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The Racial Issue in Biblical Perspective
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tinents, for the Mongoloid (supposedly descended from Shem), Negroid
(supposedly descended from Ham), and Caucasian (supposedly descended
from Japheth) races, respectively. These passages have been favorites with
those who argue for the forced return of all blacks to Africa. Proponents of
this view conveniently overlook the fact that the vast majority of blacks in
America did not come to this country by choice. They likewise do not men
tion the fact that the general application of this principle would also send
most American whites back to Europe. . . .
Genesis 9:20-27 has long been employed to justify the condemnation of
blacks as slaves and the objects of discrimination. The curse of God on Ham,
it is argued, is irrevocable; and it applied to all members of the black race,
since Ham is assumed to be their progenitor. Even a casual analysis of this
passage, with the help of a good Bible dictionary, would demonstrate that
this interpretation rests on a patchwork of incredible errors. The evidence
shows: (1) the curse is pronounced by a man, Noah, and not God; (2) when
Noah pronounces the curse, he is not sober but drunk (at any rate, he does
not curse the one who has given him occasion for offense); (3) the victim of
the curse is not Ham but Canaan; (4) the descendants of Canaan, despite
Noah’s condemnation of them to slavery, continued to be masters over Pal
estine for some seventeen centuries; (5) the Canaanites were not blacks but
whites. . . .
[A] check of the peoples from whom such biblical figures as Abraham,
Joseph, Moses, and Solomon took wives against the Genesis table of nations
reveals the presence in their ancestry of numerous connections with Hamitic
peoples. When Aaron and Miriam begin to murmur against Moses for his
marriage to a Cushite woman, they are rebuked by the Lord (Num. 12:1-8).
One might also note in the genealogy of Jesus the name of Rahab, possibly a
descendant of Canaan (Matt. 1:5; see also Gen. 10:18-19; Josh. 2:lff.), one
of the four sons of Ham (Gen. 6:10)—the one, in fact, on whom the famous
curse fell!
A close study of Genesis 11:1-9 reveals its use as a racist text to be equally
burdened with wholly erroneous assumptions. The writer of this narrative
traces the confusion of tongues to humankind’s rebellion against God, not
to an attempt to integrate the races. Nowhere is it suggested, as the racist
interpretation of the passage would require, any coincidence between lin
guistic differences and racial boundaries. And history, it should be noted,
offers little convincing support of any such coincidence. The people of India
and China, the purity of whose racial stock is surpassed almost nowhere,
speak so many different languages and dialects that they often find them
selves unable to converse with others from their own country who may live
only twenty miles away. In the United States, on the other hand, blacks and
whites, despite racial differences, speak a common language. Appeal to this
passage as proof of God’s establishment of segregation by an act of special