Lol. While I do agree- I would like to point out that we could take the extreme that it is colorist, presumptive, and several types of micro aggression to assume someone’s ethnicity or ancestry or identity from their features. If we ignore the fact that in many biblical stories a guy being born pale is probably not the most unbelievable feat- TECHNICALLY biblical Jesus is mixed or something…? His mother is presumably middle eastern- though even that is debatable as we know where Saint Anne and Joachim were born as well as Mary, but you can be born in Canada and your parents were born in Canada but their parents or such came from England, in which case one wouldn't expect you to look like a native Cree Canadian. But let’s say Mary was most likely “Middle Eastern,” but biblical Jesus’s father was God. Immaculate conception.
The Bible does not specify how God did it- so we don’t know if Jesus was just created using 100% of Mary’s genes (human reproduction from a singular parent in theoretically possible in nature and modern technology can do it..) or if the genes were random or recycled from Adam or gods owns genes or what… so at most we can say quasi confidently that Jesus was half “Middle Eastern” at most, and the rest of the equation is unknown but could be “middle eastern” or other.
And if Jesus were half, and that mix made for a baby whom had “white features,” and IF the common picture of “white Christian Jesus” were really accurate- then it’s actually a micro aggression to say Jesus looks to “white” because he is a mixed race child raised ethnically in Judea etc.
We end up at a place where all we would have to guide us would be Jesus’s own proclamations on his ethnic or racial identity basically.
So in extreme, we can say that “calling out” Jesus for being “too white” could be a form of colorism akin to saying that a mixed race child is not “black enough” to claim that identity or that because of their looks a half asian child can’t be asian.
Of course I want to be clear in saying that I don’t believe the “common white Jesus” is what a historical Jesus would have looked like- but I do find it funny that the same principles we can apply to criticizing the racial bias in the iconography can be taken to a point where they then turn on those who might criticize.
And if Jesus were half, and that mix made for a baby whom had “white features,” and IF the common picture of “white Christian Jesus” were really accurate- then it’s actually a micro aggression to say Jesus looks to “white” because he is a mixed race child raised ethnically in Judea etc.
So in extreme, we can say that “calling out” Jesus for being “too white” could be a form of colorism akin to saying that a mixed race child is not “black enough” to claim that identity or that because of their looks a half asian child can’t be asian.
Of course I want to be clear in saying that I don’t believe the “common white Jesus” is what a historical Jesus would have looked like- but I do find it funny that the same principles we can apply to criticizing the racial bias in the iconography can be taken to a point where they then turn on those who might criticize.
Some explorers came back from Africa, and described the Rhino that they saw as a horse with a horn, and artists started painting Unicorns.