In Honor of MLK
In honor of Martin Luther King Day I have turned over my blog to a much more eloquent writer than myself who I believe can share thoughts from a totally different perspective. Today's blog will be by Jasmine Baucham, daughter of one of my most quoted and listened to pastors, Dr. Voddie Baucham. Her writings are as honorable and elegant as they come on the blogosphere. May her words bless you as we celebrate the man who delivered the single greatest speach on race in American history.
A few weeks ago, we had some dear friends of ours over for lunch. This family has several little people around the ages of three of my five brothers, and they always have a blast together. We don't get to see them much since they moved to Dubai quite some time ago, but when they're in town, the children act like they've never been apart. At the Sufficiency of Scripture conference, for instance we usually had a host of little people streaming behind our bulging double stroller -and we loved it. ;-)
Elijah (5) and Asher (almost three) adore their oldest daughter, a beautiful blonde with the most gorgeous eyes, Grace (6). Whenever they start talking about their futures, Elijah's bound to say, "Well, I'm going to marry Grace!" while Asher will faithfully say, "I'm going to marry Jasmine."
That afternoon over pizza, I was having a blast, surrounded by a host of little people and their constant chatter. My favorite conversation of the day started when little John (5) -he's got the biggest, bluest eyes and they can strike the sincerest expression you've ever seen -looked over at Elijah and sighed, "Elijah, why are you brown?" To which my Elijah -who's wise, brown eyes rival Johnny's, and who has an answer for everything -confidently responded, "Because I'm black, I get to have brown skin." John wistfully gazed at Elijah's skin again. "I wish I was black," he confided. Elijah shrugged, "Well, that's too bad. You're not."
John's little sister Faith (3) -with her irresistibly pudgy cheeks, and edibly inquisitive expression- piped up, "I wish I was black so I could marry Asher," staring at my very handsome chocolate-brown brother with those big, beautiful eyes of hers. Faith has been mad about Asher since they were able to talk, toddling after him and petitioning him for hugs.
"I'm going to marry Jasmine," Asher replied. (When I asked him why he wouldn't marry Faithie, he told me it was because they were "just friends.")
"You can marry Asher if you want, Faithie," one of her siblings cut in. "All different color people can marry each other. Right mom?"
Their mother reassured them with a huge grin. "Of course!"
Faith's little heart set at ease, she grabbed Asher's hand, their pudgy fingers intertwined. "I'm going to marry you, Asher."
Asher wasn't put off. "I'm going to marry Jasmine." Very matter-of-fact. Very like Asher.
Faith crossed her arms. "Then I'm going to marry Jasmine, too! And then I'm going to marry you!"
Of course neither Faith, nor Asher can marry me. But Johnny set everything to rights with his sage proclamation. "Jasmine, just tell Faith and Asher that you're going to marry whoever God wants you to marry. It's in his hands. Whatever's his will."
Truer words could not have been spoken.
The Trend
I got a question via email the other day (which I'm sharing with permission) that I've gotten very often in my life:
You and I are both black conservative homeschoolers. That means are pickings are pretty slim when it comes to finding a likeminded spouse who looks like we do. My question to you is, (all racism aside) are you looking for a black spouse, is that your preference? Or do you expect that the only person that'll fit the bill will be white? I'm not trying to be racist because [I]'m not suggesting that anything is wrong with marrying someone who is white. Just wanted to know your take on it.
So-called interracial marriage is an ever-interesting question, one that has recently taken front-page in our society with the release of Disney's newest film The Princess and the Frog, as well as the much-buzzed-about story of former justice Keith Bardwell of Louisiana, who refused to marry a white woman and a black man several months ago. The news story was a shock for some of us, as it seemed to read out of a Civil Rights history book that chronicled the explosive nature of the movement during the sixties and seventies (after all, the U.S. Supreme Court did away with racially-based limitations on marriage in the 1967 case of Loving vs. Virginia). For others of us, however, 1967 doesn't seem all that far in the past, and we can remember passages like the ones I read in Judge Andrew P. Napolitano's book, Dred Scott's Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America (fascinating and highly recommended -more on that later):
"If any white person and any negro, or the descendent of any negro to the third generation, inclusive, though one ancestor of each generation is a white person, intermarry or live in adultery or fornication with each other, each of them must, on conviction, be imprisoned in the penitentiary or sentence to hard labor for the country for no less than two nor more than seven years."
These and similar words were echoed in laws across our nation a mere fifty years ago.
