Color, Racism, and Christianity Author(s): Roger Bastide Source: Daedalus, Vol. 96, No.

2, Color and Race (Spring, 1967), pp. 312-327 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20027040 Accessed: 09/10/2010 04:49
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ROGER BASTIDE Color, Racism, and Christianity

has brought out quite well the part the eye plays in racial attitudes, but he does not go far enough. The eye has its substitutes. Some time ago, we discovered in talking to blind persons that they race of persons whom the they meet?with recognize immediately out any mistake?by smell, by the texture of the skin, and especially react they by the voice. On the basis of this sensory information, or aloofness as the if they are do: with exactly antipathy sighted a kind of if they are attraction racially sensitive, or with physical can serve as a stimulus not. This shows that any kind of perception to racial attitude. Color is neutral; it is the mind that gives it mean Sartre ing. is important is not so much the ability to see but the abil What see to what others see. It is not so much my eye as the eyes of ity those who surround me. A blind person knows that he is seen. The re or hoarse?of anyone who speaks to him voice?high-pitched leases instantly the reactions that society has built up in him. These reactions are the same as those of the Colors are not im sighted. in as rather as bearers themselves but portant optical phenomena,
of a message.

blind people whom we interrogated were Brazilians. They is based not on race but a country in which prejudice to belonged to the in direct proportion on color, where varies discrimination is not a blond or a fair of the skin. The ideal woman blackness woman or dark-skinned and espe but a brunette skinned woman A blind Brazilian replaces the a woman.1 mulatto "rosy-tinted" cially entire gamut of color tints by shades of voice, and he reacts in the the same way as a person who can see. He performs immediately one register to another and finds in the sonori from transposition that the sighted attach to color. ties recorded by his ear the message The 312

Color, Racism, and Christianity

our attention on the led us to concentrate experiment symbolic in racial attitude in the vari color of differences of and perception ous Christian faiths. To study these particular the Christian dimensions, religion must be disassociated from the churches. While "trans religion in the world. It cends" the world, the church itself is very much This social situation, and its reactions always finds itself in a particular are determined The church, whose history be its environment. by in the and try to be in Tertullian's deserve Pentecost, gan may a genus tertium, a third race over and above the conflict be phrase es tween the "Greeks" and the "Barbarians." It is, nevertheless, in a world of Babel, a world of disunity and discord. tablished of South Africa recognized, the most liberal Christians Although for example, the brotherhood of men before God, they were willing to accept segregation of worship if providing the same church for the white and black natives?the and the Bantus?were Afrikaners to the cause of Christ among the Christians. considered harmful a rather curious case that in this connection Ren? Ribeiro describes serv in Brazil2: A Protestant occurred from North America, pastor to be extremely tolerant and ing in Recife, Brazil, showed himself to unbiased while there. The moment he stepped on the airplane return to the United im all his southern States, however, prejudice returned. He had not changed his faith; he had simply mediately found himself in a different social situation. have shown that the Negro churches were, above as a for the colored community of self-expression case As is the faith the Muslim with separate community. today, in of protest and of racial revolt. They were they were instruments we do not wish to our essence more social than But religious. place too of human?only selves in this article in the field of sociology and in of rather the field but human?institutions, religious feeling experience (phenomenology). Sociologists all, instruments I a has been accompanied of color. Christianity symbolism by a This symbolism has formed and cultivated to color that sensitivity extends even to people who claim to be detached from religion. It has created a "backwash" of fixed impressions and attitudes dif ficult to efface. Racial hatred has not evolved sym solely from this Christian 313

