Are Black People Cursed?

I am studying the Bible and other texts to verify the curses of Genesis 9:25-29 which some have used to verify the plight of Black people as slaves a century and a half ago and their destitute plight even to this day. No one can deny that black people the world over are in a perculiar position being the poorest, sickest, most ignorant (illiterate), and uncommited people on the planet. As a qualifier, I am a black woman so I am not racist and I am not an Aunt Thomasina. I just want a fuller picture of what's going on and I cannot get that snapshot from watching the 6 o' clock news or reading any history book where my heritage starts in 1619.

My journey comes from my groanings as a black woman living in America considering my people. How did we come to such destructive thinking patterns? How have we gotten to this point in history? What happened? Where did we go wrong? Something is not right? I asked God did He care about black people? An emphatic Yes was the answer. Thus, I pray vigilantly for change to take place in the minds of Blacks so that we as a people can be a better, self-sufficient, self-sustaining, self-loving group of people. God, what happened?

I read The Black Presence in the Bible by Rev. Walter Aurthur McCray and my mind was blown away by the presence of Blacks in the Scriptures. Somehow we have been taught to believe that the writers and participants in the Holy Story were white or Arab people living in Africa. There are numerous powerful black nations all throughout the Scriptures and hroughout the ancient world. This book's starting point was Genesis chapter 10, according to the author, the Table of Nations. In this dynamic chapter we find the sons of Noah and their blood lines being traced. We see more common names in Shem (father of the Jews) and Ham(father of the blacks and more) lines than with Japheth (father of whites). More successful tribes seem to stem from Ham than any other line. Ham is the second son, the middle of three and more verses in this chapter concern Ham than the other sons. The author gives a great introduction to this subject. However, the author never mentions anything about the blessing and cursings of Gensis 9:25-29, the most controversial passage concerning Black people in the Bible. This is the passage with which slave owners used to justify slavery. This is the passage used to justify the quagmire of stagnation that black people are confronted wih today. He also failed to be concerned with the fact that many of the black tribes mentioned were aversely against the Jews, due to idolatry and impending war that would follow, children of mixed ancestry feeling alienated, or simply God leading raids against these people. What effects have those relationships had on today's present condition? My spiriual ear says 'Nothing' but I am a student of history and God indulges me with a Book that is filled, explicitly and implicitly, with treasures about lives past and about God Himself.

I further read Curse of Canaan Rightly Interpreted, and Kindred Topics written by Cornelius H. Edgar, an American Pastor written in 1862. This book is comprised of 3 essays which discredits the curse of Canaan as a damning life sentence to the Negroes (I'll use his vernacular since his work was respectable).

Here is what I found so far:

-Moses wrote the book of Genesis ( I already knew that but the implications were expounded in Edgar's work) and thus the sons of Noah (Japheth, Ham, and Shem) were not names given by Noah. These names were symbolic of the three groups of the human family revealed to Moses according to the inspiration of God. It would be the same as my saying Brother Jonathan (the forerunner to Uncle Sam) was born July 4, 1776. His mother was Mrs. Britannia (Great Britain) and his aunts were Marianne(France) and Hispania (Spain). Symbolic.
Japheth=Fair
Ham=Burnt face
Shem=Name; from which the Name would come
Canaan=Humiliated

-Noah's 'prophecy' was not fulfilled completely and thus it could not have been the inspired Word of God.
Canaan did experience a period of success (their land was the land of milk and honey)
Ham by extension did have a very powerful and success posterity (Cush, Egypt, Put, Canaan, Phillistines, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Moabites, Hittites, Babylonians, all of the women mentioned in Jesus' blood line were Hamitic, the mother of Ishamel and thus the Arab people, Hagar)
Shem and Japheth were slaves (Egypt, Muslim rule in Spain, slavery to the Greeks, Romans, Germans)

-Black people have not been weakened by any divine curse.

-White people didn't introduce Christ to the continent of Africa. Africa was aware of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob before Europe.

-Black people may have settled in Asia before migrating to Africa.

-White people used the sacred text without using basic historical data to verify such Scripture to honor the god of greed at the expense of destroying three groups of people -the Native Americans, the Blacks, and themselves. Opression and violence is a double-edged sword.

-The weakness that we see today is the result of events more recent. I want to know how the mind got to where it is today. What we are seeing in Black people the world over is a debasement of the mind. I want to know who, what, when, where, and how this came about.

-Where did this hatred of black skin originate from?

I will look into Arab African slavery and/or Africa before slavery. I am also interested to see where Native Americans and Asians and Arabs fit into this Noah family tree.

Let the learning continue.