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A short, excellent article. Yes, we still have a road ahead of us when it comes to race, but this is a good step.
Preference for under-represented groups can be a double-edged sword. It’s a very good article, with some great insights. It does feel out of place with a lot of the past rhetoric, but in all the right ways. I remember this roomate I had in college (who was an all around great guy, for the record), who was offended by the mix-race marriage from Napoleon Dynamite. He was upset that their kids would grow up without a racial identity, and pointed to a few key quotes from former Church leaders.
While in the past, yup, there was some pretty extreme racisim, this article flies in the face of all of that. It almost feels like a coverup over some of the more embarassing parts of our Church history, which is as close as we get to a retraction.
:thumbup: :thumbup: Cover-up? This? How is talking about current, lingering racism (and stating it is because of former justifications) a cover-up?
Seriously, I don’t understand.
Old Timer wrote:
Cover-up? This? How is talking about current, lingering racism (and stating it is because of former justifications) a cover-up? Seriously, I don’t understand.
Because I’m Black wrote:I’ve heard people ask my husband, who is white, what it’s like to be married to a black woman. At church, I have to remind myself that people are just being nice and trying to help when they ask if I’m a recent convert. I have grown up in the Church, served a mission, and been married in the temple, but the assumption that I must be new to the Church because I’m black reinforces that some people see my race rather than seeing me for who I am… I don’t know why the priesthood restriction was put in place. Personally, I’m OK with not knowing, because I know that God loves all of His children… While I feel
the worldhas made progress, I’ve also felt the sting of stereotypes that some still hold. Brigham Young wrote:“Cain slew his brother…. and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin. Trace mankind down to after the flood, and tehn another curse is pronounced upon the same race – that they should be the ‘servant of servants,’ and they will be, until that curse is removed; and the Abolitionists cannot help it, nor in the least alter that decree. How long is that race to endure the dreadful curse that is upon them? That curse will remain upon them, and they never can hold the Priesthood or share in it until all the other descendants of Adam have received the promises and enjoyed the blessings of the Priesthood and the keys thereof. Until the last ones of the residue of Adam’s children are brought up to that favorable position, the children of Cain cannot receive the first ordinances of the Priesthood. They were the first that were cursed, and they will be the last from whom the curse will be removed.
Brigham Young wrote:“Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so. The nations of the earth have transgressed every law that God has given, they have changed the ordinances and broken every covenant made with the fathers, and they are like a hungry man that dreameth that he eateth, and he awaketh and behold he is empty.”
George Albert Smith wrote:“Your ideas, as we understand them, appear to contemplate the intermarriage of the Negro and white races, a concept which has heretofore been most repugnant to most normal-minded people from the ancient patriarchs until now…. there is a growing tendency, particularly among some educators, as it manifests itself in this area, toward the breaking down of race barriers in the matter of intermarriage between whites and blacks, but it does not have the sanction of the Church and is contrary to Church doctrine.”
I said it
almostfeels like a cover up. This is because: 1. They’re glossing over the difficult parts of our Church history, briefly mentioning something everybody knows (no excusing, no apology), stating it’s a mystery why, and the changing the subject. 2. Shifting the blame away from the Church and onto “the World”. 3. The surface message was “don’t be racist”, but the underlying message felt like “look how not-racist the Church is.” Definition of a Cover-up: An attempt to prevent people’s discovering the truth about a serious mistake or crime.
Quote:Definition of a Cover-up: An attempt to prevent people’s discovering the truth about a serious mistake or crime.
I guess we simply disagree about this, since I see absolutely no attempt at covering up the past.
This was an individual’s story of facing ongoing racism
from members of the Church, not a doctrinal or historical treatise or essay. Laying the burden of an almost cover-up on this personal story of on-going racism is not something I am willing to do. Quote:But when my good friend and I applied for the same college and only I got in, she didn’t mention any of that. Instead, she said what I started to hear from a lot of people.
“It’s just because you’re black.”
This is the real effect of positive discrimination, insectionality and “liberalism”. It actually undermines black successes to some extent.
I’m glad to say my ward just now doesn’t have much of an issue with race. Other than the Chinese members getting callings, but that’s because we have a revolving door of them, and many of them return home quickly after university.
Old Timer wrote:
A short, excellent article.Yes, we still have a road ahead of us when it comes to race, but this is a good step.