ROGER BASTIDE causes alone. Its bolism; nor can it be fully explained by economic roots extend much farther and deeper. They reach into sexual com into of color. In human religion through the symbolism plexes3 and or to take tends the form of a con every gulf separation thought flict of color. This holds not only for concrete of tribal obstacles between the of the Indians and ancient the separation?as plain men?as also for obstacles between in the social Mexicans?but structure of ancient Egypt or the castes of India. has Christianity no exception to this very rule. brought general in Christianity is a danger of confusing There that which be as in all ideol to which of the rationalization?that can, scope longs in the final infrastruc ogy, be explained analysis by the economic falls within the symbolism of color, which the scope of ture?and tried to justify slavery, they claimed pure religion. When Christians from God. They black skin was a punishment invoked the curses cast upon Cain, the murderer of his brother, and upon Ham, son of Noah, who had found his drunken father naked in his tent. Against causes of this symbolism, the background for the they invented to justify in their own eyes a process of intended malady, produc tion based upon the exploitation of Negro labor. Later, other ra and counter-rationalizations tionalizations around the got woven same symbolism. of color is very rich. Medieval The Christian symbolism paint use of it. Some colors are, however, more full makes ing pertinent or at least a dull to this discussion than others. The color yellow, come to signify treason. When Westerners has shade of yellow, this significance think of Asiatics, to they unconsciously transpose a it into trait of ethnic them, converting psychology. Consequently, as persons in whom they cannot have confidence. they treat Asiatics reasons in defense of their be They can, of course, give excellent character of the Japanese, the closed or uncommunicative havior: or some historic case of of the Chinese, the smiling impassiveness these are all reasons invented after the fact. If West treason?but erners could have themselves from being influenced prevented by as a could centuries old, they just easily have found symbolism reasons to justify an impression of the yellow race as loyal and af fectionate. is that of white the greatest Christian and two-part division to the while black expresses is used black. White the express pure, diabolical. The conflict between Christ and Satan, the spiritual and the carnal, good and evil came finally to be expressed by the con But 314

Color,

Racism,

and

Christianity

flict between white and black, which underlines and synthesizes all the others. Even the blind, who know only night, think of a swarm ex of angels or of devils in association with white and black?for an black "the "a of blackness soul," action," "a dark deed," ample, "the innocent whiteness of the lily," "the candor of a child," "to someone of a crime." These are not bleach and merely adjectives nouns. Whiteness to mind the light, ascension into the brings of virgin snow, the white dove of bright realm, the immaculateness the Holy Spirit, and the transparency of limpid air; blackness sug gests the infernal streams of the bowels of the earth, the pit of hell, the devil's color. so dominant This dichotomy became that it dragged certain it. Celestial a other colors along with blue became simple satellite in the cloak of the Immaculate of white the painting Virgin, while a fit red flames of hell became for the darkest colors. companion is so enslaved to language that this chain of associated Thinking a white person finds himself ideas operates automatically when in ex contact with a colored person. Mario de Andrade has rightly as the evils of this Christian symbolism posed being rooted in the the of of color. In America, when a Negro is very origins prejudice one often says, in order to accepted, separate him from the rest of his race, "He is a Negro, of course, but his soul is white." II Christ transcends all questions of race or Although ethnology, it must not be forgotten that God incarnated himself in a man of the Jewish race. The Aryans and the Gentiles?even the most anti their God in a Jewish Semitic?worship body. But this Jewish body was not white for them. The entire of Western enough history bears witness to or the deliberate painting whitening bleaching effort that changed Christ from a Semitic to an Aryan person. The dark hair that Christ was thought to have had came to be rendered as very and his big dark eyes as blue. It was necessary light-colored, that this man, the incarnation of God, be as far removed as possible from everything that could suggest darkness or blackness, even were His and hair his beard the color of sunshine, indirectly. given of the light above, while his eyes retained the color the brightness he descended of the sky from which and to which he returned. The of is Christ in strict accordance Aryanization progressive It did not start, however, un with the logic of the color symbolism. came into close contact with the other races?with til Christianity

315

ROGER BASTIDE artists began to avoid the the African race, in particular. Christian darker tints in depicting Christ in order to remove as much as pos sible of their evil suggestion. The Middle Ages did have their famous Black Madonnas which even were and still are the object of a devotion perhaps deeper to many is dedicated of the fair-complexioned than that which to her represents images of the Holy Virgin. But the Black Virgin as a sorceress, a rain not so much the Loving Mother devotees She has the magnetism of the strange, maker, a worker of miracles. as if a bit of stirs and she of the heart Moors; Gypsies smacking a near-diabolical in her mir involved sorcery?were magic?even to acles. She is not the beloved mother who clasps the unfortunate them with her milky white breast and comforts her white arms, tresses of her bright-colored drying their childish tears with the fair a endowed with but hair, pow mysterious goddess extraordinary ers. The in the cult; not her dark color is of eliminated symbolism it is only repressed?and it infiltrates into badly repressed?because toward her. Nevertheless, the prayers that are directed the Black one to understand in the used Catholicism appeal by Virgin helps its efforts to convert pagan peoples to the faith. to painting. must again be made The Three Kings References or Three Wise Men who came to newborn child were the worship as white men at first. They the later came to represent depicted was the Balthasar and Africa. three great continents: Asia, Europe, came to to the fair-haired child bring his tribute Negro King who straw. He was pictured the other two behind amidst the golden closest to the Babe, but never and even sometimes kneeling Magi to ignor would have been equivalent the other two?that between a patronizing of in form Racism the his color. subsisted disguised ing to remove in this first attempt the demoniac attitude symbolism from the black skin. A similar effort can be seen in the creation of colored saints in a com race. St. Mauritius, tended for races other than the white was in who Roman the of mander there, martyred Egypt legions as white but then as a Moor, and finally in was originally depicted the thirteenth century as a Negro.4 as the for purposes of evangelism Such changes were exploited The church farther. extended frontiers of the known world long the Moor, of Palermo, known as St. Benedict St. Benedict ignored in of missions the development him with but finally officialized case il This Africa and of slavery in the Western Hemisphere. 316

