In short, and let us be clear on it: race is not a card. It determines whom the dealer is, and who gets dealt.
Tim WiseRead
Here's the reality. The image of a white Jesus has been used to justify enslavement, conquest, colonialism, the genocide of indigenous peoples. There are literally millions of human beings whose lives have been snuffed out by people who conquered under the banner of a white god.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote discusses how the image of a white Jesus has been misused to justify violence and oppression throughout history.
Tim Wise's quote reflects on the historical misuse of the image of a white Jesus to legitimize acts of oppression including enslavement and genocide. It highlights the profound impact of religious imagery in societal contexts and how it has been co-opted to serve agendas of power and control, ultimately leading to suffering for many marginalized communities.
Themes
ReligionOppressionColonialismIdentityHistory
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on the role of religion in colonial history, this quote serves to highlight the manipulation of faith for exploitative purposes.
More from Tim Wise
All quotes →There are lots of research, of course, saying that a vast majority of us have been exposed to racial biases and stereotypes and, to some extent, we've internalized them, because that's so ubiquitous. That's why I'm so bored with the conversation about who's a racist and who's not.
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You can't organize people if you don't love them. And however hard it can be to love the racist you come in contact with; doing so is the first obligation of a white antiracist.
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The power of resistance is to set an example: not necessarily to change the person with whom you disagree, but to empower the one who is watching and whose growth is not yet completed, whose path is not at all clear, whose direction is still very much up in the proverbial air.
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People of color have to do this work as a mater of everyday survival. And so long as they have to, who am I to act as if I have a choice in the matter? Especially when my future and that of my children in large part depends on the eradication of racism? There is no choice.
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For people of color - especially African Americans - the idea that racist cops might frame members of their community is no abstract notion, let alone an exercise in irrational conspiracy theorizing. Rather, it speaks to a social reality about which blacks are acutely aware.
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There should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences. It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human beings have no business with each other's conduct in life, and that they should not concern themselves about the well-doing or well-being of one another, unless their own interest is involved.
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Let it be henceforth proclaimed to the world that man's conscience was created free; that he is no longer accountable to his fellow man for his religious opinions, being responsible therefore only to his God.
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