God is Black

Silly me: I thought college classes were for exploring concepts. I quickly learned that the sheep want to graze quietly and that some of them are actually venomous when aroused.

A Basic Logic class, in an auditorium half-filled with breathing bodies, me perched in the highest back row, wondering how far I could jump. The class had two speakers: the professor and me. Everyone else spoke if spoken to, and maybe not even then. At the point in a lecture where the professor was describing arguments that are unsupportable and unassailable by logic, he asked for an example.

“God is black,” I said.

You could hear heads snapping around to look up at me. The professor cleared his throat strongly and said the example was correct and that positions such as th—-

“What did he say?” growled a voice somewhere to my right.

Before the professor could interrupt, I repeated: “God is black.”

There are moments when you see a disconnected group come together, a mass of people barely aware of each other all of a sudden discovering a common focus, a menace maybe, like a fire or a fistfight. When that focus centers on a person, when the random stillness and movements instantly coalesce into a current flowing at the focus, you have the beginnings of a mob.

Words erupted first.

“What the hell?”
“What did he say?”
“Black? Like a nigger?”
“Fucking crazy!”
“No way! The black guy say it?”
“Quiet, please.” The professor spoke alone, quite loudly.
“That’s wrong! Wrong! He can’t be right! God can’t be black!”

I chose to answer that one. “God can’t be black? I thought God was omnipotent.”

“He can’t be black!”

I rolled my eyes. “Somebody explain ‘ominipotent’ to this redneck.”

“God is white because He’s white in all the paintings!” She seemed on the verge of tears. I let that one pass.

“Quiet! Please!” The incipient mob herded right to look at him. He gave me a dirty look and I waved cheerfully. He proceeded to indicate that the example, though “touchy,” was valid. A few grumbles rippled through the classless room. I was ready as he asked “Any other examples?”

“God is a woman.”

Stunned. Until the professor slammed a hand on his podium and roared “That’s enough! Confine your examples to general topics!”

I smirked. “Oh, you want us to think as you do and not freely as we’re supposed to?” Cheap shot, but it was there. The former mob suddenly perked up, sensing their grazing grounds were not as green as they had believed.

With visible effort, the professor willed himself under control. “I am hear to teach Logic, not start a debating group.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Not enough brains in here for a debating group.” Some furious looks told me I had crossed the line.

Class continued and at the end, as the group filed out with stares and glares at me, the professor pulled me over. “Why did you do that?”

I looked out the door at the small group of guys waiting for me and decided to skip to the end. “I could have said God was a black woman.” I shrugged away from him and went to meet the “debaters.”