Today, things have taken a change. A surprising 14% of black males today are married to women of different ethnicities (a staggering sum, considering the fact that the number of black women in the U.S. is exponentially larger than the number of black men in our country; for an interesting news story on that trend, click here). Still, 42% of black women remain single (that's double the number of their white counterparts), and only 4% of them will end up marrying men of different ethnicities. Newsweek wrote an interesting article examining the trend after the release of Disney's The Princess and the Frog.
A Christian Perspective
One of my favorite sermons when we were going through the book of Genesis at our church wad Daddy's message, "The Table of Nations: Are there Many Races, or One?" While I don't want to give away all of the content of that fabulous message, I'll go ahead and give away this one piece of information... there is one race, the human race. ;-) As I shared in a past post, I am a part of a family that spans generations, class lines, ethnic lines, and timelines; I am the daughter of the King of Kings, a sister to those who fight alongside me, and have been afforded a perspective that is a little broader than seeing the advancement of my particular ethnicity.
I tend to take the London Baptist Confessions stance on the issue of marriage:
It is lawful for all sorts of people to marry if they are able with judgement to give their consent. But it is the duty of Christians to marry in the Lord, and therefore those who profess the true religion should not marry with infidels or idolaters. Nor should those who are godly be unequally yoked by marrying with those who are wicked in their life or who maintain heretical teaching condemned to judgement.Beyond that, I sympathize with the large outcry against men like Mr. Bardwell, who don't believe in "interracial" marriage, and don't want the world to be populated with "biracial" children. I love that our spiritual family spans lines of class, ethnicity, and nationality; and I think it's beautiful when physical families follow suit.
A Personal Perspective
So, all of that aside, personally, what's my preference? Do I worry that I won't find a black husband who shares my beliefs? I do want the gospel to permeate the lives of people across cultures, but, beyond that dimension, no; I don't worry about not finding a black husband. I don't worry about finding a white husband.
When it comes to melanin count, that's not even the last issue on my list; it's simply not there.
And, really, I'm not worried about finding a husband at all (well, not in my less cynical moments ;-), because I know that, if it's the Lord's will that I marry, he will send a husband in his good timing, without any maneuvering or nail-biting on my part.
Funny story: my first celebrity crush was Orlando Bloom. My "cool" aunt (the one who's only eight years my senior and used to let me dance around to N*Sync when I went to visit Grandmother... as a matter of fact, my first celebrity crush was Lance Bass... but that ended badly...) bought me three Orlando Bloom posters one Christmas. My brother bought me the commemorative Legolas Barbie doll -I still have it.
(No, this post isn't to advocate eleven-year-old girls developing insanely obsessive crushes on not-all-that-cute-after-all movie stars; it was all very silly of me, of course. But I'm going somewhere with this one.)
Orlando Bloom was followed by others, from classic movie stars to a few modern leading men. I never quite swooned over them, but especially when my cousins and I got together, there was the usual teasing whenever a commercial for one of their upcoming films flashed across the screen (which still occurs: knowing glances and uncouth nudges abounded when the first Sherlock Holmes trailer appeared -and no, it wasn't about the highly overrated Jude Law).
Just a few months ago, we were watching a movie at my extended family's apartment when a commercial came on that featured Nigerian actor Djimon Hounsou (of Amistad and Gladiator fame). One of my cousins knowingly looked in my direction and her voice took on a silly, sing-songy tone: "It's Jasmine's boyfriend!" she teased.
My grandmother looked up in shock. "You like him, Jasmine?"
And I looked at her, equally shocked. 6'3". Nigerian accent. Flawless skin. I'm sorry, what's not to like? I think I uttered a respectful substitute for Duh!
"Good for you!" She was visibly elated, and went on for about five minutes about how she was so glad I actually liked a black actor, and my goodness wasn't his skin dark?
You see, this very same relative had questioned my Orlando Bloom crush of '01 and similar crushes since because she couldn't, for the life of her, understand why, say, an actor with icy blue eyes and dimples should make a teenage black girl weak in the knees. Djimon, she got. Josh Lucas, not so much. Sidney Poitier? No-brainer. Paul Newman? Weird.
I suppose I'm a little like the chickadees I was babysitting at the lunch table that day -I don't think in terms of ethnic background. And I'm happy about that. I can't wait to see who the Lord has in store for my future husband; red, yellow, black, or white -a homeschool graduate, a public school graduate, someone who grew up in a mega-church, someone who grew up in a family integrated church, someone from the U.S., someone from another country who isn't white or black (my brother Trey would love if I married a Japanese man who could satiate his voracious interest in all things Japanese ;-), someone who came to Christ later in life or someone who grew up in a Christian home, consistently discipled from a young age -I'm looking forward to standing beside him and doing some magnificent things for the Kingdom of Christ.
