From the good ol' days of the Lamanite Placement program:
Spencer W. Kimball wrote:The day of the Lamanites is nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised (2 Ne. 30:6). In this picture of the twenty Lamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twenty were as light as Anglos; five were darker but equally delightsome. The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation.
At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter were present, the little member girl—sixteen—sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents—on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather. There was the doctor in a Utah city who for two years had had an Indian boy in his home who stated that he was some shades lighter than the younger brother just coming into the program from the reservation. These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness. One white elder jokingly said that he and his companion were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated.
You've probably seen that part quoted before, but it continues:
The missionaries are having great experiences in proselyting, in teaching, in organizing, in carrying on Primaries, Relief Societies. They direct women in making quilts and towels and pot holders, which they say they can sell faster than they can make them; but always a Relief Society bazaar is in their future plans. They pound up broken pottery and clay to make new pottery. They do beadwork, learn cooking; they are taught first aid, bleeding-stoppage, use of splints, resuscitation, moving the injured; they are taught to speak and to sing. Three lovely Lamanite sisters sang a trio in one of our meetings. Two elders in one area were actually teaching the women how to make diapers.
We find the Indians are learning to be adaptable and resourceful, and from tradition they are coming to truth, from legend to fact, from sand paintings and sings to administration and ordinances.
Wow, these backwards and barbaric tribal women are actually learning how to sing and cook and make diapers! How adaptable! How resourceful!
In case you don't know, whyme, this is the kind of cultural discourse the women justme listened to are drawing on. You can even hear an echo of the last sentence in the "moving from levi's to white collars" metaphor of today.
I doubt many (or any) of the women justme described are conscious racists; they are merely retelling the basic faith promoting stories of LDS Lamanite lore, a lore that is built into the religion via the mythos of the Book of Mormon. While the Lamanite placement program has been discontinued, and Mormon leaders and apologists are delicately reworking the meaning of the term "Lamanite" itself, this lore continues to circulate and probably will continue to unless more drastic changes are made.
From the Ernest L. Wilkinson Diaries: "ELW dreams he's spattered w/ grease. Hundreds steal his greasy pants."