This week, a well-known football player here in Australia sensationally left the team camp after the assistant coach made racist remarks about an Indigenous Australian player. It’s kind of a big deal: it’s like a player refusing to play in the Superbowl because the coach has offended him. I follow such stories with keen interest because I am very interested in the issue of ‘race’.
Here are two facts I didn’t know before I started researching the topic: Did you know that Australia had a White Australia immigration policy in the early to mid part of last century? This policy excluded anyone who wasn’t from a white European background from emigrating here. It wasn’t until 1957 that superceding legislation was passed which avoided reference to ‘race’’. Did you know that in 1882 the United States passed legislation specifically denying Chinese people the ability to emigrate there? This ban wasn’t lifted until 1943, when China became an ally of the United States during the Second World War.
What should the Christian response to racism be? Well, I believe there are no “races”. We are actually all just brown – the only difference being the shade of brown each of us happens to be. Most importantly, we were all created in the image of God and are therefore equal in God’s eyes.
The truth is that human beings occupy a special place in creation, designed in the image of God and in possession of an eternal soul. God doesn’t care what shade your skin is, what colour your eyes are, or whether you have curly hair. He sees deep into our hearts, and what He sees there is what matters.
References: www.immi.gov.au; www.archives.gov; www.answersingenesis.org; Genesis 1:27 NLT
