Black History Is My History! 19 Feb.2023

Black History is My History! 19 Feb.2023

Genesis 9:18(NIV)

Black History is My History you must understand that we are all in this together. You see if we are going to celebrate Black History, we have to celebrate the Good and the Bad. Black History Month is not meant to put blacks and whites against each other. And it’s not meant to celebrate one race while excluding another. It’s meant to highlight some of the important people and events of our American history.

I have read stories about how the black race started that people have misquoted from the bible about Ham and the “history” of the black man. Ham was one of Noah’s sons who helped him build the ark. Ham sinned against his father Noah by seeing the “nakedness of his father.” This does not simply mean that Ham saw Noah naked as Noah lay sleeping (although this is one view), but something a lot more serious. When you read the Old Testament and you read the term “uncovering the nakedness….” that term is generally used to describe something sexual, “uncovering the nakedness of someone.” There is disagreement as to what really happened but what is clear is that Noah placed a curse on Canaan and not on Ham who committed the act (Genesis 9:25.) I been thinking about this, because some of you all may have not heard about this. It has been talked about and taught for hundreds of years that the curse placed upon Ham was a curse that caused his skin to become “black.” Ham is widely “considered” to be the father of the black race because the curse placed upon him changed his skin color. Now you must know that back in the days of slavery this scripture was used as the basis for enslaving black people,

the fact that black race came into existence because Noah cursed his son Ham (which Noah did not do.) The misconception that Ham’s curse was for his skin to be black and therefore all of his descendants would be black would justify slavery for hundreds of years in Europe and in America. The justification came because many believed that Noah’s curse was on Ham and besides turning his skin black, it also included that all of his descendants would be servants (slaves) and serve their brothers.. If you go on the internet today and Google “blacks in the Bible” or just Google “Ham” you will find references to Ham being the father of the black race. Now imagine hearing this story of your race as a child and growing up thinking that your skin color was caused by a curse placed upon a man who sinned against his father. Imagine thinking that there truly was something wrong w,ith being dark skin. It was bad enough when others believed it about you but it became a lot worse when you believed it about yourself. Are you able to understand what I am telling you. This may be the first time that some of you have ever heard this and yet it is a prominent teaching in racist circles – that God created us inferior because of something Noah’s son Ham did thousands of years ago. In a 2004 review of David Goldenberg's “The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam” published in 2003, states that Goldenberg "argues persuasively that the biblical name Ham bears no relationship at all to the notion of blackness and as of now is of unknown etymology." There have been others who have argued against this belief since its inception hundreds of years ago and yet the belief still exists.

These are just a few examples of why we need to understand our past from both a racial, Christian and Biblical viewpoint. If we do not know the truth we will forever believe a lie.

As I was doing some research on this in one search, I found that when you Google “blacks in the Bible” when the individuals were listed, ninety percent were associated with something negative that happened in Biblical history. I read one article that said God continuously cursed the Children of Israel because Moses had married a woman of color. What I also found interesting is that Simon of Cyrene was sometimes left off those same lists. This was not an accident and if a person did not know better or searched “harder” they could have easily accepted the fact that there was nothing positive in Scripture pertaining to people of color even though most people in the Bible had color just because of being out in the sun. My point is that we need to know, understand and believe in the truth. We must research and learn for ourselves and stop accepting anything people tell us as facts and the truth just because we refuse to verify it.