians believe in an all-powerful God, that means he could have been born white no matter what the mother’s race was.
true, but he wasn't any of those other races. So depicting him that way is a lie.
If black churches want a black Jesus statue and on stained glass windows, they are free to do that if that helps them identify with Jesus more.
but it is fundamentally counter to the argument that jesus was making. He wanted everyone to be treated the same. all equal. Needing to make jesus your race because you don't like him as he actually was proves you weren't actually listening to his message. Of course religious people very rarely actually listen to Jesus' message.
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@Swagnarok
None of it's racist. One point churches always try to get across is that Jesus was a man like us (while also God) and He was sent for the sake of all people across all time. Therefore, all people across all time should be able to relate to His humanity, which is accomplished by depicting Him in a way that's relatable to any given audience.
let me get this straight. You can't listen to the message unless it comes from a man with the same skin tone as you? That is some racist shit.
There's nothing wrong with that so long as the members of one race don't believe that Jesus belongs exclusively to them.
no, swapping the race of your savior because you don't want to see him as he truly was is kinda shitty. I can see why missionaries in the 4th century needed to do that. I mean black people and middle eastern people were foreign and scary. But the reason why they were doing that is, at it's core, racist. In a modern world where we are trying to teach people that middle eastern people and black people are not inherently scary, maybe it's time to start depicting jesus in a more accurate way.
More Jewish and less Roman. It clearly wasn't whitewashing and the main difference was beard or no beard, not skin color.
so it was racism, but racism against a different ethnicity. Does that make it better to you?
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@Swagnarok
Not so terribly different from modern Western depictions of Him.
That depiction has virtually no color in it. They are could be limited by the materials at their disposal. It is also entirely possible that this depiction has not held it's coloring properly over the last 1500 years.
also, if you read the caption it explicitly says the artistic style of this is intentionally different from how he was depicted before. It also is a reflection of race tensions. They were intentionally making him look less roman, which was the previously accepted style.
But that doesn't really explain the modern depictions of him as being caucasian, which he obviously wasn't.
And here's a black Jesus with a full afro from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church:
ok, this is racist too. It is exactly the same thing europeans did.
I guess Chinese people are racist.
chinese people can be pretty racist. What is with this "whataboutism"? Just because other people do it, it's fine for christians to do it?
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@Dr.Franklin
they dont know history, why would they damage lincoln memorial
no idea. I haven't seen any information that discusses why they would do that.
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@TheUnderdog
Statues of Jesus aren't white because they thought Jesus was white. They are white because granite, or whatever rock was used happens to be white.
i'm sure there are cases where that is true. But you and I both know that jesus is portrayed as white intentionally. I mean look at this statue. That guy is white. They were not restricted by materials. They didn't just make it with marble. They intentionally depict a white jesus. That is the point.
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@bmdrocks21
Multiple races changed the race of Jesus so that He is easier to identify with. There is nothing wrong with having different races for this. There is a black one, an Asian one, etc.
ok. so people change the race of their god because they don't like that he might be a different race. That is not a good thing. Either he is the son of god (and his race is irrelevant) or he isn't. If he is, then display him like he was. If he's not, then why worship him?
Making him white because you are not comfortable with what he really looked like is racist.
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