History of Racism in US in Book "One Race, One Blood"

One Race, One Blood, written by Ken Ham and A. Charles Ware in 2010, is a nonfiction piece of literature detailing the harsh reality and history of racism in the United States of America, specifically from its original foundation up until today. While addressing the issues that have risen up over the centuries, it also gives answers grounded in Biblical truth of how to mend and heal from the dark past, and move in the direction of finding truth in Scripture. The purpose of One Race, One Blood is to give a historical background of racism in the United States and evaluate that there is, in fact, only one race in Jesus and that through His Word we can begin to unveil our eyes from the social stigmas and see the truth so plainly laid out for us in Scripture.

A strength in One Race, One Blood that I noticed is the way the authors interacted with the reader in a way that made it seem like the reader and authors were having a dialogue.

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This writing style made it easier to read and enjoyable as well, especially for me as I tend to stray away from nonfiction and/or commentary styles of books. I also enjoyed how Ham and Ware in Chapter Three distinguish the differences between Darwinian natural selection and a scientific and Christian view of natural selection. On page 76 of chapter three Ham states, “Natural selection is not an onward-upward process with new information added...natural selection cannot create totally new information already in the particular gene pool…[it] results in a loss of genetic information and/or redistribution of pre-existing information.

” In other words, natural selection cannot create new species, but rather natural selection “take[s] away or alter[s] what is already there” (Ham, 77). It is this important distinguishment that is essential to understand in order to recognize what Ham and Ware mean when they refer to natural selection in the remainder of the book.

One thing in particular that I thought Ham and Ware did not accomplish well was their explanation of how people use slavery in the Bible to endorse racism in our country. I thought they did not make it clear that slavery in the Bible was vastly different than slavery in America – slaves in the Bible were bondservants (except for the Israelites, but that was seen as a tragic thing, not a common or good practice), those who owed a debt to someone else and worked for them as a means of payback and once their formally agreed upon “sentence” was over, then they could stop working for them. In America, however, slaves were brought over on ships from Africa to work for their white masters for indefinite periods of time, oftentimes beaten when “stepping out of line” or as their masters deemed. For a white supremicist group to endorse their means of slavery and racism from the Bible would only make sense if they were to take it completely out of context however, Ware states that “Various Christian groups still claim that the Bible supports white superiority and segregation” (Ware, 51).

I appreciated how One Race, One Blood makes a point that Adam and Eve were not black nor white, “...as most children’s book paint them to be” (Ham, 98). It can be so easy to get caught up in their physical appearance without giving thought to their spiritual appearance. Our culture today seems to have ingrained in us to judge people by their outward appearances rather than their inner selves. “We have been programmed to look at the exterior rather than the interior of a person, and to make broad judgments based on what we see” (Ham, 116). Ham and Ware make a point that though there might be multiple skin colors, there are really only two races – those who are a part of God’s Kingdom and those who are not. Again, solidifying that your soul matters more than your skin coloring, and attempting to flee the superficial outward appearance thoughts that creep into our sinful minds and “...begin to see as God sees” (Ham, 120).

One thing that I disagreed with in this book was the way Ham and Ware wrote about Darwin and his thoughts pertaining to race, it almost seemed like they were making Darwin out to be a sort of culprit of all racist ideas, like that without Darwin’s books we wouldn’t be racist or as racist. I am not saying that Darwin was not a big component of racism, but racism has been around since before Jesus’ time Darwin was not born until eighteen-thousand years after Christ and did not publish his book The Descent of Man until near the end of his life. In Darwin’s book, The Descent of Man, he “applied evolutionary philosophy to mankind [and] popularized the idea of different races of people” (Ham, 91). I agree with Ham and Ware that Darwin’s ideas were detrimental in feeding ideas about how the white man is the superior race, but I don’t believe Darwin is the one solely responsible for the state of our country and other countries. If you glance back on the foundations of our country with Christopher Columbus in 1492, he was racist and drove people who were not like him out of the land, and this was three hundred years before Darwin was born. I believe the true guilty party at hand is, of course, Satan. Since the Fall he has been trying to separate us from God and from each other into isolation. He is the one who feeds these ideas of racism into our brains and programs us to believe that a “superior race” even exists. Yes, we are responsible for our own actions and choosing to believe these lies or not and acting on them or not, but if the world was not fallen then these thoughts would not even begin to creep into our minds.

In the epilogue, or appendix A, Ware dicusses homosexuality and how we, as Christians, should evaluate what the Bible says about homosexuality versus what society is telling us and the similarities between the gay and civil rights movements. Ware says, “Homosexual activists...are strategically drawing parallels between the African American civil rights movement and their own agenda to promote gay rights” (Ware, 167). In some aspects they are right, as gays have been treated with animosity right alongside African Americans but, I do not believe that those two should be compared – one is the color of your skin and the other some would say is a choice. I believe we need to turn towards Scripture and seek the truth about homosexuality rather than sugar-coating it to fit the societal wants, and I think Ware did a good job of highlighting this. God intended for marriage to be between one male and one female and it really does not make sense any other way, especially in terms of reproduction. However, though God did not intend for a male-male relationship or a female-female relationship, I believe we are called to love them and express God and the gospel to them in a non-threatening and non-judgmental way. I enjoyed reading One Race, One Blood overall and it gave me a lot of insight to what racism looked like before and even now, and how to begin to change our thoughts and minds to focus on those who will be in the Kingdom with us one day.