As a religion major I found Heng’s articles on race in the middle ages extremely interesting, especially in terms of the views of the Catholic Church. When I previously thought about the middle ages, and in every representation, I have seen of the middle ages, there has been little to no mention of race. Heng’s articles made me realize that the long history of racial injustice and issues concerning race did not just skip over the middle ages and that issues of race were in fact present during this time. The mention of the African executer of John the Baptist on the Cathedral of Notre Dame especially stood out to me because I have visited Notre Dame and did not even notice or was made aware of this representation. This article was also interesting to me because I was able to connect these issues within the church to more modern theology. Heng talks about the common idea within the medieval church that “black is damned, white is saved” (259). This made me think of a class I took last semester that focused a lot on the whitewashing of portrayals of Jesus and the idea of a “shampoo Jesus” that was white with perfectly curly (and many times blonde) hair that we often see today. It was interesting and horrifying to me to think that Christian iconography still has racist undertones today that were built upon the racism of the middle ages and the Christion iconography from that time
I really like how you talk about the religious aspect behind the racial views of the Middle Ages. Like you said, since this time period isn’t mentioned often in accordance to race, it’s not something I had spent much time thinking about. Your point about Christian iconography still have racist undertones is really insightful, and provides an insight into how much history really gets left out when we are taught.
Agreed with Madison here--you've framed this really well, and it's one of the reasons why I think Heng's work is so important. Because it gives a long genealogy of race and racism, we can see how DEEPLY embedded ideologies around race into primary cultural touchstones like in this case Christian theology. Thinking ahead to the final project (which I'll send around a message about in the next day), this might be an interesting topic for you to develop further.