-->
As
an expression of my multiracial struggles, I used to wrestle a lot with the
issue of marriage. I used to say
to myself: “If I marry someone
who’s Mexican, then my kids will be 75% Mexican. They’ll have a solidified racial identity. If I marry someone who is Chinese, then
they’ll be 75% Chinese, probably look mostly Asian, and then they might have
some identity problems. If I marry
someone who’s Anglo, then my kids will probably look Latino, even though
they’ll be only 25% Mexican. But
they’ll have the last name Romero, so they’ll probably just pass as
Latino.” I can’t believe I used to
think this way!
In
my heart I knew that this was not the right way to be thinking about
marriage. Every time I went down
this path of reasoning I would end up deeply frustrated, practically to the
point of tears. This is led me,
one day in law school to cry out to God and say, “God, please help me to
understand the topic of race from Your perspective!” The answer to that prayer is what I hope to share with
you in the next several blog posts.
After many years of wrestling with my mixed
race identity, I feel that God has given me peace, healing, and a deep security
in my unique identity. I have
discovered a biblically-grounded understanding of race and ethnicity which
allows me to be a whole-human being, and which allows me to understand,
celebrate, and accept all of who I am.
Thank You God. I hope that I might be able to share
this understanding with you now, and that what I share might help bring healing
to many individuals who have gone through, or are going through, the same
struggles I have experienced as a mixed race individual.
As part of my journey of coming to
understand my mixed race identity, I have come to learn that I am not
alone. According to the 2010
census, there are nearly 7 million mixed race individuals in the United States. My home state of California has a
mixed race population of 1.6 million.
By 2050, moreover, it is projected that 70 million, or nearly 20% of the
U.S. population, will be mixed!
I’m also not alone as an “Asian-Latino.” According to the 2000 Census, there are more than 300,000
Asian-Latinos in The United States and 60,000 in California alone! Based upon my own experience and these
compelling statistics, I am convinced that a biblical understanding of racial
identity is now more important than ever.
Before sharing the biblical framework of
race and diversity which has brought me so much peace, it’s worth noting that
there are many prominent biblical examples of interracial marriage and mixed
race individuals! Moses, for
example, arguably the most important spiritual leader in all of the Old
Testament, was married to a Midianite named Zipporah (Exodus 2:21-22). Their first-born son was mixed-race and
his name was Gershom. We are later
told in the book of Numbers(12:1-2) that Moses’ siblings Aaron and Miriam
criticized him because of his interracial marriage and used this as a basis to
question his spiritual authority:
Miriam
and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had
married a Cushite. 2 “Has the LORD spoken only through Moses?” they asked.
“Hasn’t he also spoken through us?” And the LORD heard this.
Bible
commentators give several explanations for this passage. According to one interpretation, it is
said that in calling Zipporah a “Cushite” (or in other translations,
“Ethiopian”), Aaron and Miriam may have been taking a racist jab at her for
being dark-skinned. They also
could simply have been being racist against her because she was not an
Israelite. In any event, the Bible
is clear that God “heard this” and that he severely punished Aaron and Miriam
for their spiritual disobedience and their racist slight (12: 9-13):
The
anger of the LORD burned against them, and he left them.
10
When the cloud lifted from above the tent, Miriam’s skin was leprous[a]—it
became as white as snow. Aaron turned toward her and saw that she had a
defiling skin disease, 11 and he said to Moses, “Please, my lord, I ask you not
to hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed. 12 Do not let her be
like a stillborn infant coming from its mother’s womb with its flesh half eaten
away.”
13
So Moses cried out to the LORD, “Please, God, heal her!”
And so there were serious consequences for
being racist against Moses for his interracial marriage—“the anger of the LORD
burned against them,” and Miriam was struck with leprosy. Apparently England
and the United States didn’t read this passage too closely when they allowed
anti-intermarriage “miscegenation laws” to exist in North America from the 17th
century until 1967.
In
addition to Moses, Zipporah, and Gershom, other prominent interracial families
include Joseph, Asenath, Ephraim and Manasseh; Judah, Tamar, and Perez; Salmon
and Rahab; and, Boaz, Ruth, and Obed.
Like Moses, Joseph is one of the giants of the Old Testament and one of
the biggest heroes of the book of Genesis. He married the Egyptian Asenath who was the daughter of
Potiphera, priest of On. Their
sons, Ephraim and Manasseh were adopted by Israel as sons entitled to special
inheritance in the Promised Land.
Through a series of messy human events that’s too complicated to explain
here, Joseph’s brother Judah had a son named Perez with his Canaanite
daughter-in-law Tamar! Judah and
Perez play important parts in the genealogy of Jesus.
Speaking of Canaanites, Rahab was the
famous Canaanite prostitute who protected the spies before the Israelites
conquered Jericho. Rahab
married a prominent Israelite named Salmon, and they had a son named Boaz. Boaz married—yes, you guessed it--Ruth
the Moabitess. Ruth has a whole
book named after her in the Bible.
She is considered a heroine of the faith because she selflessly followed
her mother-in-law Naomi back to Bethlehem after her husband Mahlon died, and in
those days that was basically like resigning oneself to a life of poverty and
alienation. Because of her extreme
faith and fidelity Ruth attracted the favor of Boaz and became his wife. Their son Obed was the grandfather of
King David, the “man after God’s own heart” and the most famous king in all of
the Old Testament. And the Davidic
line traces directly to Mary and Joseph and JESUS! And so, Jesus, the King of Kings has at least four
“Gentile” women and several generations of mixed race heritage in his
genealogy. As a mixed race
individual I feel like I’m in good company!
More
soon,
Robert
@ProfeChaoRomero
Please
follow the J for Rev blog on Facebook, too!
https://www.facebook.com/JesusForRevolutionaries
No comments:
Post a Comment