#Mormonism and Racism

[mindfulldsliving]

Discussing Racism in LDS History: A Compassionate Approach

Recently, I received a message regarding a heated discussion over at Glen E. Chatfield’s blog, specifically on his recent post titled Some Quick Thoughts About LDS Racism. The conversation highlights familiar critiques of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) concerning race and the historical statements of its early leaders, such as Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and John…

[anotherpapercut]

genuinely it will never stop baffling me how people will wear twilight shirts and talk about team Edward vs team Jacob and then the same people will be like "I'm not basing my personality off of a piece of media (harry potter) made by a transphobe 😌" like good that's great! so you can excuse racism but you draw the line at transphobia? good to know

[panlight]

The racism is twilight is so unsettling. The author is a racist women mysogynist and yet she gets defended by the twilight fans. I don't know why and how anyone respect meyer. I can't believe she is still cashing or milking the franchise for all it's worth. She made a comment a long time ago she was sick and tired of twilight and was over it...i guess not.

What I've been thinking about lately is how it ties in with Mormonism. Now I don't want to disparage anyone's sincere religious beliefs, but if you look into the Book of Mormon at all as an outsider it does basically the same thing as Twilight -- co-opt Native American history and rewrites it. The Lamanites in the Book of Mormon are understood by many to be the ancestors of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and they were "cursed" with dark skin as punishment but if they became Mormon their skin would lighten over time or at the very least would become white in the afterlife if they believed. As I understand it the church doesn't teach it anymore, but the line from the Book is: "[God] had caused the cursing to come upon [the Lamanites] ... because of their iniquity ... wherefore, as they were White, and exceeding fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people [the Nephites] the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them."

The more I read about it the more I'm like "ohhhhhhh." I mean this is very similar to all vampires becoming white. It's right there.

Which is all to say that this might be cultural. It's 'normal' to her to see Indigenous history and mythology rewritten. There are even some Mormons who think that the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl may have been Jesus Christ so that the Aztec mythology 'fits' within the Book of Mormon story. Not an excuse of course, but an explanation of why SM just so blithely used a real people and re-wrote their history and mythology to suit her own story and why she didn't think it was wrong. It comes off as "I love Native American culture!" and buying mass produced dreamcatchers at some chain store and posting allegedly Native American proverbs and saying her great-grandmother was a Indian Princess. It's not about hate (she loves Jacob!); it's the kind of racism that forgets that these are real, living people with their own histories and not a quirky hobby or interest. The kind that makes white the default and everyone else is exotified.

I still mourn the lost potential of a well-done Indigenous main character in a YA novel though! Jacob had so much promise if it had been handled better, and would have been really ahead of his time in 2005.

I don't think the Tumblr version of the fandom defends it, at least not these days, but I don't know much about the other pockets of fandom.

[theotherpacman]

orson scott card: there is no tragedy greater than the violence we teach to our children before they can understand it - violence against those who, despite how completely and irrevocably different from ourselves they may seem to us, deep down, are people and that's what matters

orson scott card: homosexuals shouldn't be allowed to be members of society <3 and I also hate black people

[pixelgayte]

how the FUCK does someone read

“And it came to pass that those Lamanites who had united with the Nephites were numbered among the Nephites;

And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites;

And their young men and their daughters became exceedingly fair, and they were numbered among the Nephites, and were called Nephites”

and then think, ‘ah yes, the most correct book on earth!’ ?!?!

[the-mountain-flower]

Revisited a story that was very important to me as a child, and learned about the author being very vocal about the harm gender roles & stereotypes cause. I thought "oh that's great!" but was afraid. What if she only applied that logic to cis ppl?

I did some searching, and found out that not only does she support trans ppl, but has also spoken multiple times about how important it is to be able to see protagonists outside of the perceived norm. A.K.A., she doesn't see my very existence as wrong.

I let out a deep sigh of relief. I could continue to enjoy this thing that had been so important to me growing up.

But this isn't the first time something like this has happened. Too often I discover a new artist, or even be unsure of one I've enjoyed the work of for a long time up to the present; and I have to desperately search to know if I can enjoy their work. Either I am extremely relieved, or absolutely crushed.

This shouldn't be necessary. I shouldn't be feeling this deep fear that something so important to me, was created by someone who despises my very existence. That I, as a disabled queer femme ex-mormon Pagan witch who was raised like a girl, will be shoved off the emotional cliff of "this person you looked up to hates you for the same reason all bigots do".

