DCP doubles down on semantics to salvage Brigham’s racist legacy

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

He’s just weasel wording the word ‘slavery’ because Utahns used ‘contracts’ to force a form of indentured servitude on natives and black slaves. This practice was legalized, but the contracts themselves were just exploited by bad actors or ignored entirely.

Edit: Here’s the Act - https://bhroberts.org/records/dAzxtc-V6 ... hatgpt.com

Dan is a sociopath.

[Rivendale]

He’s just weasel wording the word ‘slavery’ because Utahns used ‘contracts’ to force a form of indentured servitude on natives and black slaves. This practice was legalized, but the contracts themselves were just exploited by bad actors or ignored entirely.

Edit: Here’s the Act - https://bhroberts.org/records/dAzxtc-V6 ... hatgpt.com

Dan is a sociopath.

I don't see a difference between what California did and what Brigham Young and Utah did with "contracts". Am I missing something?

So, despite the fact that it was a free state, the legislature came up with ways to allow enslavers to maintain the labor of enslaved people.

[drumdude]

He’s just weasel wording the word ‘slavery’ because Utahns used ‘contracts’ to force a form of indentured servitude on natives and black slaves. This practice was legalized, but the contracts themselves were just exploited by bad actors or ignored entirely.

Edit: Here’s the Act - https://bhroberts.org/records/dAzxtc-V6 ... hatgpt.com

Dan is a sociopath.

I don't see a difference between what California did and what Brigham Young and Utah did with "contracts". Am I missing something?

So, despite the fact that it was a free state, the legislature came up with ways to allow enslavers to maintain the labor of enslaved people.

Exactly. It was slavery by another name. Dan has completely lost the plot.

[Doctor Scratch]

There is a balanced and helpful review of This Abominable Slavery posted to the Times & Seasons blog, and it highlights everything that's wrong with the Afore's approach:

Indeed, based on what I’ve read before, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that “Young was clear that he opposed the idea of property in man and refused to allow human beings to be either categorized or treated as chattel” (217). At the same time, there was “an underlying racism that animated his views” and “Young refused to see Black people as equal to white people” (pp. 217–218). One reason for this was that “he fully believed in the curse of Canaan dogma, here conflated with the curse of Ham. Moreover, Young expressly connected the curse with servitude for people of African descent”, which “was entirely unexceptional.” Servitude, in this case, was “best described as subordination or dependence,” rather than chattel slavery—a “kind of public guardianship” or “quasi-dependent status in relationship to white people” that led to Young advocating for a type of benevolent paternalism (p. 79). That belief in the curse of Cain/Canaan/Ham and refusal to see Black people as equal to White (along with fears of multiracial offspring resulting from mixed-race unions) played into his solidification of the nascent priesthood and temple ban during his 1852 speeches to the legislature.

What you get instead on "SeN" is this repeated phrase: "Brigham Young was a racist by twenty-first century standards." But *not* by 19th century standards? Was he an abolitionist? No: clearly not. But that qualifier appears over and over again on "SeN": it's meant to make it seem as if *our* own, 21st century views are somehow benighted and crippled with "presentism." But as the Times & Seasons review shows, there is certainly a much more balanced (and honest) way to approach the history.

Also, unless he rejects the D&C, then the Afore absolutely *does* believe that he will be attended to by "ministering servants." I wonder, will he demand that a TK Smoothied version of Christopher Hitchens serve him Doritos Locos tacos on a silver platter?

[Rivendale]

There is a balanced and helpful review of This Abominable Slavery posted to the Times & Seasons blog, and it highlights everything that's wrong with the Afore's approach:

Indeed, based on what I’ve read before, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that “Young was clear that he opposed the idea of property in man and refused to allow human beings to be either categorized or treated as chattel” (217). At the same time, there was “an underlying racism that animated his views” and “Young refused to see Black people as equal to white people” (pp. 217–218). One reason for this was that “he fully believed in the curse of Canaan dogma, here conflated with the curse of Ham. Moreover, Young expressly connected the curse with servitude for people of African descent”, which “was entirely unexceptional.” Servitude, in this case, was “best described as subordination or dependence,” rather than chattel slavery—a “kind of public guardianship” or “quasi-dependent status in relationship to white people” that led to Young advocating for a type of benevolent paternalism (p. 79). That belief in the curse of Cain/Canaan/Ham and refusal to see Black people as equal to White (along with fears of multiracial offspring resulting from mixed-race unions) played into his solidification of the nascent priesthood and temple ban during his 1852 speeches to the legislature.