Color,

Racism,

and Christianity

on the part of the church intended lustr?tes another rationalization In order to escape from to break the nominal chain of symbolism. to St. Benedict God to make him ugly feminine temptations, prayed ?so black. skin God turned his To see only symbolism in these cases would, however, be a mis it returns from is merely the symbolism take. Because repressed, into it is the aesthetic. From the converted another angle. mystical, saints?St. the Above colored form of Evil takes the all, ugliness. and St. the St. Benedict the Moor, Mulatto, Mauritius, Iphigenia below well the Negro King?are St. Balthasar only intermediaries, the Virgin Mary and Christ, who stayed white. They express more races than the abyss, between the difference, people of different a in multiracial the unity. They stand for stratification society.5 The a in des the hierarchy subordinate color black found only place cending from white to black. In the desire of the church to become universal, the color black to be sub its detached from became symbolic significance only an sumed in ideology. This ideology reflected the religious dimen sion of the paternalism white Catholic masters felt toward Indian serfs and African slaves. When color became a part of an ideology, it was react by a counter obvious that colored people would to white saints to show that they be ideology. Mulattos prayed race of the masters. to folk rumor, a mu longed to the According latto in Brazil would in the put the portrait of his Negro mother kitchen and that of his white shun father in the parlor. He would colored saints and invoke only the aid of white saints, even though these were claimed to to belong exclusively by pure white people them. The mulattos invented the brotherhood of the Cord of St. in order to enter, Francis by the back door so to speak, the aristo cratic church of the Franciscans and to mingle with the white peo there. ple whose skin was entirely black set out to reverse the Negroes values of the traditional Catholic system. They first iconographie invented black noses. with hair and flat Then, angels kinky a sentence in the to the prompted by Gospels referring Holy Virgin, er at sed con Niger ("Black she was, but beautiful"), pulchra they of a Black ceived This in Virgin. happened only comparatively recent times, however. Christ himself was left un Furthermore, as to him make a sacri black would have been touched, though was Paternalism still too for the to be of color lege. strong hierarchy upset entirely.

317

ROGER BASTIDE in a country where the rule, as in became Only segregation Protestant America African and did North colonies, Anglo-Saxon, the revolt of the Negro go so far as to create a Black God and a an Black Christ. In the African colonies, Messianism represented to free themselves from the dom effort on the part of the Africans as inance of the white missions and to establish Black Messiahs race. saviors of their own rejected, downtrodden, and exploited than reflect the social Systems of imagery can never do more and economic in a form that can never be entirely infrastructure This color imagery represents only the reactions of the to a social situation This imposed upon it from without. abolish the more powerful pressure imagery could not, therefore, of the underlying symbolism. its racial interbreeding which it Latin America, with Catholic an of racial democracy, offers a new chain of considers expression the color black, the devil, and sin. Anyone associations between content of these associations to the manifest need study wishing was of who the work consult Baudelaire, profoundly steeped only taste for "Le Fleurs in spite of?or in Catholicism because of?his in his colored sweet du Mal." Indeed, Baudelaire actually sought heart the sensation of sin through carnal love with a woman whose color suggested the flames of Hades. less clearly evident in the cult of the These sensations, although are in the Tropics, there in the essence. South Ameri Black Venus a cans are Sin occupies Catholicism. branded larger by deeply A in distinction than in American literature South European. place a white woman, the object of legitimate is always made between the Holy Virgin, and is like who and worshiped marriage courtship A is an object of pleasure. the mistress who the colored woman, to be a person of sheer voluptuous woman of color is considered such as the balanced ness. The she makes, sway of slightest gesture is looked upon as a call of the fe her body as she walks barefoot, is desex male sex to the male. On the other hand, the white woman church or at least dematerialized. ualized, if not disincarnated limited to one's own color In Latin American society, marriage the altar of God. before wife the of a led to mystic transposition a role in this white color The symbolism of the preponderant played of the wife would have taken A too carnal enjoyment transposition. to both the white man on the aspect of a kind of incest, degrading and vir woman. White innocence, and the white signified purity, the was white not skin whose woman A suggested entirely ginity. 318 reversed.