Curt,
Thank you for posting; I probably wouldn’t have seen this article. I may try to find a way to reference it or talk about in during my ward meetings.
RR
Love, Love, Love that this is in the Ensign. I like that it subtly questions assumptions that church members may have about race. I agree with points made by both Dande and Curt.
There are a number of LDS speakers that I feel are influential and impactful. I believe that their collective work is helping to shift the cultural assumptions and understandings that we as LDS have.
I have observed that in doing so it is important for them to present their ideas as building upon (rather than a departure from) the understanding and teaching of previous generations of church leadership.I loved the grace filled doctrine of the book “Believing Christ”. In the book he mentions how his LDS university students are so soft in the fundamentals of the gospel – thinking essentially that we earn our way into heaven. He called them “soft in the middle” and lays the blame for this at their feet. What goes unexplored is that these university students were products of lifetimes of instruction in church programs and curriculum.
I loved the talk “His grace is sufficient” by Brad Wilcox. Perhaps the best thing Brad does in this talk is to compare our works/efforts to be like practicing a piano. Mistakes are expected and those with the big picture (God & Jesus) are not looking for individual performance but individual growth. Rather than to say that perhaps we have swung too far into works camp and that we could learn a few things from our evangelical brothers and sisters, Brad implies that LDS have a better understanding of Grace than evangelicals. “They (Brad’s Born-again Christian friends) are so excited about being saved that maybe they are not thinking enough about what comes next. They are so happy the debt is paid that they may not have considered why the debt existed in the first place. Latter-day Saints know not only what Jesus has saved us from but also what He has saved us for.” Later he talks about young people giving up because they feel that they cannot measure up to the exacting standards and are tired of being failures. He places the blame on the young people – not on a culture that stresses perfection and punishes those that fall short. He says that those that give up do not understand the gospel, grace, and the atonement.
Quote:Too many are giving up on the Church because they are tired of constantly feeling like they are falling short. They have tried in the past, but they always feel like they are just not good enough. They don’t understand grace.
There are young women who know they are daughters of a Heavenly Father who loves them, and they love Him. Then they graduate from high school, and the values they memorized are put to the test. They slip up. They let things go too far, and suddenly they think it is all over. These young women don’t understand grace.
The speech ““A Future Only God Could See for You” by Eva Witsman is truly impactful in that it empowers women to co-pilot their life trajectory with God. The entire speech is marvelous and offers a compelling and cohesive message. Honestly that idea is fairly revolutionary and is a departure from what might have been taught from the pulpit in times past. Sister Witsman does such a great job weaving together her main points that one could assume that this empowerment for women was what was always intended and hoped for by church leadership.
For example, Sister Witsman said,
Quote:“Women’s voices are needed in all echelons of human activity. President Spencer W. Kimball said:
‘We wish you to pursue and to achieve that education . . . which will fit you for eternity as well as for full service in mortality. . . .
. . . We do not desire the women of the Church to be uninformed or ineffective.”
The more full text from SWK is below with the parts quoted by Sister Witsman in bold:
Quote:Some women, because of circumstances beyond their control, must work. We understand that. We understand further that as families are raised, the talents God has given you and blessed you with can often be put to effective use in additional service to mankind. Do not, however, make the mistake of being drawn off into secondary tasks which will cause the neglect of your eternal assignments such as giving birth to and rearing the spirit children of our Father in Heaven. Pray carefully over all your decisions.
We wish you to pursue and to achieve that education, therefore, which will fit you for eternity as well as for full service in mortality. In addition to those basic and vital skills which go with homemaking, there are other skills which can be appropriately cultivated and which will increase your effectiveness in the home, in the Church, and in the community. Again, you must be wise in the choices that you make, but
we do not desire the women of the Church to be uninformed or ineffective. You will be better mothers and wives, both in this life and in eternity, if you sharpen the skills you have been given and use the talents with which God has blessed you. So yes, these influential speakers do something that “almost feels like a cover-up”. They are careful to speak sheepese. They do not attack or criticize Mormon sacred cows of church leadership that would cause many to get defensive and tune out the message altogether. They avoid being critical of the sacred cows even if that might mean that they have to dance around and otherwise ignore what some may feel to be the elephant in the room. They may even employ a little bit of revisionist history and cherry picking by only selecting the quotes that fit their theme and cutting those that do not.