I was so terrified that something that meant so much to me as a kid could've shattered me emotionally. Simply because I didn't know if the person who made it hates people like me.

We shouldn't have to live like this.

[soup-mother]

talking to people about mormonism really is an exercise in how many times you can sit through "i can excuse insane colonial anti indigenous and anti black racism but i draw the line at being homophobic" before you reach across the table and strangle them.

[nobetafortomorrowedie]

I could probably write a whole book on how pernicious the Mormon idea of the Premortal life is. Their belief that we ASKED for this has haunted me my whole life. You can't say that it wasn't your choice to be born in the Mormon church. You can't say that you never wanted this. A lot of Mormons even believe that we got to choose(????) the trials we go through in life before being born.

Prophets and apostles and sunday school teachers would be like You Fought to Be Here today!!! and I would be like I Fight Every Day Just To Stay Alive Bitch!!

[nerdygaymormon]

Do you really believe the racist teachings in Mormonism involving the idea that sin makes people black?

I do not believe that, it's a terrible thing to have ever been taught. Also terrible is the belief that follows from this that if dark-skinned people join the church and repent, they will become "white and delightsome." That's a bunch of racist shit.

Many people see the light-skinned Nephites as the heroes and the dark-skinned Lamanites as the villains of the Book of Mormon. However, that's a false interpretation when considering the book in its entirety.

By the end of the book, the labels Nephite & Lamanite lose their association with color of skin as the two groups have intermixed. Instead, it's behavior which determines who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Kind of makes one wonder if Brigham Young actually finished reading the Book of Mormon.

In addition to what it teaches about faith in Christ, the overarching lesson of the Book of Mormon is that wealth inequality & pride are the real dangers that doom civilizations and those who resort to violence and fail to care for the needy will dwindle in unbelief. And that's how the story ends, showing us the Nephites dwindling to nothing. The Nephites are not heroes, rather they are a cautionary tale.

Cal Burke, a friend of mine, summarizes the Book of Mormon as "a story about a large group of violently racist misogynists who thought they were better than everyone else, & wound up getting annihilated *explicitly because* they would not stop being violently racist misogynists. That's it, that's the plot."

[creature-wizard]

the Book of Mormon hasn’t harmed anybody, please don’t spread that rhetoric, it’s misinformation.

...Literally what part of "it's racist pseudohistory" went over your head? Racist pseudohistory is always harmful. The Book of Mormon is particularly harmful to Native Americans, because it erases their real history and justifies white colonialism.

[aahsoka]

hi any fellow ex mormons heard of the term ‘whitening an area’ in reference to sister missionaries coming to serve in an area where elders previously served. my bf asked me about it but I’ve never heard that term in my life

[vavuska]

Stephanie Meyer in her“The Twilight Saga: Official Illustrated Guide” wrote that vampire pallor is part of the transformation new vampires undergo that beautifies them as their melanin drains away, resulting in their white skin.

In fact, in the first chapter, in which she describes the physical characteristics common to all vampires, Meyer wrote:

In the Twilight universe all vampires were originally human. As vampires, they retain a close physical resemblance to their human form, the only reliably noticeable differences being a universal pallor of skin, a change in eye color, and heightened beauty.

More orver the typical vampire pallor is not attribuite, as traditional thrope impose, to the fact that vampires are dead, recalling the repulsive look of a corpse, but to an element of crystalline, supernatural form of beauty, which is described as following:

The common factor of beauty among vampires is mostly due to this crystalline skin. The perfect smoothness, gloss, and even color of the skin give the illusion of a flawless face.

So, dark skinned or deeper skin toned people will have very light olive skin as vampires. In fact the only creature who keeps a natural dark-skin is Nahuel, the vampire-human hybrid (born to a white European vampire and a indigenous woman), who is described having “dark brown skin”, while his Aunt Huilen, a full-indigenous woman has “an olive tone to her pale skin” due to being a vampire. Let's see more examples in the book where this “white washing” effect of vampirism is more explicit:

Vampires in Stephanie Meyer's books are white and pure because Mormons believe people who are not white will be white in heaven. I can't 100% remember the reason or events but during some event they think God turned some people black because they either betrayed him or Jesus. So when you are a good person and go to heaven he will remove that. If you look into what Mormons believe it's almost as crazy as scientology.

