It seems that race and racism are the hot topic in Mormonism this week. John Dehlin has published an excellent podcast interview with Darron Smith, who was evidently fired from his job at BYU for discussing race and Mormonism too often in the media. Brother Smith in particular, and Mormon race issues more generally, are the subject of a fascinating and generally sympathetic segment on the PBS program, “Religion and Ethics.” And, as noted elsewhere, President Hinckley made a historic and powerful statement against racism during his remarks in the priesthood session of general conference.
Racism is deeply embedded in Mormon culture, history, and doctrine. Detailed discussions of the racist legacy in Mormonism are widely available; I recommend these: Black and Mormon, edited by Newell G. Bringhurst and Darron T. Smith; All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage, by Armand L. Mauss; and Neither White Nor Black: Mormon Scholars Confront the Race Issue in a Universal Church, edited by Armand L. Mauss and Lester E. Bush. While a detailed review of all relevant details would be neither possible nor desirable here, I will quickly consider a few highlights.

During Joseph Smith’s lifetime, the church was somewhat inconsistent on racial issues. However, it was clearly more progressive than it later became. Joseph Smith did not forbid priesthood ordination for people of African descent, and his presidential platform called for the end of slavery in the American South–although Smith’s suggestion for ending slavery did involve sending freed slaves to Africa. Furthermore, Joseph Smith may have anticipated a religious and military alliance between Native Americans and Mormons against the American people; hence, Smith tried to maintain positive relations with these groups. Under Brigham Young’s administration, however, the church took a sharp and lasting turn toward racism. Suddenly, the priesthood was denied to people of African descent. Utah was organized as a slave territory. Furthermore, relations with Native Americans became more like the typical relationships between Europeans and indigenous peoples throughout the continent; the military component of the relationship became at least as prominent as the missionary component. Consistent with these policies, Mormon theology developed a rank ordering of “lineages,” or racial and/or ethnic groups. The highest rank was assigned to descendents of Ephraim, which is to say, Mormons of primarily European ancestry. The Jewish people also ranked high. Native Americans were Lamanites, a group that had the potential to rank high, but that was seen as currently existing in a fallen state. Non-Mormons of primarily European descent were Gentiles, who ranked low on the scale. However, the lowest point on the scale was reserved for Africans and people of African descent, who were conceived of as the seed of Cain, as having been marked with a lineally-inherited divine curse, and as having been less valiant in the preexistence.

These conceptions, which relate spiritual standing and character to racial groupings, are irredeemably racist. Human groups certainly do differ in a wide variety of ways; however, extensive (and initially openly racist) research by Western social scientists into differences among groups in attitudes and behavior (involving religion, family life, economics, and many other fields) has largely come to the conclusion that patterns of difference are cultural in nature, rather than racial. This is obviously significant because there is no imagineable cultural continuity from the time of Cain or Ephraim, for example, to the present day. Hence, there is very little basis for imagining that people in one of these lineages might behave or think in a way that is similar to the founder of that lineage. More recent research, suggesting that some aspects of personality and cognitive style are genetic, modifies this conclusion but not in the direction of racial groupings; no racial group is anywhere close to being genetically homogeneous enough that only a single genetically-based personality style or set of cognitive traits can be observed within the group.

If culture, rather than race, is the primary source of observed differences among groups, we can conclude that it is false to project the traits of the founder of a lineage onto members of that lineage. (Do American citizens act like George Washington in any sense? Obviously, the question seems silly–yet Washington is a far more recent founding figure in American history than Cain, Abraham, Judah, or Ephraim.) Furthermore, false stereotyping of racially-defined groups (especially when the content of the stereotype is negative) is racism. With President Hinckley, I hope that we, as a people, can put such “disparaging remarks concerning those of another race” behind us.