Sweet Chocolate Jesus

In this age of RSS I’m a bit old-school in my browsing habits, typing URLS from memory into the address bar, which often leads to misadventure. Last night, when I wanted to go to my friend Cait’s blog at wordisking.tumblr.com, I forgot about the “.tumblr” part, and found myself at WordIsKing.com.

Word Is King? It's not too much of a stretch that it redirects to a site called Biblical Black Art, is it?

Picture the Last Supper. Hard not to think of Leonardo Da Vinci's version, isn't it? Let's see if this becomes your new go-to image:

Sweet chocolate Jesus!

These images might seem 'out there', but is it any more offensive than the white, European look of Biblical characters that are drummed into the consciousness of most in the West?

I'm not going to try and make a point here, I'm just going to post these pictures in the hopes that someone stumbles across them and contemplates the tacit racism in claiming culturally significant Middle-Easterners for ones own ethnicity. Or preferably, some racist gets brain-pain from seeing Jesus with cornrows.

(More after the break)

These pictures were all republished without permission, but as they're all for sale from BiblicalBlackArt.com, I doubt the artist will mind the plug. I poked around in the site to find some direction as to what the republishing guidelines were, or maybe understand what lens I should view the art through. On the 'About Us' page? 

Lorem Ipsum! (I wonder if the uninitiated, credulous browser would consider this a devout prayer to Baby Jesus in his native tongue?)