Ok, apparently, Mormons think black and dark-skinned people are in some way descendants of Cain, who was banished from human community and condamned by God to a nomadic life. However, God was pleased by blood sacrifice (God favored Abel who killed animals for God, while Cain offered the products of earth he cultivated) and gives Cain a mark, known as “Mark of Cain” (Genesis 4:15). This mark of Cain is God's promise to offer Cain divine protection from premature death with the stated purpose of preventing anyone from killing him. Bible does not identify the exact nature of the mark God put on Cain. Whatever it was, it was a sign/indicator that Cain was not to be killed (but also a warn that helped others to spot him as a murder to not trust). Some propose that the mark was a scar, or some kind of tattoo (Maybe this is the source of Tattoo Prohibition in Leviticus 19:28). Whatever the case, the precise nature of the mark is not the focus of the passage. The focus is that God would not allow people to exact vengeance against Cain. Whatever the mark on Cain was, it served this purpose.

However, Brigham Young, one of the founders of Mormons and one of the earliest leader, described black people as cursed with dark skin as punishment for Cain’s murder of his brother. “Any man having one drop of the seed of Cane in him cannot hold the priesthood,” he declared in 1852. Young deemed black-white intermarriage so sinful that he suggested that a man could atone for it only by having “his head cut off” and spilling “his blood upon the ground.”

For more information about the racial question among Mormons, I suggest this article of New York Times:

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

Watching interview with the vampire has given me new insight on just why Twilight sucks so much.

Smeyer was obviously aping the flavor of Anne Rice’s vamps, especially Louis, with the ennui about their cursed immortality and the religion complexes about being damned and all that. It’s a very Christian religious sort of horror.

And smeyer took this mold of the vampires distraught and eternally at odds with their own natures and their need to kill humans to prolong their own lives and the deliberate and omnipresent religious horror theming and said—what if actually all of that and then! they are Saved and became Born Again Christians in their immortality and cosplay a perfectly normal Christian nuclear family :)

Just completely missing the point in spectacular fashion.

[cliveguy]

i think we overcorrected on the pushback against "reddit atheism" because i dont think we have to do a "well im sure there are nice mormons <3 not all of them are evil" thing. i think we should possibly be critical of religion sometimes.

[driftwooddestiel]

phenomenon i am sick of witnessing:

random white queer mormon online: i’m so sick of everyone acting like mormonism is an inherently hateful religion. it makes being queer and mormon even harder!! truly the scriptures say you should love everyone no matter what.

other, non-mormon person: that’s fair, but what about the racism in mormonism?

aforementioned white queer mormon: the what

non-mormon: the racism that’s like built into the church

mormon: hateful people don’t make up the entire community!! stop defining mormonism by its bad actors, queer mormons literally exist so clearly mormonism doesn’t have to be about hate

non-mormon: what do queer mormons existing have to do with racism

mormon: clearly you’ve never met MY ward, the uniquely un-prejudiced ward where everyone loves everyone and everybodys super progressive. sometimes we watch general conference and don’t even agree with the speakers on some stuff actually

and then the mormon person refuses to acknowledge any of the systemic racism in mormonism and calls any criticism of the scriptures and the ‘backstory’ of mormonism religious discrimination and insensitive. and nobody learns anything

[likeadog]

yanking this from what i said in a server earlier but like this is just sort of my speculation from my own personal ride and stuff so i could be off but i think. when you grow up in the church, as a white american, and then you leave it, you sort of get stuck in a mental rut where you feel disconnected from a cultural identity or community. i know personally even now i struggle to relate to the regional culture where i live, because i was pretty sheltered from it. because mormonism is built for white people (and esp white americans), you slot in so well that when you leave it feels like youve got nothing to look back on, in terms of family history or tradition or food etc which yknow, again, isnt the same as the violence inflicted on poc in the church, but its just part of it being a cult and having such a parasitic involvement in your life

the problem though is that for mormons, its not just a culture of self-inflicted suffrage, its a downright victim industrial complex. and since thats what weve leaned back on to lick our wounds our whole lives, we make 'victimhood' our new culture. its the same mormon mindset of self-soothing, echo chamber shortsightedness, but because in our minds we're 'against' the church, we feel as if we're already absolved of the heavy lifting to unpack that until it starts making us personally feel sad. and thats how you end up with culturally mormon fuckwits on tumblr making coffee jokes and explaining their coming out story on a post about the church's history of racism or getting mad when they aren't immediately presumed to be entirely without remnants of those beliefs