Dear Droopy: Joseph Smith said the Lamanites are a race

[_Darth J]

In another thread, Droopy asserts that the Book of Mormon cannot possibly be racist, in part because the Book of Mormon does not talk about "races" of people.

No matter how you struggle, squirm, twist, wiggle, shake, rattle, and roll, there is nothing racial at all in the Book of Mormon. There is ethnicity, there are nations, kindreds, tongues, and peoples, but not races. Skin color, or any other morphological trait, has nothing to do with race, and especially in the Book of Mormon. The text of the Book of Mormon never mentions race, or gives any indication that the Nephites thought of the Lamanites as anything other than their brethren and as apostates who's fathers lead them away from the gospel and who's culture and society reflect that benighted reality.

Everything in the Book of Mormon relative to the Nephite/Lamanite split and the conflicts between them are expressed in terms of spiritual, cultural, social, political, and moral dynamics, not racial.

Indeed, the only actual mention of skin color as a reason to dislike the Lamanites a priori is denounced as sin by the Book of Mormon itself.

For all the incessant huffing and puffing about this issue among the secularist critics of the Church, the book itself cannot not be used as a proof text or religious support for racism. It isn't in the book.

Unfortunately, this is how the Prophet Joseph Smith referred to the peoples described in the Book of Mormon. From the March 1, 1842 Times and Seasons (BYU Digital Collections archive here, or an HTML version here):

We are informed by these records that America in ancient times has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites and came directly from the tower of Babel. The second race came directly from the city of Jerusalem, about six hundred years before Christ. They were principally Israelites, of the descendants of Joseph. The Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the inheritance of the country. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle towards the close of the fourth century. The remnant are the Indians that now inhabit this country.

And he also equates the Lamanites with the American Indians, which is a real race of people in the real world.

So Droopy, no matter how you struggle, squirm, twist, wiggle, shake, rattle, and roll, the Choice Seer who translated the ancient Nephite record by the power of God said that the Book of Mormon is discussing races of people.

[_Darth J]

By the way, how did Joseph Smith know that the Indians were the remnant of the Lamanites? From the same "Church History" article by the Prophet:

I was also informed concerning the aboriginal inhabitants of this country, and shown who they were, and from whence they came; a brief sketch of their origin, progress, civilization, laws, governments, of their righteousness and iniquity, and the blessings of God being finally withdrawn from them as a people was made known unto me: I was also told where there was deposited some plates on which were engraven an abridgement [abridgment] of the records of the ancient prophets that had existed on this continent. The angel appeared to me three times the same night and unfolded the same things. After having received many visits from the angels of God unfolding the majesty, and glory of the events that should transpire in the last days, on the morning of the 22d of September A. D. 1827, the angel of the Lord delivered the records into my hands.

[_Darth J]

I wonder how the Semitic genes of the children of Lehi were lost in the vast sea of native peoples with whom they interbred, since the Prophet Joseph Smith explains that the Book of Mormon tells us "that America in ancient times has been inhabited by two distinct races of people," those being the Jaredites and the Lehites. And the Jaredites were completely wiped out, while the Lehites "succeeded them in the inheritance of the country."

[_Equality]

Yes, and the Book of Abraham refers to race as well. Droopy and the mopes are all wet on this. They know the truth: that Joseph Smith and every so-called prophet since has taught that the Lamanites were a race of people as that term has been commonly understood in the English language for the last several centuries. It's another example of the apologists throwing the apostles under the bus when it is convenient for their argument. Nobody is fooled by their chicanery.

[_Darth J]

Nobody is fooled by their chicanery.

I think they are doing okay at fooling their target audience, which is themselves.

[_Darth J]

Yes, and the Book of Abraham refers to race as well.

Why, yes it does!

Abraham 1:24

When this woman discovered the land it was under water, who afterward settled her sons in it; and thus, from Ham, sprang that race which preserved the curse in the land.

But how can this be, since we have the assurances of Droopy and bcspace and FAIR that the priesthood ban was not about race? It sure is a head-scratcher!

[_Shulem]

Nobody is fooled by their chicanery.

I think they are doing okay at fooling their target audience, which is themselves.

You're so right about that. Droopy is just another joker-Mormon who is simply trying to convince himself and maintain testimony in something that has been proven false over and over. Droopy would throw any of the past Mormon apostles and prophets under the bus just to wiggle out of a tight spot. He's a Mormon prophet killer driving like a madman over the bodies of Mormon prophets he threw under the bus. That's spiritual murder. He's guilty.

