Black History Unmasked: Intro1: The Bible They Never Told You About

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Welcome to the Diary of a Black Woman podcast. I'm your host,

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Connie Morris, and this is Faith on the Go, where you take the word with you

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on your drive to work, while you're getting ready in the morning,

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or even in those quiet moments before prayer.

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Real life, real word, and real growth, all while you are on the go.

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Before we get into today's word, let's take a moment to center ourselves with a familiar prayer.

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The prayer of Jabez, oh, that you will bless me indeed and enlarge my territory.

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Let your hand be with me and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.

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Father God, we come before you this day asking that you will indeed bless us,

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not just with what we have, but in who we are becoming.

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Enlarge our territory, Lord. Expand our capacity, our mindset,

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and our ability to receive what you have for us.

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Let your hand be upon us, guiding us, covering us, and leading us in every decision we make.

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And Father, keep us from harm, physically, emotionally, and spiritually,

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that we may walk in peace and not in pain.

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And Lord, just as you heard Jabez when he cried out to you, hear us now.

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Your word says that you granted his request, and we believe that you are the same God today.

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So we come boldly before you, knowing that you hear us, knowing that you see

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us, and knowing that you respond to the prayers of your people.

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Have your way in this moment as we sit, listen, and receive your word.

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In Jesus' name, amen.

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Hello and welcome back to the Diary of a Black Woman podcast.

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I'm your host Connie Morris and today we're going to start a new series.

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It's titled Blacks in the Bible and it's going to be our summer series.

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So you will need your Bible and also reference guides.

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We're not going to follow it word for word and it costs like $32,

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but you can actually contact James and Opal Warden and they have a small website

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and probably get it for a little bit, a little bit more.

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I think I paid like $40 or more because I wanted to bless the family because

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who took time out to write the Blacks in the Bible when I didn't even know there

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was Blacks in the Bible? Isn't that interesting?

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And so the timing is very, very important in what we're talking about today

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and for the rest of the summer.

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The title of this book is A Complete History of Blacks in the Bible.

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The full title is The Biblical Black History Unmasked, Eurocentric Christianity

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in the Great White Coast.

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So I might change my title to Black History Unmasked.

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I might do that, but we'll see. I might change the title. But for now,

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it's going to stay Blacks in the Bible Summer Series.

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And we're going to do two intros because I want to get you primed and ready

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for what you're about to hear.

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If you don't have a Bible, get a Bible.

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A King James Bible and a Bible that I listed in the comments.

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I think it's the African Heritage Bible and it would change your life.

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But I want to talk to you. We just covered a very powerful series of Hebrews to Negroes.

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So you kind of have your ears nice and wet from that episode.

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Your heart is ready for what else is there that I'm missing.

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And this is going to be two intros and Then we're going to get into eight weeks,

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eight to nine weeks of Blacks in the Bible with scripture reference.

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We're going to talk about the lineage of Jesus, of that person lineage,

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Jesus. We're going to talk about the color of Adam and the color of Eve.

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That's going to be right after our intro to get into what was happening and

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why is everything is whitewashed.

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And to bring it all full circle, we're going to talk about it just for this

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intro, is how the Bible became whitewashed, you know?

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I don't know about you, but when, and I grew up in America, right?

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And so I didn't know Blacks were in the Bible.

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I didn't know that until when I started writing my books, The Propaganda of

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Racism and then Rethinking Implicit Bias, two textbooks that I have written

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for my criminal justice courses.

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And I remember how God led me through the propaganda of racism.

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And the first chapter is on the lineage of Jesus.

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And he walked me through that. And when I realized that Jesus is not white, it blew my mind.

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And then as you search for wisdom, as you search for revelation,

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as you pray, and you're hungry for a particular topic, and God wants to reveal

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to you, you're going to be amazed at what he shows you.

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And that's how I end up looking, finding this book, The Complete History of

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Blacks in the Bible. And then the same reference came from this other Bible,

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the King James African American Heritage Bible.

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And when I first got the Bible, you know, I thought it was hearsay.

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I was like, ooh, Blacks in the Bible.

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And I'm looking like, oh my gosh. And I had to really become accustomed to seeing Black skin.

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In the Bible, seeing the word African, Edenic in the Bible, like words like

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that, that does give you identity.

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And so we're getting our identity back. We're getting our names back.

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We're getting our attitude back. We've lost it. The world has tried to steal it.

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But for this summer series, we're going to take it back.

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Our first intro is on how the Bible became whitewashed.

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And this is still a teaching series because I don't want to preach it and I

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get lost in my preaching. But every now and then I might preach a little bit.

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But I want you to hear every word. Before we talk about blacks in the Bible,

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we have to talk about the image problem.

