Black and White

Galatians 3:26-28

Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

²⁶ You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. ²⁷ For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ like a garment.²⁸ There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

In 1957 I went to Sedaven High School near Johannesburg, South Africa. As was required by apartheid law, Sedaven was a whites only boarding school. In church I would hear how the blacks were cursed by God in the curse Noah pronounced on Ham and Canaan shortly after the flood. Blacks were merely children, and whites were placed in South Africa by God to govern them and care for their well being.

Fellow classmates used to exclaim vehemently, “If blacks are going to be in heaven, then I’m not going!”

I’d laugh and say, “Well, I’d rather be in heaven with the good ones than in hell with the bad ones!” But this never changed any of their attitudes.

Twenty years later I was back in South Africa teaching mathematics at the all white Helderberg College. Solusi College, a black school far to the north in war torn Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), had been forced to close its doors on account of the civil war. Many of its students were from South Africa originally, and Helderberg had quietly offered to let those students attend its classes as long as they lived in areas designated for blacks by the government.

There were two black students from this group who would slip into my calculus class every day and sit very quietly on the back row and say nothing to anyone. I watched the other students carefully for any kind of reaction: they simply ignored them. One day after I had returned the second test a group of them came to my office.

“Dr. Clarke,” Pieter said guardedly, “after each test you write our scores on the board. We’ve compared all of our scores carefully, and none of us got either of the top two scores. Is it possible that it belongs to the two blacks sitting in the back row of class?”

Now, of course, I had to be careful. “What does your research show?”

“Well, by the process of elimination it has to be them. But we have been told that they are just children and aren’t very clever. So how can they possibly get the top scores?”

“I taught for years in Tanzania,” I laughed, “and I found that God handed out brains pretty equally across all races.”

This led into an excellent discussion about misconceptions of racial superiority.

Thank You, Lord, that indeed You love me and everyone else just like You love Christ. Grant us the grace to do the same.