Mitt Romney and the Curse of Blackness (Huff Post)

[_moksha]

The author is on a political tightrope. He avows he is not calling Romney racist, but then he still points to the racism inherent in the Book of Mormon and says, "See!".

To be completely honest, he should have mentioned that the Book of Mormon was a product of its time and that the LDS Church and its most of its members have since moved on to a more enlightened understanding.

[_bcspace]

Exactly. Mormons weren't racist against black people because of the Book of Mormon; they were (and are) racist against Native Americans

Still wondering how black skin as a curse (not necessarily the case with the descendents of Cain) equates to racism.

[_bcspace]

The author is on a political tightrope. He avows he is not calling Romney racist, but then he still points to the racism inherent in the Book of Mormon and says, "See!".

To be completely honest, he should have mentioned that the Book of Mormon was a product of its time and that the LDS Church and its most of its members have since moved on to a more enlightened understanding.

His expectation is that Romney denounce the Book of Mormon.

[_mms]

I don't think the author was necessarily stating that the Book of Mormon addressed Africans specifically, but that it makes the clear point that God's manner of cursing people is to give them a "skin of blackness." Thus, it is not a huge leap to say that the Book of Mormon states that blacks are black because of a curse. Clearly, God does not think much of dark skin according to the Book of Mormon, no? Why use it as a curse (and, yes, the skin color was used as a curse) if it is not a negative?

Mormons will try to slice it thinly and it will sound ridiculous. Antley says in his response that the Church "repudiated" its prior racist teachings. Not all of them by a long shot--only those that contradict the revelation of 1978. There is much that has not been repudiated, but I predict it will be. And when it is, we will hear how that has how it has always been and the Brethren were just clarifying things and not because of public pressure, blah blah blah.

[_mms]

I imagine this gem from Apostle Spencer W. Kimball at a 1960 General Conference will make its way into a column...

"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."

Link to talk: http://scriptures.BYU.edu/gettalk.php?ID=1091&era=yes

[_Morley]

Still wondering how black skin as a curse (not necessarily the case with the descendents of Cain) equates to racism.

Hmm. A conundrum. How could calling black skin a curse be interpreted as racism?

[_ldsfaqs]

Still wondering how black skin as a curse (not necessarily the case with the descendents of Cain) equates to racism.

Hmm. A conundrum. How could calling black skin a curse be interpreted as racism?

For one black skin wasn't the "curse"..... Being denied the Priesthood was the curse.
Black skin was a "mark", not a sure sign..... Other things like lineage determined if you were under the curse or not.

Even white men were denied the Priesthood..... Those DAMN RACIST Mormons!!!

Yah, those DAMN white men, who ate in White Only Restaurants, used white toilets, etc. etc.
Ya, those DAMN Mormons were "racist" against those DAMN white men.....

[_schreech]

Even white men were denied the Priesthood..... Those DAMN RACIST Mormons!!!

Yet another unsubstantiated claim from an angry apostate....In other words: CFR

[_Sethbag]

ldsfags, if any white men were discriminated against by the church because of this policy, it was because of the "one drop" concept that held that these white men were tainted by having at least one black ancestor. This hardly absolves the church of the claim of racism if they banned these guys under the "one drop" concept.

One more thing, while you're here. You say that it wasn't skin color that determined whether a person was banned, but rather lineage. This is patently false, because it was (skin_color == black ) && (continent_of_origin == Africa), to put it in the succinct terminology of the C programming language. That is, a black-skinned man whose ancestors (or the man himself) came from Africa was banned.

Coming from Africa, however, is not a lineage. There are many different lineages of black-skinned people in Africa. As I pointed out in another thread recently, a Khoisan man is certainly a black African, but is genetically unrelated to most other blacks on the continent going back tens of thousands of years, and is in fact more distantly related to northern African blacks than white Europeans are. He certainly cannot have come from the cursed lineage of Ham, or Cain, or whoever, at least not if science has correctly traced this lineage back through time.

The church's black African designation doesn't take this into consideration, however, and just assumes that all black men from Africa were of the same lineage, being the lineage of Cain, continued past the Flood of Noah by Ham's marrying Egyptus, as recorded in the Book of Abraham, just a few thousand years ago.

The bottom line is that the church's policy is both racist and non-scientific. How you can continue to defend it is beyond me, but then again I'm just a lying, idiot, god-damn apostate to you, so whatever.

[_Aristotle Smith]

As I pointed out in another thread recently, a Khoisan man is certainly a black African, but is genetically unrelated to most other blacks on the continent going back tens of thousands of years, and is in fact more distantly related to northern African blacks than white Europeans are.

If there is one thing the recent DNA and the Book of Mormon debate has taught us, it's that God loves to play games with DNA.