Politics

Metropolitan Museum of Art sued for ‘racist’ painting of too-white Jesus

jesus-statueMove over, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Now, it seems that even a painting of the baby Jesus can be considered racist.

On Saturday, the New York Post reported that Justin Renel Joseph sued New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art because he considers a painting of the baby Jesus to be racist and sacrilegious.

The Post reported:

The masterpieces are “offensive aesthetic whitewashing” of the reality that the Savior, as a native of the Middle Eastern region, had “black hair like wool and skin of bronze color,” says Joseph, 33, who is acting as his own lawyer.

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He says he suffered “personal stress” after viewing “The Holy Family with Angels” by Sebastiano Ricci; “The Resurrection” by Perugino; “The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes” by Tintoretto; and “The Crucifixion” by Francesco Granacci.

They are especially offensive to him, he claims, because he himself has “black hair like wool and skin of bronze color.”

“The implication that someone who possesses physical features like the plaintiff could not be the important historical and public figure of Jesus Christ . . . caused the plaintiff to feel, among other things, rejected and unaccepted by society,” said papers filed in court.

Elyse Topalian, spokeswoman for the Met, explained: “When they were painted, it was typical for artists to depict subjects with the same identity as the local audience. This phenomenon occurs in many other cultures, as well.”

But that’s not good enough for Joseph.  “They completely changed his race to make him more aesthetically pleasing for white people,” he said. “I’m suing a public venue which by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 can’t discriminate on a protected basis.”

Blogger Jeff Dunetz responded:

Humans tend to portray their deity in a way they can relate to.  It’s why the Greeks portrayed their gods as scheming, jealous beings who have sex with anything that moves and is also why 500 years ago in Italy Perugino saw Jesus as blonde— because that related to him.

Unless he was around two millennia ago, Justin Renel Joseph has absolutely no idea what Jesus looked like, so his lawsuit is nothing more than the idiotic political correctness which has infected our society in recent years.

Dunetz suggested Joseph, “close his eyes and try to find Jesus in his heart instead of on a wall in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

Sage advise.

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Joe Newby

A 10-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Joe ran for a city council position in Riverside, Calif., in 1991 and managed successful campaigns for the Idaho state legislature. Co-author of "Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad," Joe wrote for Examiner.com from 2010 until it closed in 2016 and his work has been published at Newsbusters, Spokane Faith and Values and other sites. He now runs the Conservative Firing Line.

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