Color,

Racism,

and Christianity

the legitimate carnal merely therefore, by her color. She became, of enjoyment object The South American perhaps does not realize so fully as Baude laire did the workings It does, nevertheless, of this symbolism. to for in the detriment of operate reality. When, physiological to express his re stance, the antislavery poet Castro Alves wanted action against the stereotyped mentality in the symbolism anchored of color, he found no other resource than to cast his colored hero ine into a waterfall thousands where of brilliant drops created a white bridal veil around her dusky skin.

Ill
The Protestant's association of the color black with the devil and sin was as strong as the Catholic's. sure But the Protestant, feeling to that his soul would the bulwark of hell, placed go straight between himself and the temptation of the woman with Puritanism color-tinted skin. Puritanism served to strengthen and the roots of the deepen association the idea that the symbolic by arousing contagiousness of color was associated with contagiousness of sin. The mere pres ence of a non-white woman was sufficient to sully the eyes and mark the flesh of the white man. Without the grace of God, man was to be feeble in the face of considered Satan temptations. worldly over the emotions such power wielded that every contact with women race was to be avoided. of the African They who bore the color of the infernal master had to be fought against by building up defense reactions of an aesthetic nature. A white man had to convince himself that colored women were odor and an oily skin. By ugly and had an unbearable maintaining that they had none of the a white man qualities of the ideal woman, could establish a moral was When not fear sufficient, protection. barricades of an institutional nature were established: segregation by color in trains, streetcars, theaters, post offices, and other public Satan could most places. The schools, where easily work his evil influence by white children the of habit giving playing with colored children, were segregated. Rationalizations about the practical effects of mixed marriages can, of course, camouflage the action of the Sin was symbolism: defined as a stain or the white black person becoming pollution, ened. was doctrine measures of Religious expressed by spiritual 319

ROGER BASTIDE taken quite accompanied hygiene by the anguish of never having a matter all the precautions No how careful necessary. person was, in spite of himself, as if a colored he might be stricken by madness woman exuded sin by her mere presence. Over and above any his are to be found torical or economic factors, the roots of segregation in the idea of contagiousness of sin through color. of the color Thus, in the field of religious ideas, the association in the black with sin was expressed by different behavior patterns to New The Catholic the Catholics and the Protestants. brought the heritage of medieval culture. This culture was character World ized not only by the taboo of the white woman, who had been ele was in flower to the almost inaccessible vated when knighthood rank of a Madonna, but also by the so-called right of the feudal on of lower rank. The Protestant lord to women brought with him, of the middle-class the other hand, the characteristics culture that was world at the time of the dis coming into being in the Western New and colonization of the culture characterized World?a covery a stern Puritanism. in par strict This was, and morals by family the culture of the Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, ticular, dle classes; the Italian upper-middle class had of the old medieval nobility. An examination of Calvinism unveils and Calvinist mid the ethics adopted

in other impressions be Calvin of color is firmly entrenched. the symbolism which lieved that "the knowledge of God was deeply rooted in the minds or Christian. This of men," be they pagan could, knowledge blinded the intelligence, which be stifled however, by superstition, to any concept of or the senses. Contrary corrupted by sin, which reason to be proper to all men racial hatred, Calvin considered sin or Christian. all men were whether pagan Concomitantly, ners. Because the pagans had not been able to trace nature back of God. They had to its Creator, they had stifled the knowledge of the senses. Even if they were the sacred to phenomena reduced of moral from the true objective in conduct, moral they deviated man. not the of of honor God, glory ity?the the Institutes, Calvin grounds sin in human nature. Throughout of Christ did not automatically acquit the pagans who Ignorance had never heard of him. Their souls, too, were made of mud and came to America and found themselves the Calvinists filth. When that was natural it in the presence of pagan Indians, perfectly the cor fervor to destroy set about with missionary should they had not come to the New of these pagans. They rupt nature 320

