Color me fed up

Before we moved to Cleveland, I never had much cause to think about race.  Sure, I lived around, went to school with, and worked with people of all different backgrounds... but race never came up because we were all just people doing our thing.  Then I moved here.  Race is EVERYWHERE.  I noticed it our first day here in Cleveland when I was walking into our new apartment building and some people behind me (who were black) started yelling after me, "Yeah, you better get inside white girl!  You're afraid of us black people."  Then there was the time Mike was in the video store and overheard a large black woman on her cell phone loudly complaining, "Naw, they only got WHITE movies here." Then later on I couldn't find a white baby doll at the Walmart I shopping in, and I got a glare from an employee when I commented to myself.  Now, it doesn't bother me that they make baby dolls in different races.  I get that.  Obviously a little child will enjoy playing with a doll who they can identify with in the looks department.  

What kind of gets me thinking, "now that's odd..." is that some people on our street have a black Santa Claus up in their window. (See picture above) This doesn't really bug me either, it just makes me chuckle within myself.  Because though St. Nick was a real person from Turkey (when it was part of the Roman empire...  he was not black), and historical tradition is that Santa Claus is white, he is also pretty much now a fictionalized character.  Taking creative license with a fictional character is not something I have a beef with.  

What do I have a beef with?  Here's the beef:  Today Mike did a home visit with an elderly black woman who was Catholic, and she had a black Jesus statue.  Jesus was not a made-up person.  He is a real person, who was born in the middle east.  How race-obsessed do you have to be as a group to feel it necessary to depict the Savior of mankind (ALL mankind) as your own race, when He clearly was not that race?  I'm a woman.  I don't need to pretend that Jesus was a female in order to feel that He is my Savior or my friend.  If a person feels that race is a barrier to them being able to worship their Lord, then that person has been living in a toxic (and I dare say in these days), self-imposed environment of racial thinking.