Joanna Brooks, the politically correct academic diva of "NOM" cultural Mormonism recently posted the above small essay, which provides a number of insights into why she is considered by many faithful "TBM" Latter day Saints to be a subversive element within the Church who's central approach is to claim "faith" and "belief" in the Church, while in actuality, holding beliefs and values substantially inconsistent with core Church teachings and principles. I intend to follow her postings at Religion Dispatches here in the Celestial, hoping to avoid the "posse" that resides in the lower kingdoms and provoke at least some stimulating, critical discussion of just what she represents within the broader LDS culture and, more specifically, in relation to the Church as the restored visible, organized Kingdom of God on earth.
A few snippets from this essay, and some critique, are called for, just to get a general idea of the culture (not LDS) within which she has developed much of her worldview and philosophy and its interplay and intersection with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints (less various elements of Mormon culture, which is not my primary concern here
Can Anti-Mormon Prejudice be Compared to Anti-Black Racism?
Post by Joanna Brooks
Mild forms of social discrimination against Mormons are real, Riess wrote. But she offered several reasons why the experience of Mormons differs significantly from that of African Americans, including, as she writes:
“White Mormons can easily blend into white society and ‘hide’ their minority status in ways that persons of color cannot.”
“White Mormons face no systemic cultural poverty. They are on par socioeconomically with the rest of America, and in fact fare slightly better in terms of education and affluence.”
“African-American women, according to statistics released yesterday from the Center for American Progress, have an unemployment rate of 13.3%, nearly double that of white women, and make up 53% of those with no health insurance.”
“White Mormons have no history of enslavement.”
Here we come upon a classic example of what is to be found within the steaming swamps of critical theory (cultural Marxism as an academic body of theory and various sectarian doctrines), critical race theory, and Afrocentrism. The basic idea is, of course, that very little, if anything, has really changed for American blacks since the march on Selma and that the vast majority, if not the totality, of the social pathologies that disproportionately afflict indigenous black Americans are the result of systemic and institutional white racism ("institutional" racism is a derivative cultural Marxist concept (that originally arose within black studies in the seventies, which later mutated into Afrocentrism and "Africanology") that implies racism is not simply an individual or group cultural/psychological trait or prejudice that can impact other human beings, but a pervasive and deeply entrenched inherent aspect of virtually all the primary institutions and fundamental ideas underlying American society, including capitalism, limited, representative government, personal responsibility, individualism, the traditional nuclear family, bourgeoisie notions of merit, hard work, thrift, industry, middle class morality etc.) which is as deeply ingrained and pervasive within white American society as it was 60 years ago.
American society is innately and inherently racist in nature, and white racism permeates virtually all aspects, institutions, and relations within society such that American blacks as a collective are to be understood, at the present time, to be a systematically and pervasively oppressed, disenfranchised, discriminated against, and marginalized people.
All social pathologies within the black community that affect blacks at disproportionate, and in some cases vastly disproportionate rates, including a 70% out of wedlock birth rate, massive family breakdown, violence, drug use, gang involvement, and general over-representative criminality; disproportionate welfare dependence and unemployment, precipitous high school drop out rates etc., are understood to be the direct or indirect result of systemic, institutional racism, and not sociocultural dynamics internal to certain segments of the black community itself. Let's look at the claims by one Jana Riess that she approvingly quotes:
White Mormons can easily blend into white society and ‘hide’ their minority status in ways that persons of color cannot.”
This implies that American blacks need to "hide' their black skin among other Americans in the normal course of affairs - an utterly preposterous claim but, keep in mind, this is representative of the state of contemporary political correct humanities and social science departments and their "studies" disciplines, not serious academic reflection.
“White Mormons face no systemic cultural poverty. They are on par socioeconomically with the rest of America, and in fact fare slightly better in terms of education and affluence.”
