I wonder...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCjHjQEU0Xw

After watching this video, a number of questions popped into my head. I have sent out a call asking for opinions and will gladly (with permission) post the answers, but here is my specific query:

Let's assume, for arguments' sake, that this child's visions and experiences are true. Assuming her mother is, in fact, an atheist who never spoke of god, that somehow in her nine years this girl never had contact with religious iconography:

Why does God/Jesus always portray himself as a white man? Further, why always the same white man?

My mother has a lot of iconography about the house. I grew up surrounded by various depictions of the risen (and not yet risen) Christ, and ALL of the pictures were near-identical. This child's paintins are strikingly similar to those of my childhood. My adolescent presumption was that all the artists had seen each other's work and were building off the DaVinci archetype (or something to that effect). As a child, I took for granted that this was simply what Jesus looked like. But as an adult, knowing what I know of geography and races, I have to ask myself, "Wouldn't Jesus have been brown?"

Perhaps this child sees what she sees because this has grown to be the acceptable image of the Christ in colonized nations. Perhaps this is how he appeared to the first artist so as to be revered by a white dominant culture; this was the only way to gain respect. Maybe he stays white to remain respected, knowing how racist the colonies (and most of the world) still is. Or maybe it's because he doesn't want to appear fishy by changing his appearance some thousand plus years after the fact.

I would like to put out there, however, that I'm disappointed by all these explanations. The white archetypical Jesus alienates and subjegates a LOT of would-be followers, merely by continuing to portray himself as white and male. Not to mention he is making a fool of a LOT of people who insist that it is geographically unlikely for Jesus to have been white; he was born, raised, and murdered in the MIDDLE EAST. I certainly don't know a great many middle-eastern born individuals who are any shade remotely resembling the ultra-white Jesus we see in pictures. If he is still out there as a white guy simply to win the approval of the masses, then I am highly disappointed. In life, he befriended tax collectors, hookers, women, fishermen, all those considered lesser people in society (even in contemporary society). If in death he seeks the rich, the powerful, the so-called "influential" then he is negating his own living message.

God/ess is alive, but is not necessarily a white guy.