The belief that people of African descent are of less value than God’s favored white people ran very deep in my childhood religiosity. It was believed that Blacks were the offspring of Satan through the lineage of Cain. That they were cursed with a dark color so that we would know to fear them and avoid them at all costs. To me this is one of the most hurtful and hateful beliefs ever propagated by religion. The belief that God despises some of Earth’s children so much that he holds them accountable for the actions of their ancestors thousands of years before their birth is mind-boggling. Talk about harboring resentments.
This was one of those beliefs that deeply affected my life for a very long time, really until just a few years ago. I had many dark skinned friends who I adored, yet still felt fear around them. Although I stopped logically believing this nonsense many years ago, my body did not get the message. While I truly enjoyed the company of my friends and their beautiful energy, I found it difficult to feel as connected with them as I was with my Caucasian friends, and this deep-seeded reservation really troubled my heart. To put it in easy to understand terms, I practically had an anxiety attack whenever I hugged one of my friends. It literally gave me heart palpitations, which I found very disturbing.
Once I understood where the root of my anxiety came from I was able to deal with it through forgiveness, compassion and love. After confronting the belief and working through it, I cleared any control it had over me and its remnants in my body. Freeing all of me up to genuinely love my friends, regardless of their physical appearance, and embrace them without reservation.
I am now able to see the ridiculousness in the belief that the shade of a person’s skin plays any role in their physical and spiritual worth. The rainbow does not judge one of its colors as better than another or the sun judge a ray of light as more valuable than the next, and yet we somehow have bought into the irrational belief that the Creator judges some of us as more worthy than others, simply because of our ancestry.
What makes this belief all the more irrational and inconceivable is information we now have about humanity and our collective evolution. Thanks to science we now know that all human life originated in Africa, which means we all had dark skin at one point in our ancestry. It really is amazing how one person’s story and perception spreads like a wildfire of destruction through the hearts of humanity, causing us to hold resentment toward other members of our human family. The belief that Black people are evil is only one story that shows evidence of how hurtful and unjustified our beliefs can be.