What you get instead on "SeN" is this repeated phrase: "Brigham Young was a racist by twenty-first century standards." But *not* by 19th century standards? Was he an abolitionist? No: clearly not. But that qualifier appears over and over again on "SeN": it's meant to make it seem as if *our* own, 21st century views are somehow benighted and crippled with "presentism." But as the Times & Seasons review shows, there is certainly a much more balanced (and honest) way to approach the history.

Also, unless he rejects the D&C, then the Afore absolutely *does* believe that he will be attended to by "ministering servants." I wonder, will he demand that a TK Smoothied version of Christopher Hitchens serve him Doritos Locos tacos on a silver platter?

Reading through his Gospel Tangents discussion I kept noticing historical mind reading. It is superfluous in Mormon apologetic circles and tends to craft the narrative which is the exact criticism they levied at Fawn Brodie.

So, he views this law, in his own mind, as a way of moving African Americans towards freedom while they remain in the state of servitude, which, probably, he would have likened to apprenticeship, which was something that he had personally experienced.

What did he think in his own mind about the use of a javelin?

[Doctor Scratch]

You are quite right, Rivendale: there is plenty of speculating and mind-reading going on. Normally, I'd be fine with shrugging and saying, "Ah, well: that's how it goes!" But the Mopologists have spent *decades* attacking others for doing the same thing. So, no: they shouldn't get to "rescue" BY from accusations of racism by using techniques such as mind-reading and speculation.

[MG 2.0]

Right: nobody needs to demonise Brigham Young. He can be an ordinary figure of his time, not a great moral leader but not a terrible person.

He just can't be a Prophet of God. A prophet of God in his time would have heard God saying

Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egypt's land,
Tell old Pharaoh,
Let my people go.

Divine silence may not always be divine approval. If you look at religious history as being partially a product of evolution and interspersed inspiration/revelation to man, including God's prophets, this will help with the understanding that human agency and growth reigns paramount. I don't think any one of us can determine whether or not God approves and/or disapproves of something unless He actually says so. This is true, I think, at both the macro level (organizations such as the church) and the micro level (individuals in their own search for God).

I think it's fairly obvious that from our view and perspective Brigham Young had a predisposition to look at African Americans through eyes that are not ours.

Regards,
MG

[I Have Questions]

I don't think any one of us can determine whether or not God approves and/or disapproves of something unless He actually says so.

Hmmm, so how do we know (reliably) that God has, or hasn’t, spoken to us? Does he have one of those blue tick things so that you know it’s God.Official?

Are you putting the blame for the racist policy that kept black people from the temple and from priesthood office for a hundred years, on God? Or on God’s inability to communicate clearly?

Note: Feel free to use a lot of words to avoid specifically answering those simple questions, just as long as your response isn’t an AI derivative.

[MG 2.0]

I don't think any one of us can determine whether or not God approves and/or disapproves of something unless He actually says so.

Hmmm, so how do we know (reliably) that God has, or hasn’t, spoken to us?

Are you putting the blame for the racist policy that kept black people from the temple and from priesthood office for a hundred years, on God?

Of course not. I think it unwise to "blame" anything on God.

Regards,
MG

[I Have Questions]

Hmmm, so how do we know (reliably) that God has, or hasn’t, spoken to us?

Are you putting the blame for the racist policy that kept black people from the temple and from priesthood office for a hundred years, on God?

Of course not. I think it unwise to "blame" anything on God.

Regards,
MG

Either God is to blame for instigating the racist policy, or God is to blame for allowing His Prophets to lead the Church astray for a hundred years. Which one?