Color, Racism, and Christianity

World with any racial attitude, but, on the contrary, with an idea in of essential Indians and colonists were equality. equal?equal sin on the lowest level and in divine grace on the This highest. theoretical could be made actual. The Indian had only equality to give up his natural liberty, which was anarchical, troublesome, as and diabolical, and bow to the superior law of the Christians the Indian preferred laid down in the Good Book. Unfortunately, to the rules his liberty to servitude and his diabolical practices an infallible in the eyes of the Puritan, of Holy Writ. This was, In the unavoidable sign of negative predestination, damning of the
dian's soul.

re the judgment of God these Indians Although regarding a mystery, in diabolical their perseverance mained practices to the Calvinists that God had refused to shed his grace proved a to the white the Indian presented upon them.6 What spectacle colonizer. The tyrannical rule of the tribal chief instead of democ instead of economic pros racy, wretched poverty happily accepted a diabolical in sin that doomed evidence of perity?all persistence to eternal damnation. the Indian The association of the darker for color of the skin with a parallel blackness of the soul became a fact of The in the Puritans New the World experience. arriving symbolism of color was confirmed as an obvious truth. As Max Weber has shown, success in life was, for the Calvinists, a sign of selection: The Lord God in multiplying his graces upon his servants and conferring upon them new graces every day shows thereby that the work that they have begun is agreeable to him and he finds in them the matter and
the occasion to enrich and increase their benefits. ... To him who has

it shall be given. ... I therefore confess that the faithful shall expect this benediction, that the better they have used these graces of God the more shall other new and greater benefits be added to them every
day.7

in the Institutes Some curious passages take on a special sig the problem of the religious nificance when origins of racism is is assailed from all sides considered. Man and liv by temptations a doubtful Calvin in the includes that world; ing in dangers threaten man life among the savages and the of country pitfalls life.8 Although he condemns that the pre racism, he maintains to those who have some alliance must of limited salvation be cept or on Mat aflfciity with Christians,9 He adds in his Commentary 321

ROGER BASTIDE that God esteems more highly the small company of his own than all the rest of the world.10 and the priceless These ideas?the danger of pagan contagion for the the religious basis value of the small flock?constitute sentiment. South Africa has "frontier complex" or restricted-group cul institutionalized this attitude in the form of apartheid.11 White com ture becomes identified with defense of the faith. The white thew feels itself to be a community elected by God to make fer munity tile a land that the non-Europeans could not exploit. The natives have cast themselves away from divine election because they have not used the has them. talents God given properly use of In some cases, the natives have even made perverse the gifts of God. For example, strove to perfect a the white people race of cattle that could furnish to the Afri great monetary wealth cans. The Bantus, the however, quantity. They made preferred number of cattle a sign of wealth and used them as the price of women not as objects of in marriage, The white peo productivity. to tried teach natives the value of the and the saving money ple use of standard of their ethics Calvinist for morals, labor, capital, and divine vocation, but the natives worked needs for the of only in immediate and the feasts?feasts spent consumption surplus a licentious or in the eyes of the whites were which always of
erotic nature.

the the Calvinists reached the same conclusion about Thus, African natives as they had about the Indians. The Calvinist mis to enter into the the Bantu the opportunity sionary had given to con of salvation, but he had refused. He preferred economy manner. the tinue living in his diabolical Even when converted, series of supersti African mixed into his Christian ideas a whole tions. He interpreted the Christian dogma he was taught according and to the dictates of his pagan mentality, inventing prophetesses
messiahs.

it came The community of the whites had no sense of loss when economic Its as of the select. flock small to consider the itself as the situation of the blacks success was proof of divine grace, just or restricted "frontier was the The complex" sign of their rejection. final in the analysis upon the Cal group feeling rests, therefore, and visible signs of divine election. vinist idea of predestination and to symbolize, came both in Africa In this way, dark skin a race of abandonment stubborn and the voluntary in America, the white person s soul this race endangered in sin. Contact with 322

Color, Racism, and Christianity

of color thus took and the whiteness of his spirit. The symbolism on one of the most complicated and subtle forms, in both Protes tantism and Catholicism, through the various steps through which darkness of color became associated with evil itself.

