Racism has been everywhere lately, I mean it’s always been here, but recently it has shown it’s ugly head in the mainstream of America. We see the ugliness that happened in Charlottesville, where all the bigots come out to express their backward way of thinking, under the protection of the first amendment. It’s sad and it makes me wonder who I really am living amongst. I’m Caucasian, my wife’s nationality is Mexican, and she is very dark complected. It makes me wonder what people really think of my relationship.

I mainly grew up in Utah County. In many ways I hated jr. high and high school. I didn’t get along with a lot of the people I grew up around. Racist things were said all the time, mostly from people who watched too many movies, and didn’t even know anyone personally from another race or nationality. I played sports growing up and heard the things people on my team would say about minorities. Especially when they would get mad, they would insult their race or nationality. They really thought they were above them. How did Utah County, home of just nice smiling religious people who profess acceptance, become so brainwashed in racism?

My wife didn’t really know what a Mormon was when her family moved here from Mexico, she was 18. They opened a Mexican restaurant, and one day an older man came into their restaurant.  She was working, and he asked her, “Do you want to know the real history of your people?” My wife, being polite like she is, said okay. She did not really know what to expect, and the old man proceeded to tell her about people sailing here from Jerusalem, and how some of them got in trouble with God and were cursed with dark skin. Then the dark skin cursed people killed off the white ones, etc. She didn’t know what to say, but she knew one thing, he was out of his mind.

When Donald Trump was running for president, I kept seeing people on facebook say, “He’s just saying what people think, but are afraid to say.” Or things like, “He’s telling it like it is.” However I never thought that. I thought, “This guy is an idiot! He’s a racist, and a complete moron.” I hoped people would wake up, but like we all know he won, and he won Utah easily. That scared me. I always knew there were a lot of closet racists, but I didn’t know there were this many. How could anyone vote for somebody who acts like that? I guess deep down a lot of Mormons feel like they really are better than minorities, and people from other countries. They’ve been taught this all their lives, learning the reasons for differences between skin color. If you’re white you’re the best, the most valiant. If you’re not white you’ve been cursed, and didn’t fight hard in the preexistence. How can people not see how insane this is?

My wife is the most beautiful woman in the world. No one can convince me that she is from a cursed people, and wasn’t valiant enough so she was born brown in Mexico! That’s such a backwards way of thinking. I’ve heard all the apologists excuses from the priesthood ban on black people to trying to explain dark skin cursing, and it’s dumb. It’s not right, it’s just messed up, like all the people who marched in Charlottesville. Including people who voted for a guy like Donald Trump, after hearing the things he said about other races and nationalities. Are people always going to choose leaders they have to make excuses for?

Here are some of the racist things from Mormon leaders and scholars:

-Mormon President and Prophet Joseph Fielding Smith, “Doctrines of Salvation”, pp. 61.

• “There is a reason why one man is BORN BLACK and with other DISADVANTAGES while another is BORN WHITE with great ADVANTAGES.”
• “The reason is that we once had an estate before we came here, and were obedient, more or less, to the laws that were given us there.”
• “Those who were faithful in all things there received greater blessings here, and those who were not faithful received less.”

-The Church and the Negro, pp. 42-42.

• “It is the Mormon belief that in our pre-mortal state there were a large number of individuals who, due to some act or behavior of their own in the pre-existence, forfeited the right to hold the Priesthood during their mortal lives,…
• The Negro is thus denied the Priesthood because of his own behavior in the pre-existence.”

–Race Problems — As They Affect The Church, Address by Mark E. Petersen at the Convention of Teachers of Religion on the College Level, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah,August 27, 1954.

