The book of Ezra is difficult to read.  It ends with God’s prophet breaking up marriages between Israelite men and foreign women, leaving these wives abandoned, with their children, without once considering their welfare.  Not only is it cold and callused, but all this talk of the impurity of these people is also disturbingly like that of the ethnonationalist rhetoric leading to genocide in modern times.

My own mixed family has encountered some difficulties with those who put their own tribe first recently at work and school.  

My son, a very friendly and outgoing kid, has had some issues with a few bullies.  One of these adversaries slapped him hard on the side of his head at the bus stop.  Eventually, my son and this attacker had an all-out brawl on the sidewalk and my son says he got the upper hand before an adult intervened.  But now my son is afraid of being the victim of another surprise attack and feels very much alone against the group.  Which is the worst part, the one who is instigating the violence, telling other kids that my son insulted them or otherwise provoked, is himself a newly arrived racial minority—albeit from a much less friendly urban culture.

My wife recently started a new job at a local meat packing facility, staffed primarily by those from Spanish-speaking countries, and faces a similar uphill battle.  They preferred their own for promotions and sabotaged the work of another Filipino who took one of these better-paid positions.  The upper management is seemingly unaware of this dynamic, perhaps seeing all ethnic minorities as the same, but it is very real to those who directly encounter it and see the discrimination first-hand.  It really is not ‘people of color’ versus white as is the binary often presented.  No, there are local majorities, and also many rivalries that are within racial minorities.

Something my wife observed early on is that you need to know someone to get a job.  As it turns out, that is true, she had applied at her current employer and never heard from them in weeks.  Finally, she found out that a fellow Filipino worked there, reached out, got a recommendation, and a few days after this she was interviewed.  Her ethnic contingent, within the company, has increased to three as they also have convinced another to join them against Hispanics.

My ideal solution to my son’s situation would be for him to have an older sibling or cousin to help him.  It is just automatic that family will look out for family and yet this dynamic does not contradict the sad reality of the rest of this post.  There is a fine line between this preference for our own blood and racial discrimination and bullying behavior.  In fact, it is basically the same thing.  We prefer our genetic division and general ethnic category to others.  And this may be why the older Asian girl on the bus takes a little more interest in my son?  Instincts may cause her to treat him like she may a little brother.  At the very least his polite and respectful behavior is common across most Asian cultures.

Discrimination is a survival mechanism.  An individual who truly treated everyone exactly the same would soon find themselves to be depleted of resources.  Without a tribe or a gang, nobody is strong enough to stand up to the bullies in the real world.  You’re either in the dominant (physically superior and better organized) group or you’ll be harassed into serving it.  Even the legendary heroes of ancient times tended to have an army to back them up.  And outward appearance is simply the easiest way to align ourselves given that this was always a natural division of people across time.

This all starts at a very young age.  At only three months old babies will start to prefer faces of their own race to others.  This idea that children need to be taught to be racists has no basis in science.   Yes, conditioning and socialization will come into play, but this is only a sharping of inborn tendencies.  We will trust those who look like us over those who are foreigners.  This can metastasize into racist ideologies and the hatred of those ‘impure’ others. But it is not unnatural.

Inhuman Nature and the Alternative

Defenders of Biblical ethno-nationalism will say that the problem was more about these people being idol worshippers.  And yet the people of Israel certainly weren’t free of this and they themselves would frequently follow after these false gods.  Why weren’t these impurities abandoned?  Ezra gave them an opportunity to repent and remain part of the group despite this disobedience.  They, as the seed of Abraham, were given preferential treatment simply for their bloodline and not only as a result of their different behavior.

Being truly human is about going beyond the primal and transcending even ourselves.  No, we may never convince all to find a common bond beyond the lowest hanging fruit that is skin color or facial features.  Still, those I’ve been able to identify with the most, at least other than siblings or biological cousins, do not belong to my own race.

My wife and I started as geographically far apart as two people could possibly be on this planet.  Her people, Igorots, were very tribal and primitive up until a half-century ago, my own Swiss-German heritage may seem the opposite.  But her rural agrarian roots make her more similar to me than one may assume.  Her people are stoic, with a strong work ethic, and are very much like my own grandparents.  Our son, to whom I am a step-father, is completely different than me in terms of his athleticism compared to my own clumsiness. Still, we do share many interests and are peas in a pod.

Unnatural love is that which is extended to those who do not look like us.  It is to try to be fair to all people, of all races, rather than show favoritism.  It starts with simply not mistreating those who are different from us and trying to find the humanity in others.  It is to put our common values and aims at a higher level of importance than appearance, which is to say seeing the heart rather than outward appearance.

This is not ‘diversity is our strength’ or some kind of woke BS either. 

The left is as divisive as the right or worse.  They hold everyone to a different standard, based on their outward appearance, and call this inclusion.  But all they really do is replace a meritocracy with a victim hierarchy and then use past injustice as an excuse to do the same thing to others today.  Actual virtue or contribution does not matter in this ideological dogma, it is always about outward appearance.  The bully is of another color and the discrimination goes in a new direction, but it is just more division by the lowest common denominator.

Common values are our strength.  Working towards the same cultural and civilizational goals, rather than only what is good for our own ethnic identity group, is where diversity of abilities is useful.  Bullies cost us resources, discrimination for reasons other than good or behavior is unjust, and being totally colorblind may be impossible.  However, we can work to correct our own prejudice and towards a common goal.  It will take some faith and leading by example, it will a change of heart from the current paradigm:

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28 NIV)

It is that, unity in Christ, or we revert back to the ethnic wars, cleansings, disregard, and other abuses of the Old Testament. We can live in a world where it is tribe against tribe, man against woman, and soon every man for themselves, or we can find ways to overcome our differences and see our better potential realized. We’ll never be completely fair, favoritism is natural, but we can aim for it. We don’t need to slaughter each other over our shades of difference.