IV now be traced must ramifications of this symbolism in the of America and of de secularization double process through even in Europe. Western Christianization culture, among atheists, in still remains profoundly the Christian culture of the steeped The to be effective of color continues, therefore, past. The symbolism even when it goes unrecognized. and de-Christian Secularization new ization do involve, however, that cannot be over phenomena looked. to America, With the coming of independence the philosophy a great extent to the of the European Enlightenment replaced Puritanism It was first espoused the of the early colonists. by aristocratic class of the South, of which Jefferson was the repre classes of New figure, and then by the hard-working American is still colored by reli England. democracy undoubtedly more more but to retain Americans tend and gion, only that part of Christianity which is based on reason, which is something quite close to what the philosophers to call "natural used religion." Barton in book Puritanism and Democracy, his Ralph Perry, the significance to of this transition from Calvanism explains well an acceptance of the philosophy of the Enlightenment: Puritanism should distrust their own inclinations and their taught that men natural faculties, their in a both and their salvation origin seeking was a order. It of The supernatural religion misanthropy. philoso on the other hand, was human, phy of the Enlightenment, op timistic, and eudaemonic. Such a revolution of thought and feeling should have been marked by a revision of racial values. It was, in fact, the philosophy of the Enlightenment that precipitated the abolition of slavery. there no serious attack upon the of then, was Why, symbolism founded upon reason than the social color, since it was no more institution of slavery which of got carried away by a tidal wave thought and reason? First of all, Calvinism still remained just under the surface, The migration to ready to be revived at the slightest opportunity. 323 sentative

ROGER BASTIDE was considered as to be ward the West, Perry has also pointed out, and found the idea that the Puritans further proof corroborating ers of American had formed of their destiny. The pio democracy success was as a sign of divine grace. The interpreted neering Puritan felt sure that he was among the chosen few when he suc over ob and triumphing in standing up under adversity ceeded
stacles.

With of national groups in the Western the consolidation world remained and the triumph of the spirit of Enlightenment, nothing of Calvinism except the barriers forged by the "frontier complex" or The positive elements of concept. restricted-group-boundary their dynamic the rise of effect with Calvinism ceased to exercise to a from the old Christianity and the transition secularization the barriers fostered rational religion of democracy. Nevertheless, between white men still stood as signs of distinction by Calvinism men. and colored the descendants of the slaves The worst was to happen when and gave themselves American values North assimilated finally over to a "white narcissism." They could see no other way to dem a kind than by adopting onstrate their identification with America The introduction Protes of this factor into Negro of Puritanism. class. By intro tantism defined the religion of the colored middle a factor historically linked to the con into its religion ducing as inveterate the the and the Indian of demnation savages, Negro own its The condemnation. also introduced class Negro middle in the Negro, of color, interiorized Christian gave rise symbolism a of the marked to the neuropathic character, by guilt complex, middle class. Negro Latin America that Catholic It must not be thought, however, interracial But similar not did sexuality phenomena. experience in the min was accepted there, and the drama found its solution and blood acted as a tonic both physically White gling of blood. the a process Brazilians call "purging in for the Negro, morally was race African the of blood." The progressive whitening coupled with its progressive spiritualization. as has had sources in Calvinism, In Europe, while capitalism was destined its Max out Weber, been brought development by of code of ethics. The multiplication the Calvinistic to destroy the without its not maintain pace parallel power could productive of needs. This gave rise to an ethic of consumption multiplication was un scientific to materialism. Moreover, and finally thought 324

Color,

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of the religious foundations the supernatural concept. dermining a system of laws that human reason The universe was becoming it was con in equations, of being expressed could discern. Capable sacred. of devoid everything sequently in the colonies the white man was to meet The Africans whom nor this rational con of life had neither this materialistic concept even after contact with Tribal life continued, cept of the universe. to follow the ancestral norms. It took no account the white man, of the value of time or money.12 The schools introduced by the of than to change the mentality had no other purpose colonizers in the service to prepare him to become a good worker the African, and a good con and factories of the white mans plantations It destroyed man's white sumer the of products. buying capable with is that the African's something concept penetrated everything view of life. sacred and implanted a more materialistic to have caused the Christian This change of perspective ought in the to disappear color of entirely. But the change symbolism antici did not come about as rapidly as was African mentality the founders of the lay schools. Money was not used in pated by standards but lavishly for the purchase with Western accordance of family groups. The relations of the and the prestige of wives of the archaic pattern still followed African with his employer con and not that of the modern familial or tribal relationships, to the white In short, it appeared tractual ethic of industrialization. man that the native remained alien to the materialistic approach of the capitalistic economy and also to the rational spirit of science, the new religion of that economy. which had become in of color which we have been the Thus, symbolic association some of the elements Associations have discussing, disappeared. in the concept the devil and sin have no place of the uni with in the late-nineteenth But "frontier verse introduced the century. two mentalities has held firm. between conflicting complex" These meanings still Black and white have taken on other meanings: centuries before on founded the basic antithesis follow, however, of Satan. Because the white purity of the elect and the blackness it survived the collapse of the this symbolism became secularized, code of ethics and the advent of another system of old Christian tree had been uprooted, ideas. The Christian but had left root to creep that continued the surface. under obscurely fragments in the present Mircea Eliade has taught us to discover the as the remnants of primitive Para such for archetypes, nostalgia 325

