Do you believe in Luck? I think I do, or at least in a form of Grace that is indistinguishable from Luck. We white people were lucky in this way, belledame: Out of the Gothic holocaust wrought by Alaric and facilitated by the dilapidated pagan elite, there emerged an old, white(ish) man named Augustine of Hippo. Amid the smouldering ruins of the entire world, he and others like him rebuilt the City, this time of sturdier stuff than travertine and mortar.
The Word went north out of Canaan. I don't know why. Was Europe at the time somehow deserving of it? Were the soft, Mediterranean olive people entitled to such a Grace? How about the Germans in the woods, with their faces painted in human blood, slouching toward Ragnarok? How can one not believe in Grace as Luck looking back on these people who became Europe (Great Europe!) only after they were transformed by the Word?
And how can one not feel pity and rage now that, after 2000 years, they stuff logs into their ears to stop out the sound of the Word that made them great?
No doubt we are all going to suffer as the new Goths besiege the City of God (you know, the one that is in our hearts); will it help us to remind ourselves of Christ's suffering? What kind of suffering will it be? Confusion, paranoia, despair---the suffering of the beseiged, I think. The near occasion of sin...the near occasion of sin...the near occasion of Alaric...
St. Augustine was from Northern Africa, what is now Libya. Although not Arabic--like the peoples there now, 4th Century Libyans were likely a mixture of Cartheginian and Roman... i.e. your swarthy meditarianian type. One can't really call him white, or black for that matter.
The earliest images of Augustine, as more or less reliable as they are (none date from his lifetime) back of my contention the St. was an olive skinned meditarianian.
I find the peleocon contention that skin color makes culture rather offensive. I think all kinds of people can learn--once steeped in Western culture--the basics of democratic thought, and their backgrounds can add, not subtract to our culture. There will always be various skin colors--and we should lighten up about it all!