44 ~ ONE HUMAN FAMILY FEATURE


Black People and the ‘Curse on Ham’ M


any people in Christian societies, including South Africa and the US, have sought to justify ‘black’ people being inferior based on the idea that Ham, one of Noah’s three sons, was cursed. It was also used to justify their enslavement, because the curse involved being a ‘servant of servants’. Especially in the USA, the obvious contradiction of slavery with the idea that ‘all people are created equal’ needed to be rationalized. The ‘curse’ idea was virtually unknown in places like Brazil, where there was no need to justify slavery on the basis of ‘race’ (see Chapter 4), since they had no Declaration of Independence teaching equality of people. Even many today who do not consciously hold to ideas of inferiority/superiority still believe that black skin color arose from this ‘curse on Ham’.


The biblical account this is based on indicates that Ham


obviously transgressed against his father by the standards of the prevailing culture, leading to Noah’s pronouncement of the curse (Genesis 9:22–27).


However, there are major problems with the idea that


this has to do with dark skin. The Bible says nothing about skin color in Ham*


or his descendants. That idea comes from the alleged association of the names of certain descendants with particular nations, some much more tenuous than others.


In fact, the curse was not on Ham at all, but on


Canaan, his son. Anyone looking for later fulfilment of Noah’s pronouncement could perhaps find some indication of this in the destiny of the Canaanites, the descendants of Canaan. Even this may be stretching a point, though, since the Israelites never made reference to any such thing in relation to their conquest of the land of Canaan.


In any case, the Bible does not indicate


that this curse had any divine imprimatur, without which it could hardly have been effective. Noah, despite his track record, seems to have let his guard down in


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