ROGER BASTIDE dise Lost and the Center of the World. It is not surprising, then, that a symbolism of color associations could survive the disap of its mystical Christian roots. A change of polarization pearance is and however. The conflict between today, taking place light dark is not so much two and the colors?white expressed by a chain of black?as men in of white their rela experience by tions with races of stock. A black or dark color has non-European come to a certain social situation, class, or caste. There symbolize still remains, even in this process of secularization, of something the antithesis of darkness and the of and sky light?the brightness the darkness of anguish.

References

1. Brazilian films are typical of this point of view. In Europe, a blond is

usually a man the heroine, and a brunette the dangerous woman. In Brazil, the

dark woman
to ruin.

is loving and faithful, while

the blond is the vamp who leads (Religion and Racial Relations;
(Sociology and Psychoanalysis;

2. Ren? Ribeiro, Religia? e Rela?o?s Raciais Rio de Janeiro, 1956).

3. Roger Paris, Bastide, 1951). Sociologie et Psychanalise

4. Wolfgang
pp. 5. St. Feast 370-76. Benedict are

S. Seiferth, "St Mauritius, African," Phylon, No.

became to be where is celebrated. numbers the found Saint of the and Indians and Negroes. that his

(1941),
statues or Day for him

Most Saint's

of him

Day in churches

in homes, There may of

it is there

Indians

see R. Olivares from Venezuela, Acta Venezolana, de Venezuela," Vol. occidental in the Western Folklore of Venezuela; 1946-47). 6. Juan A. Ortega de ind?genas y Medina, los Estados "Ideas Unidos de

a be, however, chapel special or For illustrations Negroes worship. en el folklore "San Benito Figueiroa, 2, Nos. 1-4 (St Benedict

de

la Evangelizaci?n Norte-Am?rica,"

anglosajona Am?rica

entre Ingigena,

los

Vol. 18, No. 2 (Ideas Used in the Anglo-Saxon Evangelization Indians in the United States; 1958).
7. Jean Vol. Geneva, 8. 9. 10. Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Vol. Vol. Vol. Calvin, Part 1888), 1, Part 2, Part 9, pp. Institution 3 de la (The Christian p. 11. 17, p. 10. religion Institutes Chr?tienne, of Calvin ed. F. [author's

of the

Baumgartner, translation];

2,

8, p. 54. 37-38.

326

Color, Racism, and Christianity

11. Concerning this frontier and its various dimensions, complex including are we which cultural stressed but which the most aspects generally as sider see Kenneth derivatives of the first, L. Little, Race only reader may The 1952). (Paris, Society two passages here from Calvin which of apartheid and that we justification surprised the Afrikaners have not be that we do not the have use the con and

quoted in their

of passages quoted on Jeremiah, Parts Part (Works, 36-51, pp. 400-803; Commentary on the Part which the South 24, p. 2; Sermon 6, pp. 5-9) Ephesians, are utilized as Africans for that purpose. do use These latter passages of the racial situation rationalizations after the fact, deform and therefore Unsolved Problem (Cf. Benjamin Colour, ing Calvin's thought. J. Marais, Calvin The that we have n.d.], of the West [Cape Town, pp. 300ff.) passages to have been stimuli and the appear quoted acting upon both the conscious mind subconscious of the Dutch the advent of the pioneers long before situation. apartheid 12. Concerning this development of Calvinism in regard to science and its im

pact on the blacks, see Michael Banton, West African City: A Study of Tribal Life in Freetown (London, 1957).

327