Does it matter that Pope Leo XIV is sort of black?
Somehow I missed the news that the new Pope Leo XIV is black.
ABC News, for example, bragged about how it traced his family history back to discover that “Both of Leo XIV's maternal grandparents, Joseph Martinez and Louise Baquié, are described as Black or mulatto in several census documents.” Others found that his mother was “mixed race,” and the family moved to Chicago as “Creole,”
Opinionators opined that this should be big news. Frankly, I don’t give a damn.
One commentator opined that it should be huge news, but that it wasn’t given the attention it demanded. I give you Rebecca R. Gibbs in the Chicago Tribune who proclaimed Leo to be “the first known pontiff of demonstrable African descent.” It’s important, she proclaimed.
She lamented that the supposedly muted fanfare of the pope’s race “seems odd.” That’s because there “has been little mention of [the pope’s race] in the mainstream media.” [My emphasis.]
Gibbs also gave The New York Times a shot for describing the family as creole. That, she wrote, is “a historical way of softening the blow toward introducing the Blackness of an individual who otherwise might be read as white.”
Shame on us.
First, suggesting that Leo’s racial identity “drew little attention” is so wrong that Gibbs has to be ignorant or a liar. A Google search revealed page after page of coverage.
But more to my point: Who the hell should care anymore? I believe that most Americans don’t. Black people can understandably use it as a point of pride—it should be.
And yet, one’s race has become an insignificant feature of life for most Americans. I’ll be tarred for saying, even thinking, that. But having lived for more than 80 years, I don’t need a pseudo-scientific survey to believe it. It’s taken decades, and some lives. But it’s real. And it’s great.
The only thing that’s keeping race alive now is the ideologically blind, race grifters, “victims” and mistaken good hearts. It’s time, as I said previously, to junk the whole idea of race. It’s “divisive.” Seeing who we are through the prism of race has been ugly, destructive, deadly.
Sure, vestiges of racism in American culture can be found. They should be condemned and stamped out. But, please stop pounding the drums.
I don’t know about you, but I’m proud of how we, as a nation, have left it behind us. Saying that it’s behind us doesn’t make us deniers of the horrible past of slavery and Jim Crow. But it gives a chance to congratulate ourselves for a job well done.