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For many of us, the first Bible we saw was not scripture.

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It was pictures. It was Sunday school posters, stained glass windows,

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children Bibles, church plays, cartoons, movies, and paintings.

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And every time we saw that image, Adam was white, Eve was white,

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Noah was white, Moses looked white, David looked white, Mary looked white,

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the disciples looked white, and Jesus looked white.

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Even today on a show called The Shosen, everybody looking white.

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And we know that's not biblical.

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And so I don't watch the show. I heard the stories were nice,

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but the front image is wrong.

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You know, that image did not come from the Bible.

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It came from art, empire, religion, and repetition.

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The Bible did not begin in Europe. The world of the Bible included Africa,

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Egypt, Cush, Ethiopia, Canaan.

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Israel, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Rome, Arabia, and all the surrounding nations.

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These were African, Semitic, Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean people.

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They were not European living in a European world. But over time,

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Christianity moved into Roman and later European power structure.

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The image of the Bible began to change. In 1313 AD, Constantine and Licinius

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issued the Edict of Milan, giving Christianity legal protection in the Roman Empire.

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Later in 3380 AD, under Theodosius.

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The Nicene Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

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Christianity became tied to empire, politics, church authority,

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buildings, images, and public power.

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So I want you to get one thing correct, right?

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That when we think about Michelangelo, many times we mix it that Constantine

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hired him, but they lived over a thousand years apart.

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So that was never the story, but they put them together because Constantine,

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he was a ruler too, and he liked to Christian, but he used a lot of pagan things for Christians.

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And we'll get into that when we go through maybe the history of the Bible,

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which may be another topic that we can cover here.

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I remember I told you it's so important that you pick.

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Your Bible. And even on church on Sunday, my pastor says, do not come in his

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church without your Bible.

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You know, you have your phone, but as soon as you use your Bible on your phone,

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then someone's sending you a text.

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So you end up getting distracted with the text or you get distracted with an

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email or whatever happens on your phone while you are at church.

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He says, turn off the phones and come into the sanctuary and tap in,

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seek Jesus, and he will be found.

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And that's what I want us to do for the next eight to nine weeks,

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that we will pay attention and we will learn something about our history, okay?

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So remember, Christianity was tied to empires, politics, church,

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authority, buildings, images, and public power. Why? Because there was money to be made, right?

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So now one thing we want to get correct is who hired Michelangelo.

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It wasn't Constantine. Michelangelo lived from 1475 to 1564.

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Michelangelo painted the Sistine chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512,

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commissioned by Pope Julius II.

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Not Constantine. But the connection

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is this. Constantine helped move Christianity into imperial power.

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Centuries later, European church power and European artists helped shape the

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visual Bible that the world inherited.

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And that is how whitewashing grew. European artists painting biblical people to look European.

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It's interesting that people say that. I was studying it for a class.

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And it says the people who you thought were white, you can probably still find it.

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And this guy went into deep research on even some of our presidents who appear

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to be white were not white. They were painted.

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They were not white. They were black. But when the artist painted them,

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they painted them white. I know it's hard. It's hard.

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It's hard to know when the truth starts to hit you upside the head.

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You're like, wait a minute, wait a minute.

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We'll shake our head. Even my students did not understand that.

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We're thinking that what we see, what people put before us, the narrative they

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put before us is always true. We were so gullible.

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We were so gullible, but not anymore. You know, the European artists painted

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biblical people to look European. Adam, Eve, Moses, David, Solomon,

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Mary, the disciples, angels were even white. You know, some black angels. Come on now.

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Jesus ain't prejudiced. He ain't racist.

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He probably got all kinds of angels up in heaven and even on earth because they

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come to protect the heirs of salvation.

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Even Jesus was given pale skin, European faces, and Western features.

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Michelangelo was not the only artist who did this, but his work became part

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of a larger European tradition that shadowed how people imagined the Bible.

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And you know what happens when you shadow what's happening in the Bible?

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Because you never pick it up, right? We want to watch it on the TV.

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We want to watch chosen on TV,

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but never pick up your Bible to see who was chosen, right? Come on now.

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We want a shortcut to Christianity. And that's why they're able to fool us because

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no one wants to read the Bible. People say the Bible is too hard to read,

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but the first page tell you where we're at.

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But yet everybody after that was white. Talk to me, folks.

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So not only did Michelangelo change the scope, everybody else started to.

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Even when you watch Moses, remember there was Moses, a show called Moses and

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Noah, they're both white.

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We're watching it, we're looking, you're like, okay, okay, never questioning it.

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Then come modern images like white Jesus.

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Many of us saw it in homes, we saw it in churches, funerals on the fans, right?

