Dr. Aubrey Buster, Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, contemplates how a translation of an ambiguous word can reflect and/or lead to serious errors of perception, including perceptions of race and social class. A common Hebrew conjunction used in Song of Songs 1:5 could be read as “black but beautiful” or “black and beautiful.” The latter, “and,” is more likely contextually, though it has long been translated as “but.”