“Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

29:23 Pride brings a person low, but the lowly in spirit gain honor.
Mt. 20:26-27 “Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave–just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

There is no graceful way of saying it: Bigotry is wrong. Determining people’s worth according to the color of their skin is senseless. What they don’t know is that they are really judging according not to how much melanin a person has, but how much he retains in the cells of his skin. From, “A Pocket Guide to the Human Body,” page 70.

Why there are no “white” people

Human skin is normally never truly white, though some people have less melanin in their skin than others. Surprisingly, all humans, regardless of the shade (“color”) of their skin, have approximately the same number of melanocytes per square inch of skin. Even albinos have melanocytes, but they produce colorless, rather than pigmented, melanosomes. The granules are colorless because the enzyme necessary for producing melanin is either missing or defective.

Interestingly, these colorless melanosomes are still taken into the epidermal stem cells, where they form an umbrella just as in the normal skin. The result, however, is something like a clear plastic umbrella–not very good for warding the sun.
Some people have darker skin than others, not because they have more melanocytes but because they retain a greater amount of melanin after the cells are no longer able to divide. People with lighter shades of skin break down most of their melanosomes.

While DNA is less vulnerable to UV when the cells no longer divide, retaining more pigment is still advantageous. People with darker skin are more resistant to sunburns and skin cancer. Yet people with very dark skin face another problem–they may not be able to produce enough vitamin D.

Judging people by their skin color is contrary to the way God sees us. The apostle Paul tells us how God sees us–and goes much further than skin color:

²⁸ 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

Jesus is not only the Great Emancipator, He is the Great Liberator, as well. Let’s thank God for putting us all on the same playing field. “The ground is level at the foot of the cross.”

Abba, please make us blind–color blind. May we see people according to Your mercy and Your grace rather than on any outward appearance, which includes gender. It’s important to You and needs to be important to us. Amen.