For more thoughts on the subject, check out the last chapter of Daddy's book, What He Must Be, which answers the question in more detail. It's not to be missed! Also, for more thoughts regarding the concept of race, I recommend "Table of Nations."
A few weeks ago, we had some dear friends of ours over for lunch. This family has several little people around the ages of three of my five brothers, and they always have a blast together. We don't get to see them much since they moved to Dubai quite some time ago, but when they're in town, the children act like they've never been apart. At the Sufficiency of Scripture conference, for instance we usually had a host of little people streaming behind our bulging double stroller -and we loved it. ;-)
Elijah (5) and Asher (almost three) adore their oldest daughter, a beautiful blonde with the most gorgeous eyes, Grace (6). Whenever they start talking about their futures, Elijah's bound to say, "Well, I'm going to marry Grace!" while Asher will faithfully say, "I'm going to marry Jasmine."
That afternoon over pizza, I was having a blast, surrounded by a host of little people and their constant chatter. My favorite conversation of the day started when little John (5) -he's got the biggest, bluest eyes and they can strike the sincerest expression you've ever seen -looked over at Elijah and sighed, "Elijah, why are you brown?" To which my Elijah -who's wise, brown eyes rival Johnny's, and who has an answer for everything -confidently responded, "Because I'm black, I get to have brown skin." John wistfully gazed at Elijah's skin again. "I wish I was black," he confided. Elijah shrugged, "Well, that's too bad. You're not."
John's little sister Faith (3) -with her irresistibly pudgy cheeks, and edibly inquisitive expression- piped up, "I wish I was black so I could marry Asher," staring at my very handsome chocolate-brown brother with those big, beautiful eyes of hers. Faith has been mad about Asher since they were able to talk, toddling after him and petitioning him for hugs.
"I'm going to marry Jasmine," Asher replied. (When I asked him why he wouldn't marry Faithie, he told me it was because they were "just friends.")
"You can marry Asher if you want, Faithie," one of her siblings cut in. "All different color people can marry each other. Right mom?"
Their mother reassured them with a huge grin. "Of course!"
Faith's little heart set at ease, she grabbed Asher's hand, their pudgy fingers intertwined. "I'm going to marry you, Asher."
Asher wasn't put off. "I'm going to marry Jasmine." Very matter-of-fact. Very like Asher.
Faith crossed her arms. "Then I'm going to marry Jasmine, too! And then I'm going to marry you!"
Of course neither Faith, nor Asher can marry me. But Johnny set everything to rights with his sage proclamation. "Jasmine, just tell Faith and Asher that you're going to marry whoever God wants you to marry. It's in his hands. Whatever's his will."
Truer words could not have been spoken.
The Trend
I got a question via email the other day (which I'm sharing with permission) that I've gotten very often in my life:
You and I are both black conservative homeschoolers. That means are pickings are pretty slim when it comes to finding a likeminded spouse who looks like we do. My question to you is, (all racism aside) are you looking for a black spouse, is that your preference? Or do you expect that the only person that'll fit the bill will be white? I'm not trying to be racist because [I]'m not suggesting that anything is wrong with marrying someone who is white. Just wanted to know your take on it.
So-called interracial marriage is an ever-interesting question, one that has recently taken front-page in our society with the release of Disney's newest film The Princess and the Frog, as well as the much-buzzed-about story of former justice Keith Bardwell of Louisiana, who refused to marry a white woman and a black man several months ago. The news story was a shock for some of us, as it seemed to read out of a Civil Rights history book that chronicled the explosive nature of the movement during the sixties and seventies (after all, the U.S. Supreme Court did away with racially-based limitations on marriage in the 1967 case of Loving vs. Virginia). For others of us, however, 1967 doesn't seem all that far in the past, and we can remember passages like the ones I read in Judge Andrew P. Napolitano's book, Dred Scott's Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America (fascinating and highly recommended -more on that later):
"If any white person and any negro, or the descendent of any negro to the third generation, inclusive, though one ancestor of each generation is a white person, intermarry or live in adultery or fornication with each other, each of them must, on conviction, be imprisoned in the penitentiary or sentence to hard labor for the country for no less than two nor more than seven years."
These and similar words were echoed in laws across our nation a mere fifty years ago.
Today, things have taken a change. A surprising 14% of black males today are married to women of different ethnicities (a staggering sum, considering the fact that the number of black women in the U.S. is exponentially larger than the number of black men in our country; for an interesting news story on that trend, click here). Still, 42% of black women remain single (that's double the number of their white counterparts), and only 4% of them will end up marrying men of different ethnicities. Newsweek wrote an interesting article examining the trend after the release of Disney's The Princess and the Frog.
