White jesus! er, happy easter!

i’d thought i’d take this eater sunday opportunity to talk a little bit about the whitening of jesus christ. the above image on the left is what the best of modern forensic and anthropological science estimates a male born at the time and place of jesus of nazareth would look like, while the right-hand picture is of a 1940 painting by warner sallman which serves as a prime example of the thoroughly whitened image of jesus ubiquitous in the contemporary West. (wait, maybe he was murdered looking like the image on the left, but came back looking like the one on the right! case. fucking. cracked.)

certainly, many christians are not surprised by the news that the supposed son of god didn’t look anything like the image on the right, but nonetheless have no trouble looking to that image. because, as evidenced recently and quite visibly by the high profile killing of trayvon martin (among other less publicized killings), as well as the backlash against fictional characters of color, under white supremacy, non-whiteness cannot possibly be ascribed to the epitome of purity and goodness that is the popular image of jesus christ. as savior, as martyr, jesus must be white, because white is all that is good. white=light, after all, and light “drives out the darkness.”

all this, despite the fact that historically speaking, jesus could not possible have been “white” (or at least what we would call “white” today, since white as a racial categorization didn’t even exist til about 1650 years after jesus’ birth). white jesus simply defies logic. as hari kondabolu has put it, “two brown people cannot make a Swedish fucking tennis player… Any child or racist can tell you that.”

(go to 2:21 for white jesus specifically, though it’s all great.)

and while we’re on the subject of historical revisionism and christian fantasy, what the fuck do chocolate eggs and bunnies have to do with christ’s resurrection? eddie izzard offers his thoughts:

 

anyway. happy white(ned) savior resurrection day, dear reader.

intermission, part II

…because apparently this show’s long enough for two intermissions. (slash it turns out i have a life outside the internet and actually think more about posting shit than managing to get on here and do it for real….)

anywho. whew. thank the fucking lord i don’t believe in that xmas et al are over. the second half of winter break (because of course my life schedule will forever be dictated by school calendars…) was far better than the first, and i even managed to have a new years eve that didn’t leave me with the seemingly requisite sense of anticlimax and all-consuming cynicism.

while i spent far less time reading, sleeping, and generally organizing my shit over break than i wanted to, i did manage to see this video that pretty much made my life:

 

and as i mentioned, i’ve been giving some thought to future posts. so, dear reader, i’ll share a few of those with you now, ya know, just to keep the five of you interested. some potential upcoming topics include (but are not limited to):

–a love letter to hari kondabolu (because clearly his prominence in my comedy links section isn’t enough).

–on pronouns, assumptions, and speaking the fuck up

–when will white people stop telling me how great avatar is? see this first. i know that shit’s old news and maybe it doesn’t need its own post, but take enough craigslist rides with white people and see how quickly small talk turns into OMGavatarentironmentalismWeee!

–dear eddie izzard: you’re usually fucking hilarious and im all for positive gender-variant visibility in pop culture, but transvestites are not “male lesbians.”

–how i came to my present understanding/experience of the messy list of identities that make up the subheading of this blog

–and finally, i hope to start writing about the current work i am doing in education and with queer youth, which ostensibly was one of the main reasons i created this space in the first place.

before actually creating new content, however, (of which i already have soooo much, naturally), i will probably throw up the excerpts from the second part of my senior project — the lesson plans on socially constructed identity and narrative accounts of how my curriculum was received. mostly i just want to stop staring at them on my desktop and compulsively adding minor edits… as well as ya know, make a potential educational resource available. or whatever.