Paul O

[_tapirrider]

Everything in the Book of Mormon relative to the Nephite/Lamanite split and the conflicts between them are expressed in terms of spiritual, cultural, social, political, and moral dynamics, not racial.

The problem is that Droopy's argument ignores the fact that labeling a culture to be inferior is racist. To be perfectly clear, I'm not talking about the mythical people in the Book of Mormon now, I'm talking about the living people that the Book of Mormon applies to; The American Indian enrolled tribal members in the US. The Book of Mormon is racist by the definition given in The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Page 2
Affirming further that all doctrines, policies and practices based on or advocating superiority of peoples or individuals on the basis of national origin or racial, religious, ethnic or cultural differences are racist, scientifically false, legally invalid, morally condemnable and socially unjust

Mormonism does in fact teach that American Indians must accept the LDS gospel or they remain cursed. Droopy did make mention of existing degenerate cultures.

[_Samantabhadra]

1) He was speaking as a man.

2) What he meant by "race" is culturally determined by the exigencies of 19th century vernacular and to impute the contemporary meaning of "race" on the words of Joseph Smith is rank historicism.

[_Droopy]

In another thread, Droopy asserts that the Book of Mormon cannot possibly be racist, in part because the Book of Mormon does not talk about "races" of people.

No matter how you struggle, squirm, twist, wiggle, shake, rattle, and roll, there is nothing racial at all in the Book of Mormon. There is ethnicity, there are nations, kindreds, tongues, and peoples, but not races. Skin color, or any other morphological trait, has nothing to do with race, and especially in the Book of Mormon. The text of the Book of Mormon never mentions race, or gives any indication that the Nephites thought of the Lamanites as anything other than their brethren and as apostates who's fathers lead them away from the gospel and who's culture and society reflect that benighted reality.

Everything in the Book of Mormon relative to the Nephite/Lamanite split and the conflicts between them are expressed in terms of spiritual, cultural, social, political, and moral dynamics, not racial.

Indeed, the only actual mention of skin color as a reason to dislike the Lamanites a priori is denounced as sin by the Book of Mormon itself.

For all the incessant huffing and puffing about this issue among the secularist critics of the Church, the book itself cannot not be used as a proof text or religious support for racism. It isn't in the book.

Unfortunately, this is how the Prophet Joseph Smith referred to the peoples described in the Book of Mormon. From the March 1, 1842 Times and Seasons (BYU Digital Collections archive here, or an HTML version here):

We are informed by these records that America in ancient times has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites and came directly from the tower of Babel. The second race came directly from the city of Jerusalem, about six hundred years before Christ. They were principally Israelites, of the descendants of Joseph. The Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the inheritance of the country. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle towards the close of the fourth century. The remnant are the Indians that now inhabit this country.

And he also equates the Lamanites with the American Indians, which is a real race of people in the real world.

So Droopy, no matter how you struggle, squirm, twist, wiggle, shake, rattle, and roll, the Choice Seer who translated the ancient Nephite record by the power of God said that the Book of Mormon is discussing races of people.

Joseph's rhetoric - the common, accepted, colloquial expressions used in the 19th century to denote various phenomena, such as, in this case, the term "race," does not represent official Church doctrine, nor is there any evidence that Joseph intended it to be taken as so. "Race," as Joseph is here using it, as indicating "a group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution" is a completely non-ideological and non discriminatory usage - a common anthropological usage without racialist overtones.

Let's not conflate common, unreflective usage of common linguistic conventions as being indicative of underlying doctrinal or philosophical assumptions. "Race" means different things to different people, only one of which implies innate genetic differences that determine human potential.

One notices as well that, contra the endless word gaming in this forum along these lines, Joseph clearly considered both the Nephites and Lamanites to be of the same lineage and the same biological background, and hence, of the same "race" differentiated only by slight morphological differences. If whites in the old South had only thought of black people as looking different, there would have been little problem. But they thought of blacks as a separate and distinct sub-species of human being, an entirely different concept, and one that appears nowhere in LDS scripture, or in Joseph's explications above.

As of yet, you still have not made your case. There is no mention in the Book of Mormon of "race" in the modern sense, nor any teaching regarding any innate or inherent inferiority between the Nephites or Lamanites based on anything but culture and behavior.

Fail, in other words, as is the usual case in here.