Why is the Church still promoting the idea that black skin is inferior?

[_Gadianton]

Even if the curse was just underwear, it's the same problem as if polygamy was just spiritual. God would have to be the most incompetent know-nothing in the universe to pull something like that. So god uses this totally benign tactic of colored underwear to manage a few thousand people who buried their history about it for the benefit of people in modern times, when racism is abundant within society, especially among the religiously enlightened. The interpretation seems obviously about race and the offspring of the survivors from history really do have dark skin. So now, a big problem already with racism is re-enforced by a narrative much similar to other similar racist narratives, and tens of millions are affected in a bad way. And then one day, some dip-crap scholar discovers through a tortured analysis of words that it really meant underwear. Oops! The most correct book of the face of the earth was right all along, but nobody, including all the prophets, had the ability to discern the rightful meaning until long after society had made the misreading unacceptable.

The Mopologists put the "D" in Dumb, I swear to god.

[_Philo Sofee]

Fence Sitter
It is amazing how consistently the Mormon God is about 50 years behind in social moral standards.

Give him a break, he is getting pretty ole, just like his geriatric leadership he keeps calling in Salt Lake City.....its Godsheimer's the deity version of the human disease. It's not his fault, lets go easy on him, after all he has a lot of people to save and hasn't done much about it for 2,000 years...

[_Philo Sofee]

Gad
The Mopologists put the "D" in Dumb, I swear to god.

You forgot the "S" in stupid, and the "L" in LDSFaqs. The "P" in Peterson Priesthood and the "M" n Mormon Midgley, and the "K" in Kooky Kiwi.

[_ldsfaqs]

Even if the curse was just underwear, it's the same problem as if polygamy was just spiritual. God would have to be the most incompetent know-nothing in the universe to pull something like that. So god uses this totally benign tactic of colored underwear to manage a few thousand people who buried their history about it for the benefit of people in modern times, when racism is abundant within society, especially among the religiously enlightened. The interpretation seems obviously about race and the offspring of the survivors from history really do have dark skin. So now, a big problem already with racism is re-enforced by a narrative much similar to other similar racist narratives, and tens of millions are affected in a bad way. And then one day, some ____ scholar discovers through a tortured analysis of words that it really meant underwear. Oops! The most correct book of the face of the earth was right all along, but nobody, including all the prophets, had the ability to discern the rightful meaning until long after society had made the misreading unacceptable.

The Mopologists put the "D" in Dumb, I swear to god.

The curse was not "underwear", that is a perversion of what is being said and meant.
The curse was not having the gospel.
The sign of the curse was a persons "countenance" their spirit, i.e. their "skin".

As cheezy as the Book of Mormon Movie was, their portrayal of the Lamanites was pretty much spot on.
You'll note, it wasn't "racial" or "skin color" based... It was what was in their souls, their behaviors as manifested in their "appearance" a.k.a. skin.

You all need to watch the videos I posted, and learn something.

[_Gadianton]

The curse was not "underwear", that is a perversion of what is being said and meant.

go explain that to your Mopologist brother on Sic et Non, JP Lambert. He's nearly as unhinged as you are so you guys might get on.

[_ldsfaqs]

The curse was not "underwear", that is a perversion of what is being said and meant.

go explain that to your Mopologist brother on Sic et Non, JP Lambert. He's nearly as unhinged as you are so you guys might get on.

You confuse YOUR lack of understanding of things with him being "wrong".

Watch the videos I posted, and you'll understand why. "Garments" or "skins" have a long history of scriptural symbolism in relation to righteousness.

[_Shulem]

"K" in Kooky Kiwi.

No, it's "K" as in what's the King's name in Facsimile No. 3?



Stupid Mormons. Stupid ldsfaqs! He's the dumbest Mormon on the Internet. He's even dumber than JeZus!

[_Dr LOD]

Given that the policy was lifted when institutional racism and with most people racism itself was finally gone from America in the mainstream, it's not a wonder why it existed in the first place, and why and when it was finally lifted.

Systemic institutionalized racism is just beginning to be recognized for the insidious evil it is and is very much alive in most places including the LDS church.

