Category:Black Jesus (subject)

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Black Jesus refers to a series of fictional works depicting Jesus' identity as a black male.

Overview

The tendency of Christians of all centuries has been to portrait Jesus as "one of them." As Christianity was predominantly an European phenomenon, the image of Jesus as a "white male" became standard in Christian iconography. The numerous "Black Madonnas" present in European church were venerated without any ethnic or racial connotations. The only conspicuous exception was offered by the Ethiopian Church, the only major "native" Christian Church in "Black" Africa, in which Jesus was for identical reasons imagined as a black male.

In the colonial age, the image of the Aryan Jesus was "exported," first in the Americas and then in Africa and Asia, and imposed (especially in the Americas) on the masses of black and latino slaves, to affirm European cultural and racial superiority. In the new context of Latin America, sacred images of Black Jesus and Black Madonna became marginal yet powerful symbols of racial self-consciousness in the popular culture and devotion of black and latino slaves, as in the case of the images of Our Lady of Aparecida (Brazil), Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexico), etc.

In the post-colonial age, the banner of Black Jesus has often characterized radical movements of opposition against European racial supremacy. In 1929 African-American poet Countee Cullen compared the lynching of an innocent black man to the crucifixion of Jesus. Black Jesus became a popular icon in the American Civil Rights and Black Power movements as well as in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. The film Color of the Cross (2006) suggested that the blackness of Jesus might have been a factor even in his death.

Jesus Mafa (1973), art, and The Son of Man (2005 Dornford-May), film offers a departure from the polarization Black vs. Aryan Jesus as they (re-)located Black Jesus in the context of pan-African culture and politics.