AUDITIONIN' FOR BLACK JESUS

Ever sat down to think about Jesus?
You have, right? I thought so.
Ok, what about Black Jesus? Huh uh? Why not?
Ok, now take a few seconds to chew on that... What would he look like? What country would he have been from? Snap back to reality!

How many of you guys remember Black Jesus, that hot record that the late great Tupac Amaru Shakur a.k.a 2pac and his crew, Outlaws put out back in the 90s?

Searching for Back Jesus
It’s hard, it’s hard
We need help out here
So we searching for Black Jesus...

It's ok if you've never heard it…but then again, what you waitin'? Get your ass up and go diggin’ in your uncle's crates. Oops! Did I say crates? My bad, YouTube or Google the dam thang!

I've been looking at the ways different societies have portrayed Jesus as their own race in their art; for example, He is primarily European in the West. To the Native Americans, He appeared in their art as Native American. Am yet to come across a black depiction of Jesus and though I know it’s there, it’s nowhere as common as the ubiquitous European Jesus. Our medulla oblongatas have been conditioned by hundreds of years of exposure to European arts and paintings which depicted Him as a bearded, long dark haired, solemn looking kinda guy.

Anyways, I bet Pac woulda known two facts by now…one, that Jesus wasn’t a black man, and two, if there’s really a heaven for a G. Of course, it’d be preposterous to think Jesus was a black man but I understand what my nigga Pac was tryna put across to Uncle Sam and ‘em. Deep nigga, dat boy Pac!

What got me thinking about Back Jesus and stuff is the new video piece by the German artist Christian Jankowski. This dude used an X-Factor-Idol-like format to cast an actor who best interprets the role of Jesus for a short movie as part of an artistic performance.

I thought it was pure genius... sounds like some' I would think of (ah ha butterin' myself up, I know). He had 13 Jesuses competing against each other. Imagine the kinda of bitching that goes down in competitions like these. At the beginnin' of the show, these dudes had no beard... two weeks into it; cats started growin' their mane and beard without being told to. Am sure the real Jesus is coolin' up there, all amused and things at how these guys were jostle to be the winnin' Jesus.

Back to one of my original questions, what would a Black Jesus look like? If you were to cast a black man the role of Jesus, what physical characteristics would you be lookin' for?