Living Color

Here in Chinle, AZ in the heart of the Navajo Reservation (the largest Native Reservation in the world), I mused this morning about the Washington Redskins. Redskins? "White" people on the North American continent have long called native people redskins. Amazing! Their skin is no more red than mine is white.

Apparently, anthropologists believe the people "indigenous" to North America originally came from Asia to this continent via a previous land connection across the Bering Strait to what is now Alaska. From there they migrated across the continent, say the anthropological historians. The evidence is compelling; I have no problem believing this.

A Japanese man who lives in Flagstaff but works on the nearby Navajo Reservation is often mistaken for a native. Navajo people sometimes approach him speaking their native language - which he cannot understand.

Asian people are often called yellow-skinned people. Their skin is no more yellow than Native American skin is red or European-origin peoples' skin is white.

"Jesus loves the little children. All the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world," go the lyrics of a song I grew up with. Perhaps Jesus loves people of all cultures in spite of their silly, erroneous descriptions of people different from them and their ethnocentrism.