Neither do American blacks. This is another preposterous claim having no empirical basis, but which is a part of the systemic and pervasive ideological catechism of the academic Left
“African-American women, according to statistics released yesterday from the Center for American Progress, have an unemployment rate of 13.3%, nearly double that of white women, and make up 53% of those with no health insurance.”
Which is, of course, nothing but naked fact without surrounding context or interpretive background. The modern academy, of course, steeped and marinated in race consciousness, racial/ethnic separatism, and a dualistic Marxian oppressed/oppressor mental set that contaminates every humanities and social science discipline and sub-discipline it touches, cannot conceive of the possibility that the internal social and cultural dynamics of a substantial subset of the American black community is primarily responsible for the fundamental and apparently intractable problems that afflict that community.
To so much as even entertain this possibility, of course, is indicative of the permeation and saturation of the typical white American psych with the reflexive if unconscious racism critical race theory claims exits and determines the entire complexion of American civilization. Here, the dominant, capitalist, white male oppressor class that holds the power in society and determines who can climb and succeed and who will not, "blames the victim."
“White Mormons have no history of enslavement.”
True but:
1. Neither do any living blacks for born since the late 19th century.
2. Mormons had the entire Constitution and Bill of Rights removed from them as American citizens, and became a hunted and persecuted out-group, even, at one point, targeted for extinction by a state government.
3. The idea that slavery, which ended a century and a half ago, is relevant to present black social pathologies, or to a aspect of black culture that produces people like Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, and Tookie Williams (and countless teenagers and youths who parrot their clothing, mannerisms, attitudes, values, and language) in substantially disproportionate numbers, is again, preposterous on its face. It also has not the slightest empirical support, but the Anointed have never needed empirical evidence, facts, or critical, philosophical rigor either in the construction or defense of their abstract, ideologically mediated theoretical modeling of the human condition. It is the ideology itself, and the sense of moral and intellectual anointing that dogmatic adherence to the ideology (and the various activist "movements" such ideology inevitably spawns, including ideologically based activist movements that masquerade as academic disciplines - such as woman's studies, etc.) confers upon its acolytes
One of the ways scholars of race gauge racism is in terms of life chances and outcomes. Is a child born African American in this country statistically more likely to experience different life outcomes than a child born into a non-African-American Mormon family?
Which is, of course, precisely the way the academic Left as avoided intellectual rigor and analytical substance for decades. The answers to the what otherwise would be academic questions have already been answered by the ideology that underlies that very asking of the question: White racism. The questions then, become nothing more than a connecting of dots, not questions to which philosophical rigor and critical thinking are to be applied as if there's actually something to research and learn.
(Thinking about how religion and race intersect for black Mormons would add a new wrinkle to the analysis.)
Yes, especially by leftist academics and philosopher kings who have invested themselves wholly in a collectivist, identity based conception of the human condition.
Analytically, just by the numbers, just for the fact of being born black, a child is statistically more likely to experience poverty, lack of access to health care, lower rates of college education, higher rates of incarceration, worse health outcomes, and death at a younger age than a child born white. Can the same be said of the life chances of a child born into a Mormon family compared to those of a child born into a non-Mormon family? No.
Which to someone who is not a cultural Marxist, critical race theorist, Afrocentrist, or multiculturalist, means utterly nothing, in and of itself. What we would then want to know is why these disproportionate contrasts exist. Long ago, we would have set out to dispassionately study the dynamics and variables surrounding such social phenomena, with the idea that we would try to be as objective, critical, and honest as we could be about the results.
Joanna Brooks, unfortunately, is among a generation and cohort of leftist academics who entered western academia precisely with the idea of colonizing, subverting, restructuring, and turning higher education away from education and toward indoctrination and relentless intellectual conformity centered in their own image and their own vision of the world.
But prejudice against Mormons is not a defining and constituting fact of American life, the way slavery and anti-black racism (which is the residue of slavery)
have been.
Since when?
We will see, in some other posts.
