And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God made a distinction between the light and the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness God called night. And it was evening and it was morning, day one.

Genesis 1:3-5

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Light and darkness is one of our most enduring false dichotomies. Light and darkness are seen as opposite, opposed to one another, and entirely different from one another. We have even endowed the concepts of light and darkness with the moral dualism of good and evil. Good lives in the light, and evil dwells in the darkness. Or so we insist. This light/dark dichotomy even touches our social construction; dark skin is threatening, light skin is not. To say the very least about it, this construct is deeply problematic. How else might we think about light and…