Children are not born being racist. They are taught racism and religion saturates societies worldwide. Even those that claim atheism have been persuaded (if not somewhat brainwashed) by religious hearsay many times in their life. Unfortunately, hearsay in itself, is essentially the problem, viz. illiteracy. This hearsay can be described as a rudimentary understanding of particular verses within the holy books. Just to confirm, racism is not, by any means, limited to prejudice only because of a person’s skin color. Racism could also include discrimination because of gender difference. A friend in the past was very critical when his wife and her friend made a poor decision. His response was “Well, Eve ate the apple!” Some years ago another friend told me she was going to be submissive to her husband because the bible said to do so. Unfortunately for her, she was unaware that those verses came from what religious scholars refer to as Pseudo-Pauline epistles. In short, Paul of Tarsus did not write them. Even more importantly, the historical Jesus defended women and treated them as equal. Not a single viable verse, regarding the degradation or abasement of women, can be attributed to the historical Jesus. A prime example of how biblical illiteracy and the treatment of women has inundated our society is demonstrated by when women were allowed to vote. This wasn’t until the latter part of the year 1920 in the United States.
To further extrapolate on biblical illiteracy and the problems that have arisen demeaning persons because of skin color, let’s consider my discussion with Naomi Tutu (daughter of South African human rights activist Desmond Tutu) some years ago about apartheid in South Africa. We both concluded that the biblical story of the curse on Ham played a definite role in the attitude towards blacks in South Africa. During this time, South Africans were typically very religious, which caused even more of a problems because they took religion very seriously. Subsequently, blacks were often viewed as cursed and malicious. However, had proper religious education, while embracing critical thought, been a high priority, the lives of blacks during that era likely would have been much different. Unfortunately, this simply wasn’t the case at all. To understand this biblical story from Genesis in context, this curse was from Noah and was passed down to Ham’s youngest son Canaan because Ham had dishonored his father Noah. How Ham dishonored his father is debatable among religious scholars, as the story says that Ham saw his father naked, yet many scholars believe this story is construed to mean that Ham had sexual relations with either Noah or his wife (Ham’s mother). Notably, the curse from this story in Genesis did not involve (or even reference) race or skin color. It did however state that Canaan and his offspring would be servants. The confusion arose from the later writings of the Jewish rabbinic Talmud and the associated folklore that was slowly disseminated over time as a result. This involves Ham’s oldest son Cush. The etymology of the word Cush comes from the Hebrew term which is used to refer to a dark-skinned person usually of African descent. Yet, decidedly, Cush was not the one cursed. It was Canaan. In the above examples and many others not noted here, just reading the holy books is obviously not enough. What is required is an exegesis, or in other words, a critical interpretation and explanation of the text.