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Calendars, Sunday school rooms, that soft face, light skin Jesus with European

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features became normal.

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People saw it so often they stopped questioning it, but the narrative was not truth.

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A white Jesus did not come from scripture.

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A white Moses did not come from scripture. A white Adam did not come from scripture.

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And a white Bible did not come from scripture.

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It came from people who control the images and images teach.

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Come on now, think about it. When did you see a black Jesus during your childhood?

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Even now, you know, I was just thinking now that you'll go to the store,

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now there's a black Santa.

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Hello, where's Jesus? If every prophet is painted white, people begin to believe

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God only spoke through white people.

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If every biblical woman is painted white.

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People forget Hagar was Egyptian. Zipporah was connected to Cush.

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Rahab was a Canaanite, and the queen of Sheba came from the south.

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Africa. And whitewashing did not stop with paintings. It entered children's

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Bibles. It entered Sunday school lessons. Come on now.

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It entered Bible movies, church plays, and even cartoons.

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Even shows like VeggieTales shape how children remember Bible stories.

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That does not mean VeggieTales was evil, but it does show how children could learn,

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Jonah, Moses, David, Esther, Daniel and Jesus without ever learning the geography,

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the nation, the people, the skin tone, or even the African presence behind those stories.

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That is how erasure works. Sometimes it's just not loud.

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Sometimes it's colorful, cute, religious, and familiar.

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Black people were never missing from the Bible, many were hidden under names

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people were never taught to recognize.

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When the Bible says Cush, C-U-S-H, it is pointing to the region commonly connected

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with Ethiopia and Nubia in Africa.

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These were dark-skinned African people. That is why Jeremiah 13,

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23 says, Can the Ethiopian change his skin?

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The verse makes it clear that Ethiopian skin color was visibly distinct.

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When the Bible says miserable.

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It's talking about Egypt. Miserain is a Hebrew name connected to Egypt.

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Egypt is in Africa. And Psalms 105.23 calls Egypt the land of Ham.

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So when we talk about Hagar, Anseith, Pharaoh's daughter, Moses being raised

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in Egypt, and Joseph and Jesus fleeing into Egypt.

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We're talking about African soil and African people.

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When the Bible says put or foot, P-H-U-T, is commonly connected to Libya or

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Northern African region.

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These were African nations that can appear in prophetic and military passages.

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When the Bible says Canaan, it's talking about the land and the people surrounding Israel.

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Canaan was not Europe. Canaanites were part of the ancient Near Eastern and

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African connected world. Rahab was a Canaanite, a woman from Jericho.

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And Matthew 1 places Rahab in the genealogy of Jesus. What does that tell you?

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When the Bible says Sheba, it's often connected with the southern region,

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including Arabia and African Ethiopian nations.

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The queen of Sheba came to Solomon with wealth, wisdom, spice,

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and hard questions. Jesus later called her the queen of the south.

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Even Jesus recognized her.

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And that's found in Matthew 12, 42. When the Bible says serene,

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it's talking about the city in North Africa in what is now called Libya.

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Simon of Serene, the man compelled to carry the cross of Jesus, was connected to North.

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Africa. Even when we think about the movie, The Passion of the Christ,

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there was no black people.

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The thing they put him in there, the sirene, but he was really kind of light.

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The Bible is made of all black people. When the Bible says Candace,

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it's not just a woman's first name.

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It's a royal title connected to the queen of Ethiopians.

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In Acts 8, the Ethiopian Enoch served under Candace.

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That means an African royal official was reading Isaiah and received the gospel

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early in the New Testament.

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So when we say Hagar was there, we mean an Egyptian woman from Africa was seen by God in Genesis.

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When we say Zipporah was there, we mean Moses' wife was connected to Midian

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and the Cushite discussion in Numbers 12, where Moses was criticized because

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of the Cushite woman, because she was black.

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When we say Rahab was there, we mean Canaanite women enter the direct line lineage of Jesus.

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When we say Simon of Cyrene was there, we mean North African man carried the cross of Jesus.

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When we say Ethiopian eunuch was there, we mean a black African official received the gospel and acts.

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So why does this really matter? Because we are not guessing.

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We are reading names, places, nations, geography, and bloodlines.

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The Bible names Africa. The Bible names African people.

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The Bible names dark-skinned people. The Bible places them in creation, covenant, Egypt.

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Exodus, monarchy, prophecy, and the cross in the early church.

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The issue is not that black people were absent.

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The issue is that many were renamed, untranslated, unexplained,

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painted over, or disconnected from their geography.

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The problem was not the Bible. The problem was what people did to the Bible.

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They painted over it. They preached around it.

