Does God love the black half?
My ethnic background was always up for discussion (one-sided of course) in the house. I say “in the house” because at no point in my childhood did I ever feel that it was a home. For those of you who do not know, my mother is caucasian and Cherokee and my biological father is black and Cherokee, which makes me . . . well . . . a lovely blend of all three. My mother left my biological father when I was thirteen months old, and I did not meet him face to face until I was nineteen. The years in between I refer to as “the ethnic fog” because I was really confused about my ethnic identity. My mother was always very open with me about my ethnic makeup, and I am thankful for that. However, when it came to anything that I did wrong, “It’s the black half coming out!” ”When you act like that, you are showing your “true” colors!” ”God hates it when you act like your daddy!” These types of remarks were the norm in the house. Nevermind the fact that at this point I already knew that behavior is learned and shared, to my mother, it was something that I had “inherited” from my “black daddy.”
My mother was obsessed with making me appear to be as “white” as possible. This including straigthening my hair until I had scabs in my head so that my hair would not be “nappy. . .like your daddy’s” and so that it would look more like “white people hair.” Nevermind that my hair was not nappy at all . . . if it had the slightest bit of curl, it was starting to “look like your daddy’s hair.” It was these statements and many more than caused a great deal of confusion about who I was . . . and I often wondered to myself . . . Does God love the black half?
I was already searching for the truth about what I believe to be true about life and God and the Hereafter, etc. . . but now . . . the most pressing issue for me was the terrible thought that if my “black half” is so terrible . . . Does God love the black half? . . . and if God does not love the “black half” then does God love me at all? . . . and why would God create me this way if He could not love me as I am? These were some of the many questions that immediately came to mind . . . it was a troubling time and the constant attacks on the color of skin by those who were supposed to love me unconditionally only made matters worse.
Leave a Reply