• “The discussion on civil rights, especially over the last 20 years, has drawn some very sharp lines.
• “We who teach in the Church certainly must have our feet on the ground and not to be led astray by the philosophies of men on this subject…”
• “I think I have read enough to give you an idea of what the negro is after.”
• “He is not just seeking the opportunity of sitting down in a cafe where white people eat.”
• “We must not allow our feelings to carry us away, nor must we feel so sorry for negroes that we will open our arms and embrace them with everything we have.
• Remember the little statement that we used to say about sin, ‘First we pity, then endure, then embrace.’…”
• “At least in the cases of the Lamanites and the Negro we have the definite word of the Lord Himself that he placed a dark skin upon them as a curse — as a punishment and as a sign to all others.”
• “He forbade intermarriage with them under threat of extension of the curse.”
• “And He certainly segregated the descendants of Cain when He cursed the Negro as to the Priesthood, and drew an absolute line.”
• “You may even say He dropped an Iron curtain there….”
• “Now we are generous with the negro.”
• “We are willing that the Negro have the highest education.”
• “I would be willing to let every Negro drive a cadillac if they could afford it.”

B.H. Roberts-the Seventy’s Course in Theology

• “That the negro is markedly inferior to the Caucasian is proved both craniologically and by six thousand years of planet-wide experimentation.”

The Juvenile Instructor (a children’s Church magazine)

• “Last in order stands the Negro race, the lowest in intelligence and the most barbarous of all the children of men.”

Are those the teachings of the true and only church of God? So God, who has more love, acceptance, and understanding than anything we can imagine is actually a bigot? He created races to be inferior to whites, and he loves and favors whites more? Especially whites who live in Utah, where they can be Mormon and know the truth? That’s not a god I would follow, or one I’d want to know. It doesn’t take love and understanding to think you’re better, and to treat people like they’re inferior to you. There is right, and there is wrong. Having any attitude of superiority, especially based on skin color, is wrong. Yet it’s been taught since the inception of Mormonism. What does that say about Mormonism?

Stop with these attitudes! This is what leads to people believing their ugly, or inferior because they’re too dark. Believing they’re not smart enough or as good, because of their race or nationality. It happens here, in our communities all the time, and it needs to stop. How is that attitude any different than those who showed up to march in Charlottesville? Or Trump wanting to build a wall to keep out the “rapists, and murderers from Mexico”, since according to him, that’s what they are. I don’t want my kids to ever feel these things and have people look down on them, but I can’t stop it.

I have a son who just turned 14, he’s dark complected, and plays basketball. I live in Salt Lake, but we went to Utah County to play a team down there. My son was having a big game and we were beating one of the dominant programs. Our team has minorities on it, the opposing team was white, from an area that’s over 90% Mormon. I could see my son talking back and forth with some of the players on the other team, and I could tell he and another team mate were upset about something. My sons team ended up winning pretty easily, and I asked him what was wrong. He was usually happier after a win. Turns out the kids on the Utah County team kept calling him and a Polynesian player on our team the “n” word. They were doing it in a way to make them feel less, and making fun of them coming from a “poor school.” When they couldn’t beat us they started in on name calling, using racist names to feel superior.  I wonder where they learned that? Where would they learn that their race makes them superior to kids who aren’t white, in such a religious area? This is a pretty common thing with the Utah County schools.

The Mormon religion starts brainwashing from the time we’re old enough to understand language. Songs like “Follow the Prophet” and “Book of Mormon Stories,” they start teaching children lies early. It plants a seed that grows. At 8 we’re told that now we’re old to make a decision that will affect the rest of our lives, and a spirit is actually going to help guide us, and it’s not just any ghost, it’s a holy ghost. None of it makes any sense. I made a decision when I had kids that I wasn’t going to poison their minds with any of this. The whole God is watching, so you need to be perfect thing. It’s hard enough being a teenager, and growing up without thinking God is watching you.

The fact that the Mormon religion would act like they have all this “secret” knowledge about all the native Americans from all over the North American continent, based on absolutely no proof or evidence to support it, is nothing more than arrogance.

Derek Iorg

Published by Newcomb

Sarah Newcomb is Tsimshian of the First Nation from Metlakatla, Alaska. She works as a freelance editor, writer, and blogger. She has a Bachelors in English with a Focus in non-Fiction Creative Writing, an Associates in Communications, and a Minor in Philosophy. She currently lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband and four children. View all posts by Newcomb