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31 reviews for:
The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America
Paul Harvey, Edward J. Blum
3.84 AVERAGE
31 reviews for:
The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America
Paul Harvey, Edward J. Blum
3.84 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
The thesis statement is fine, and I agreed with much of their arguments, but the history was poorly done. There were many stretch arguments that were not fleshed out, were briefly mentioned, and/or not tied together to the main argument. It is an okay book if you are looking for a casual read on the history of "white Jesus" but I would not cite this book in a paper without careful consideration.
This was really interesting, but also somewhat boring and repetitive. I also found the writing to be a bit random and all over the place. It was hard to track where he was going. He also cherry picked examples that he felt captured a whole unproven zeitgeist, at one point even quoting a random 2 year old who recognised Jesus' picture, as if this clearly demonstrated that that whole generation had been influenced by images of Christ. You'd get the impression after reading this book that no one in America's history ever seriously considered that the 'real' Jesus was a middle eastern Jew, but that might not have suited the author's narrative. Overall though it was a fascinating look at how the 'idea' of Jesus and his 'usefulness' in fuelling certain movements were more important to many people than understanding who the real, historical Jesus actually was.
Pretty interesting, a lot of good information and analysis. Since college, I've been frustrated by depictions of Jesus as blue-eyed and light-skinned but hadn't thought about the way that it would especially affect black people who use these images in their places of worship. I had also never seen Native American or Asian Jesus depictions and they're a great addition to my conception of Christ. I also hadn't thought about the way that Christ as white was used to promote white supremacy, it always seemed nonsensical to use Christ as an image of hatred and exclusion but the radical, racist right's adoption of a white Christ was crucial to the supposed legitimacy of their disgusting aims.
There was a quote in the book that I found problematic but I don't have it with me, I'll edit this review to include it later. I also think it's weird to refer to black people are African Americans but maybe that's a newer shift among non-black people.
Also frustrating is that as a book about black people, written by white people and narrated by a white guy, they really should have made sure that in the audiobook the white guy was pronouncing black people's names correctly. As well-researched as the book was, it was distracting, disrespectful, and incongruous to hear the narrator mispronounce W.E.B. Du Bois (should be "du boys," the way he himself pronounced it) and Tupac (literally 2Pac, not sure how he bungled that one).
There was a quote in the book that I found problematic but I don't have it with me, I'll edit this review to include it later. I also think it's weird to refer to black people are African Americans but maybe that's a newer shift among non-black people.
Also frustrating is that as a book about black people, written by white people and narrated by a white guy, they really should have made sure that in the audiobook the white guy was pronouncing black people's names correctly. As well-researched as the book was, it was distracting, disrespectful, and incongruous to hear the narrator mispronounce W.E.B. Du Bois (should be "du boys," the way he himself pronounced it) and Tupac (literally 2Pac, not sure how he bungled that one).
1.5 stars. The tedium of academia with the shallowness and other standard pitfalls of pop-history. This is the kind of infuriating history book people mean when they say that history is fictional. When an author ascribes intentionality to the actions of a dead person or whole people groups in order to serve their own narrative, I lose all trust in the author. Still, i was introduced to a couple interesting anecdotes and historical figures.
One of the great cons perpetrated on billions of believers and non-believers alike is that a peasant from Palestine born some 2000 years ago of Palestinian parents somehow had fair skin, brown hair, and blue eyes. In other words, Jesus was a white guy.
The Color of Christ gives some insight into how this con was carried out, and the obvious racism that motivated the grifters.
The subtitle mentions America, and though the story the authors tell did take place here, the belief in a white Christ lives throughout the world.
It seems that every Christian who could fabricate an image not only came up with a white guy, but based it (if based at all) on a false document purported to be of Roman origin, and then on a press run of 500 million "holy cards." It also seems that few people gave this misrepresentation a second thought.
My boyhood bedroom contained a print of white Jesus seated on a bench in the garden with little white kids playing all around - one of whom I empathized with was holding a model airplane.
The sixties saw black Jesus, Hispanic Jesus, and Hippie Jesus, but White Jesus lasts to this day.
It's an interesting book, and if you're interested in organized religion, or race in America it's worth the read.
The Color of Christ gives some insight into how this con was carried out, and the obvious racism that motivated the grifters.
The subtitle mentions America, and though the story the authors tell did take place here, the belief in a white Christ lives throughout the world.
It seems that every Christian who could fabricate an image not only came up with a white guy, but based it (if based at all) on a false document purported to be of Roman origin, and then on a press run of 500 million "holy cards." It also seems that few people gave this misrepresentation a second thought.
My boyhood bedroom contained a print of white Jesus seated on a bench in the garden with little white kids playing all around - one of whom I empathized with was holding a model airplane.
The sixties saw black Jesus, Hispanic Jesus, and Hippie Jesus, but White Jesus lasts to this day.
It's an interesting book, and if you're interested in organized religion, or race in America it's worth the read.
This was really interesting, but also somewhat boring and repetitive. I also found the writing to be a bit random and all over the place. It was hard to track where he was going. He also cherry picked examples that he felt captured a whole unproven zeitgeist, at one point even quoting a random 2 year old who recognised Jesus' picture, as if this clearly demonstrated that that whole generation had been influenced by images of Christ. You'd get the impression after reading this book that no one in America's history ever seriously considered that the 'real' Jesus was a middle eastern Jew, but that might not have suited the author's narrative. Overall though it was a fascinating look at how the 'idea' of Jesus and his 'usefulness' in fuelling certain movements were more important to many people than understanding who the real, historical Jesus actually was.
Assigned reading for a class but overwhelmingly interesting analysis of the intersection of race and religion and the real-life implications of assigning meaning to them
informative
medium-paced
This book was informative if a but dry but I think I learned a lot. I would skip the foreward or read it at the end because it went over a lot of things that were in the first chapter. I thought the best chapter was “A Deity in the Digital Age” and I think the book does a good job of expressing the cognitive dissonance between the imagery of white Jesus and the region of the world he comes from, and how various aspects of his life have been used to connect him to all kinds of cultural identities. I also think the book could have gone a bit more in depth in certain places- particularly the proliferation of Jesus imagery middle section is a bit jarring in the transition & I would have appreciated a bit more central messaging.
It has a lot of information, a lot of very interesting information, but Blum seems to have a hard time getting to any specific point.