A Christian Perspective
One of my favorite sermons when we were going through the book of Genesis at our church wad Daddy's message, "The Table of Nations: Are there Many Races, or One?" While I don't want to give away all of the content of that fabulous message, I'll go ahead and give away this one piece of information... there is one race, the human race. ;-) As I shared in a past post, I am a part of a family that spans generations, class lines, ethnic lines, and timelines; I am the daughter of the King of Kings, a sister to those who fight alongside me, and have been afforded a perspective that is a little broader than seeing the advancement of my particular ethnicity.
I tend to take the London Baptist Confessions stance on the issue of marriage:
It is lawful for all sorts of people to marry if they are able with judgement to give their consent. But it is the duty of Christians to marry in the Lord, and therefore those who profess the true religion should not marry with infidels or idolaters. Nor should those who are godly be unequally yoked by marrying with those who are wicked in their life or who maintain heretical teaching condemned to judgement.Beyond that, I sympathize with the large outcry against men like Mr. Bardwell, who don't believe in "interracial" marriage, and don't want the world to be populated with "biracial" children. I love that our spiritual family spans lines of class, ethnicity, and nationality; and I think it's beautiful when physical families follow suit.
A Personal Perspective
So, all of that aside, personally, what's my preference? Do I worry that I won't find a black husband who shares my beliefs? I do want the gospel to permeate the lives of people across cultures, but, beyond that dimension, no; I don't worry about not finding a black husband. I don't worry about finding a white husband.
When it comes to melanin count, that's not even the last issue on my list; it's simply not there.
And, really, I'm not worried about finding a husband at all (well, not in my less cynical moments ;-), because I know that, if it's the Lord's will that I marry, he will send a husband in his good timing, without any maneuvering or nail-biting on my part.
Funny story: my first celebrity crush was Orlando Bloom. My "cool" aunt (the one who's only eight years my senior and used to let me dance around to N*Sync when I went to visit Grandmother... as a matter of fact, my first celebrity crush was Lance Bass... but that ended badly...) bought me three Orlando Bloom posters one Christmas. My brother bought me the commemorative Legolas Barbie doll -I still have it.
(No, this post isn't to advocate eleven-year-old girls developing insanely obsessive crushes on not-all-that-cute-after-all movie stars; it was all very silly of me, of course. But I'm going somewhere with this one.)
Orlando Bloom was followed by others, from classic movie stars to a few modern leading men. I never quite swooned over them, but especially when my cousins and I got together, there was the usual teasing whenever a commercial for one of their upcoming films flashed across the screen (which still occurs: knowing glances and uncouth nudges abounded when the first Sherlock Holmes trailer appeared -and no, it wasn't about the highly overrated Jude Law).
Just a few months ago, we were watching a movie at my extended family's apartment when a commercial came on that featured Nigerian actor Djimon Hounsou (of Amistad and Gladiator fame). One of my cousins knowingly looked in my direction and her voice took on a silly, sing-songy tone: "It's Jasmine's boyfriend!" she teased.
My grandmother looked up in shock. "You like him, Jasmine?"
And I looked at her, equally shocked. 6'3". Nigerian accent. Flawless skin. I'm sorry, what's not to like? I think I uttered a respectful substitute for Duh!
"Good for you!" She was visibly elated, and went on for about five minutes about how she was so glad I actually liked a black actor, and my goodness wasn't his skin dark?
You see, this very same relative had questioned my Orlando Bloom crush of '01 and similar crushes since because she couldn't, for the life of her, understand why, say, an actor with icy blue eyes and dimples should make a teenage black girl weak in the knees. Djimon, she got. Josh Lucas, not so much. Sidney Poitier? No-brainer. Paul Newman? Weird.
I suppose I'm a little like the chickadees I was babysitting at the lunch table that day -I don't think in terms of ethnic background. And I'm happy about that. I can't wait to see who the Lord has in store for my future husband; red, yellow, black, or white -a homeschool graduate, a public school graduate, someone who grew up in a mega-church, someone who grew up in a family integrated church, someone from the U.S., someone from another country who isn't white or black (my brother Trey would love if I married a Japanese man who could satiate his voracious interest in all things Japanese ;-), someone who came to Christ later in life or someone who grew up in a Christian home, consistently discipled from a young age -I'm looking forward to standing beside him and doing some magnificent things for the Kingdom of Christ.
For more thoughts on the subject, check out the last chapter of Daddy's book, What He Must Be, which answers the question in more detail. It's not to be missed! Also, for more thoughts regarding the concept of race, I recommend "Table of Nations."
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