It can be like adding the proverbial “spoon full of sugar” that makes the Mormon medicine go down – not to be choked on or rejected. The LDS church (and Christianity before that) has a long history of cloaking new ideas in old trappings in order for them to gain respectability and acceptance. The process continues in our day.
Therefore, I can agree with the points made by both dande and Curt.
Love the comments, Roy, thanks. The Givens make a point similar to Wilcox’s in The Christ Who Heals, and I totally agree – I think LDS theology does teach a “better” version of the atonement (but that most latter-day saints don’t get it). Thanks for sharing, Curt – I probably would not have seen this otherwise. Love this comment from the article (the last paragraph):
Quote:My faith is in God. I am so grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ found in His Church. I have always loved it and wanted to learn more about it. The more I study the scriptures, the more that love grows. I’ve lived the gospel and I’ve seen its blessings. I don’t think I could live my life as well or as happily if I weren’t a member of the Church. Thanks to the Savior and His gospel, I can become better and find peace through any struggle I have.
I like it because it does not conflate the gospel and the church and it’s a very simple profession of faith. I could honestly say all of this myself, although I would likely soften the “I don’t think I could live….” line a bit.
There is no question racism exists in the church.
Old Timer wrote:
This was an individual’s story of facing ongoing racismfrom members of the Church, not a doctrinal or historical treatise or essay. Laying the burden of an almost cover-up on this personal story of on-going racism is not something I am willing to do.
I’m sorry if you’re offended by the stigma of the term “cover up”. FWIW, I don’t think a “cover up” is in itself a bad thing; I said it was as close as we can get to a retraction, which the Church cannot do. It is a very tactful, positive step. Curt said it all better than I could.
When I joined the church, it was a different century and we were much closer in time to the 1978 declaration. Now, many years on, I feel more comfortable and work closely with black people in my ward. I can’t speak for the traditional Mormon areas, but round here, if we have racism it is mostly “background racism”, i.e. the same level as the outside world.
I deeply regret this aspect of our past. It has often made me very angry and no one will say “we were wrong”. We tend to have a gradualist church – we often forget that David O. McKay also extended the priesthood some years before. However, I think we need to look to the future. I think Africa will be the big growth area for the church in the near future.
On another note, it was good to see that “white baby challenge” woman ex’d from our church. All too often high profile excommunications are badly handled. In this case the church put a line under the matter.
I didn’t mean to sound offended, Dande. I understand the need to “almost cover up” sometimes, especially in progressive, scholarly articles. I just don’t see it in this piece, especially since it is a regular member’s candid experience with current racism, not even an attempt at scholarly examination. That is an important difference to me.
Also, thank you for the way you have responded in this thread. It is an excellent example of why your participation is so valuable here.
I know where Dande is coming from with this. There is a kind of wilful neglect of our past. While some might say to let sleeping dogs lie, the COJCLDS can never admit its past errors. This probably comes of the idea that we are the true church, prophet will never lead us astray etc. But like I’ve said we are a gradualist church. In a thread earlier this year, I point out some interesting facts about RMN:
http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=8680 Quote:Born 54 years before priesthood opened up to blacks, joined 38 years before the declaration. Since the declaration was 40 years ago, he has spent approximately half his church life under the priesthood ban.
One more thing (with all due respect) that rubbed me the wrong way, was the title and focus story of the article, really had nothing to do with racism within the Church. The friend was not said to be a member, and the college was not said to be BYU. There are real and deep systemic problems with racism in our country. Blacks are still underprivileged, largely because their parents were openly discriminated against, specifically in housing, education, and employment. While it’s illegal now, the effects are still present. So we decide to give Africans a preference when it comes to higher education. It levels the playing field. However, now we’ve got a situation where a Caucasian, who has better grades, might get turned down from university/employment, in favor of an African who has worse grades. The Caucasian worked hard, and was ultimately discriminated against because of the color of their skin. That stings. To make things worse, now the African is viewed as being given a hand up in life, regardless of their hard work, intelligence, or efforts. That stings too.
The only Church-related discrimination mentioned, was people thinking she was a convert. This is because there just weren’t a lot of African members pre-ban, and is a fairly reasonable presumption. But the actual systemic historical racism brought on by the Church is flaunted.
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