A Sistah in the White House - God's Answer to White Supremacy

"Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite. 'Has Jehovah (YHWH) [aka: Heb-Adonai, Christian-the Lord] only spoken through Moses?' they asked. 'Hasn't he also spoken through us?' And the Lord heard this (Numbers 12:1-12)."

The issue was clearly race. "How could God call you to be our primary leader, the highest official in the land, and be stained with Black blood by intermarrying with this Black woman?" They objected to this beautiful Black Sistah occupying the "White House" of the ancient Israelites (Hebrews). The historical-critical methodology of analyzing sacred texts could also reveal that the Nile story (Moses floated out of the Hebrew encampment into Pharaoh's Court Wading Pools) is an early story added to distinguish Moses from his African origins (like the Bethlehem birth narratives of Jesus). But this would have been unnecessary, since the land that the Hebrew's ancestor Abraham settled in was also part of the African continent. (Look at your map and discover which continent ancient Israel is located on).

The Bible tells us that among the ancient Hebrews who left Egypt was a "mixed race people (Exodus 12:38)." Exodus 12:41 reminds us they had lived in Egypt 430 years, hence a comment to explain the Black (Cushite) African and Chaldean blood of many of the ancient Hebrews (Ha'Biru-see "Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic," by Frank Moore Cross, Harvard University Press and "Tenth Generation" by George Mendenhall, University of Michigan Press). Moses' marrying Zipporah was nothing out of the ordinary for him. She was the oldest of the three daughters of Reuel, called Midianite (who were also considered Cushite though living on the fertile crescent or Levant of the Mediterranean Sea).

The racial characteristics in the cartoons that Adolf Hitler's propagandists drew to ridicule and identify Jews were the same cartoons used to identify the children and grandchildren of African American, African Caribbean, African Canadian, Afro-French, Afro-Russian and Colonial African (British) soldiers living in the Rhineland. Hitler even made the claim that the Allies had left these soldiers behind to marry German women as a plot to "mongrelize" pure Arian blood. Not even the Askenazic Jews of Germany escaped this classification as "fair-skinned coloreds."

These mixed-race children were the first targets of Hitler's Euthanasia programs which gassed and sterilized and ultimately shot and starved these black men, women and children of color in Nazis Germany. My colleague The Reverend Chris Pierson just informed me that Anderson Cooper presented this subject today (3/9/12) on AC 360, so you can verify what I am writing through that source.

Perhaps Miriam and Aaron had forgotten that their brother was raised in the culture and religious traditions of African Egypt. In his book "The Destruction of African Civilization," the late Dr. Chancellor Williams traced the King of Egypt's lineage at the time of the Exodus to be in the line of the "Black Kings," because a half century earlier Cush had invaded Upper Egypt and established its dynasty there). The concept of "One God" or what we call Monotheism originated with Pharaoh Akenhaton, also known as Amenotep I. The Ankh which resembles the cross was developed by his dynasty to symbolize the oneness of all life through the One God.

Surely the evolution/revelation/transition that Moses proclaimed in summarizing the three ancestral tribal gods of the ancient Hebrews (Bull of Jacob, Lord of Abram, Fear of Isaac) into YHWH="I AM" was no historical accident for one whose people had celebrated the One God of Egyptian monotheism. Moses' revelation on Mount Sinai clarified that this God could not be represented by tribal images and symbols of fear or bulls, goats, lions or even as divine kings.

But back to the core of this Bible study. What was God's response to their bigotry, their elevation of the absence of melanin as a divine trait? "AT ONCE the Jehovah said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, "Come out to the Tent of Meeting (Tabernacle), all three of you. . . . Jehovah (YHWH) came down in a pillar of cloud; he stood at the entrance of the Tent and summoned Aaron and Miriam. . . . The anger of the Lord burned against them and he left them. . . . 'Why were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?' When the cloud went away from over the Tent, Miriam had become leprous as white as snow (NASB 12:4-10)." You can draw your own conclusions. But it is clear that God has no patience for those hung up on the complexion of his leaders. As an aside of Grace and forgiveness, foreshadowing God's unconditional love, it was Moses who prayed to God to heal Miriam of her white skin: Moses (12:13). Think on these things.