Rethinking Race: Part 2, Humanity’s Original Sin

Critical race theory … Whoopi Goldberg suspended for comments about Jews and race … once again we are arguing about racism … welcome to the second of an eight part series on how we might understand “America’s original sin.” The series will be published on eight successive days. In Part 2 we will look at the concept of race — a concept that should unite us, as we will see, but instead has often been used to tear us apart.

In the Biblical creation stories, God created the first two humans and gave them Gan Eden — the Garden of Eden — which is described as a lush paradise. They were told that they could eat the produce of any of the trees, shrubs or herbs except one, which was reserved by and for their creator. And of course, being human, they promptly plucked the forbidden fruit and ate it.The original sin is greed: what’s mine is mine and, by the way, what’s yours is also mine.

It is difficult to imagine a manifestation of human greed more heinous or damning than slavery, which has been with us since early antiquity. It was well established in both the Greek city states and the Roman empire — but, it is important to note, it was not based on skin color. Prisoners of war, residents of conquered lands, children sold into slavery by impoverished parents and those who inherited the status made up the bulk of the slave population. Race or…