This is the way that we have always been.  It is the likely rationale or unconscious thought for those who live a racialized life or justify the anger, unforgiveness and hatred that support it.  Always is synonymous with “for all of time, until the end of time, constantly, and forever.”  But for all of time, we have not been “races” and to the end of time, we will not be colored people.  We are not constantly in any one state or mode of being– not even racial and we are not forever bound to this social contract.  Unless, of course, we do not believe that we will be “caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (I Thessalonians 4.17) or that we will take off what is perishable and put on what is imperishable, exchange what is mortal for that which is immortal (I Corinthians 15.53).

Nothing of our flesh and nothing that we have created with it is imperishable or immortal.  Race will not survive the rapture neither will its color- coded hierarchy, its rules for relating or the social positions that it requires.  Despite the racial folklore of centuries past, there will not be a segregated heaven or one that supports the system of racism.  It is God’s heaven; race does not have one.

Always.  The only attributes that are eternal are God’s.  There is nothing about human behavior that is so faithful, constant or dependable.  We are not always bad or always good.  And this is the problem or at least one of the problems that I have with race.  It assigns eternal characteristics to temporal conditions and experiences.  Race says that this is the way that my life will always be, the way that I will always be seen, the way that I will always be treated.

I am a “black” person; I will always be seen as the oppressed, the slave.  I am a “white” person; I will always be seen as the oppressor, the master.  I am a red person; I will always be seen as the one taken advantage of.  I am a “brown” person; I will always be seen as “the help.” I am a “yellow” person; I will always be seen as a foreigner, unable to assimilate.  The word makes us helpless.

It suggests that there is no time for us, that we are created simply to repeat what has always been, that we are to live an unjust life eternally, that we will be stereotyped and experience prejudice always.  What power we have given race!  Worse still is the underlying belief that God does not offer a personalized and new life experience for each of us.  Now, which scripture supports that?

And I must say, we are to learn from history not live from it.  History is often treated as if a sage or a prophet.  Though it often provides understanding for the present, it is not always a predictor of the future.  In our becoming experts of the past, we must not allow this knowledge to render us inexperienced with the present.  We must know our time as it will provide understanding for the future.

Race is not eternal, immortal or imperishable.  It has a lifespan- ours.  It can die with us, today, tomorrow or in “that great getting up morning.”  But, race will not be with us always.