It is disappointing that these type of beliefs are sitting in the church pews. But it does explain a lot.

[_I have a question]

Jana Riess, in a well written article about white privilege within Mormonism, makes the point that Nelson and the Church are stuck in the 1980's when it comes to thoughts about race. Riess starts by referring to Nelson's recent statement on the current situation:

An unequivocal statement condemning racism is good to see. It’s an improvement that the church is addressing the elephant in the room — racism, most recently exemplified in the brutal killing of George Floyd last week in Minneapolis, though the statement does not name him or cite his death.
The church has not always stepped in to denounce racism. As late as the 1960s and 1970s, some of its top leaders were staunch segregationists, with apostle Mark E. Petersen saying that since the Lord himself had separated the races, “who is man to change that segregation?” (Heaven, however, would be integrated ... because if black people were “faithful all [their] days,” they could go there as servants. Um, thank you?)
That teaching has been repudiated by more recent leaders and church statements, as have other racist doctrines of the past, such as that black people bore the mark of Cain, that they were less valiant in their premortal lives, and that interracial marriage was a “wicked virus,” as apostle J. Reuben Clark taught in 1946. It’s a long and sad list.
But if the church has made strides since the middle of the 20th century, its ideas about race seem to be grounded not in contemporary realities but somewhere in the in-between world of racial dynamics in the United States in the 1980s.

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2020/06 ... ess-white/

In the 1980s world, it became expected that middle-class white people would denounce individual racial prejudice as unkind and even un-American. But they were not expected to acknowledge racism as a systemic problem of ongoing injustice, rather than just the occasional result of poor individual choices.
I’m grateful for Nelson’s statement, especially the first half that I quoted above. The second half brings up more complicated feelings:
“Any nation can only be as great as its people. That requires citizens to cultivate a moral compass that helps them distinguish between right and wrong.
“Illegal acts such as looting, defacing, or destroying public or private property cannot be tolerated. Never has one wrong been corrected by a second wrong. Evil has never been resolved by more evil.”

On the one hand, I agree with this. I, too, believe that evil has never been resolved by more evil, and that looting and the destruction of property are wrong. On the other hand, I recognize that it’s a hallmark of white privilege to focus on quelling civil unrest without attempting to listen to minority voices and trying to internalize why the unrest is happening — indeed, why it feels like that’s the only thing that will ever get people in power to pay attention.

Unfortunately I think Riess is right, there will need to be civil unrest against the Church (from within or without) if the racism within the Book of Mormon is to be removed. Nelson and Co. are too white to simply remove it because it's the right thing to do.

It doesn’t help that there are so few African Americans who are active Mormons. A range of studies have put their numbers between 1% and 4%. This makes their voices even more invisible in the church than they are in society, where they are 12% or 13% of the population. And while the United States as a whole is diversifying every year, with growing populations of Latinx Americans and Asian Americans as well as African Americans, Mormonism has stayed much the same: it is still between 85% and 90% white.

Which is roughly where it was in the 1980s.

[_I have a question]

From Nelson's statement...“Any of us who has prejudice toward another race needs to repent.”

Has he repented for sustaining the Priesthood Ban?
Has the Church?

Abandonment of Sin. Although confession is an essential element of repentance, it is not enough. The Lord has said, “By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins—behold, he will confess them and forsake them” (Doctrine and Covenants 58:43).

We must maintain an unyielding, permanent resolve that we will never repeat the transgression. When we keep this commitment, we will never experience the pain of that sin again. We must flee immediately from any compromising situation. If a certain situation causes us to sin or may cause us to sin, we must leave. We cannot linger in temptation and expect to overcome sin.

Restitution. We must restore as far as possible all that has been damaged by our actions, whether that is someone’s property or someone’s good reputation. Willing restitution shows the Lord that we will do all we can to repent.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... e?lang=eng

The ongoing failure to remove the racism from the Book of Mormon means the Church (and its Apostles) hasn't abandoned the sin of racism, nor has it made restitution - no public apology for the Ban has ever been made.

Nelson is not practicing what he is telling other people they should do. He's a hypocrite.