During the holiday season, Pulitzer Prize-winning Karen Hunter addressed questions live on-air about race and religion during a segment of The Karen Hunter Show after a first-time caller asked her to clarify remarks about Black Christians worshipping what he described as a “white Jesus.”
Hunter welcomed Larry, a caller from Tennessee, who said he had joined the conversation mid-discussion and wanted clarification. Hunter was happy to respond, noting that her remarks were rooted in observations about colonial influence and religious imagery.
“When I went to Ghana, I noticed, because I went during the holiday season, that there were white Santa Clauses in the streets and there were billboards, a lot of Christian billboards with white Jesus on them,” she said. “There’s some of us who go to churches right now with Jesus, who is depicted as a melanic person with long blonde hair.”
Larry responded that he viewed Jesus primarily as the Messiah, adding, “If I look at him from a physical standpoint or from the color of his skin, I see him as a person of color.”
Hunter shared that she was speaking about cultural indoctrination rather than individual belief.
“I was speaking specifically about a culture of people,” she said. “That pushing of Jesus like Michelangelo’s version of Jesus was to erase the actual historical reality.” She added that such imagery reflects how “antilackness is so baked into colonized Africa that it’s hard for you to make an assessment through an undamaged lens.”
Listen to the exchange in the clip below.