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They translated names without explaining places. Wow, they made Europe the center

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of a book that was born, that was not born in Egypt.

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Then came one of the most damaging lies ever attached to scripture,

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the so-called curse of Ham.

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Let's tell the truth. The Bible does not say black skin was cursed.

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The Bible does not say Ham was cursed.

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Genesis 9 speaks of Canaan, not Ham, and not black people as a race.

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Men took the text and twisted it.

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They used it to justify slavery, segregation, racism, spiritual abuse.

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They made Black people believe God cursed what God created.

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That was not the Bible. That was white supremacy using Bible language.

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So this series is not about forcing black people into scripture.

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We are not changing the Bible.

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We are not changing the Bible. We are correcting the image, the pictures.

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We are correcting the teaching. We are correcting the imagination.

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The Bible was not whitewashed by God. It was whitewashed by men.

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God named the nations. God created the bloodlines. God saw Hagar.

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He defended Moses, Cushite wife. He placed Rahab in the genealogy of Jesus.

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He allowed Egypt to shelter the Messiah. God placed Simon of Cyrene at the cross.

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God sent the gospel to an Ethiopian official in Acts.

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How important is that? So before we begin this series, let's be clear.

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We're not asking for permission to see ourselves in scripture.

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We are opening the Bible, reading the names, tracing the bloodlines,

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looking at the geography and telling the truth about what was already there.

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The Bible was never white. It was made to look that way. I want to just do one

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more topic because we know the Bible wasn't white, but how did it become so white?

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We saw that Pope made us commission Michelangelo to draw pictures of white.

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And he said, I want you to create the white. I want you to kind of whitewash

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this Bible. What's the first thing you can do?

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So I think he had a picture of his cousin and his dad, and he drew that on top

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of the Sistine Chapel, and it's in a holy place. So when you go into a holy

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place and you look up and you see the art in your mind, you see it.

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God and you're seeing Adam, but actually, Wally, those are his relatives.

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Those are his relatives.

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I was going to start another topic, but I'm going to let you absorb the episode,

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not even episode, introduction one, because that was filled with a lot of good things.

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I don't want to rush it because next week, I want, not next week.

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The next episode, we're going to get into white supremacy, black origins,

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and denial of the beginnings.

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And I had a question. I said, how did this get started?

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How did the Bible become whitewashed? We know who did it, but I wanted to go

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in more detail of why. And what I found out was really, really good because they knew who we were.

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They knew our power. They knew our authority. They knew everything about us,

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our black-skinned people, but they never told us. They kept washing us away.

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Remember Hebrew to Negro, Negroes, niggas to niggas. You see,

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because we lost our identity.

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But this summer, we're taking it back.

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So I want to take my time. I want to walk you through.

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And now you understand that there are blacks in the Bible.

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If you get a chance, get the book. You need to get the book in your library

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so you can have something to follow along with. I want to let you go now.

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And I'm going to go prepare for the next episode. because I want you to get it.

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The next one is going to be a little bit longer, a little bit more detail.

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And then after that, the episode won't be after both of our intros,

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unless God shows me something different.

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But right now I want to say goodbye. I want to thank you for joining me today.

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I'm your host, Connie Morris, and this is the Diary of a Black Woman podcast.

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And I'll see you on the next episode.

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Family, thank you for spending time with me today.

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To every woman listening who has ever felt hidden, overlooked,

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or pushed aside, hear me clearly.

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God has not forgotten you, and neither have I.

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Now let's go before the Lord and close this out with a word from God.

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Because someone out there needs this reminder today.

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Jeremiah 29, 11, verses 11 through 14.

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For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you

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and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

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Then when you call on me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you,

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you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

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I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and bring you back from captivity.

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Father God, we thank you for your word, that it is true, that it is living, that it is for us.

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You said you know the plans you have for us, plans to prosper us and not to

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harm us, plans to give us hope and a future.

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So today we receive that, not just in our minds, but in our hearts.

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When we feel overlooked, remind us you still see us.

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When we feel forgotten, remind us you still have a plan. And when we feel hidden,

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remind us you are still working.

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Your word says that when we call on you, you will listen.

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So we call on you now. Hear us. Strengthen us.

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Guide us. Help us to seek you with our whole heart, not halfway,

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not sometimes, but fully.

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And as we seek you, let us find you in every season, in every place.

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Even the hidden mark. Restore what was lost, renew what feels broken,

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and remind us that nothing in our lives is wasted in your hand.

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Lord, we trust you, we believe you, and we stand on your word. In Jesus' name, amen.

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This is Diary of a Black Woman podcast, and I'm your host, Connie Morris,

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and I'll see you on the next episode.