Comments on: How Mormons Became White

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I give you points for creativity:)
Do you have anything to back up a PR push for whiteness? I’m just curious as to your sources, since I’m guessing I have most of them.

By: Nate Oman

Nate Oman — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I have no smoking gun in which Joseph F. Smith writes a memo explaining his change of mind in the terms that I outline above. I take it as fairly well established in the basic texts on this — Lester Bush — that Joseph F. Smith’s change of mind was decisive. For the racial edge to anti-polygamy rhetoric, see Sarah Barringer Gordon, _The Mormon Question_. For the general attitude of retrenchment, check out _Mormonism in Transition_.

You will notice that the characters in my story are kept vague. “Mormonism” is imputed with some set of “broader strategies.” I leave the actual mechanisms of choice and influence to subconscious axiety, etc. ;->

After all, I am “doing” history not “social science.” I am allowed to posit isms and vague social functionalities as causal elements. ;->

NOTE TO THE UNIRONIC: I am in part poking fun at the epistemology of historical explanation. This is all VERY humorous stuff.

By: brayden

brayden — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Nate – This is a pretty good theory (and a very sociological one at that). I know much less about Mormon history than I would like, but since you seem to know more than most of us and because it sounds intuitively plausible, I’ll give the explanation a thumbs up.

By: Nate Oman

Nate Oman — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I am a lawyer, which means that I get to skip across the surface of social science, but I have to confess that I have always found something a bit fishy about the kind of functionalist explanation that I offer above. On the other hand, I find rational actor models fishy. I find critical theory fishy. I find…

You get the picture.

By: Kristine

Kristine — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Nate, I’m with you right up until the part where the church now wants to be non-white. While we want worldwide appeal, it seems to me that we are also still extremely concerned with respectability, which looks (at least some of the time) very much like “whiteness.” What am I missing?

By: Melissa

Melissa — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Nate,

If you are doing history then you’ll need a lot of sources to back you up. Can you give us some of yours? (not for the JS vs. BY stuff, but for the “Mormons needed to defend their whiteness” bit)

By: Aaron Brown

Aaron Brown — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Kristine,

You’re missing the fact that there is an indisputable law of the universe that goes something like this:

“If you are a non-white ethnic minority, and you loiter around outside of General Conference, you WILL have your picture taken by an official LDS photographer and featured prominently in a Church periodical.”

Aaron B

By: Kristine

Kristine — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Yeah, we had a black missionary in our ward in California who told everybody when he was leaving, “Look for me at October conference–they always show all the black people on TV!!”

By: Nate Oman

Nate Oman — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I look at where the church spends its money — third world countries, and expensive inner-city buildings — and I look at the very nearly complete disappearance of racial rhetoric from Mormon sermons.

I grant that the church still wants an image of wholesomeness, so that will preclude Home Front Ads set to rap music in the near future. On the other hand, I think that we are unduly parochial in our use of understanding of racial politics — we tend to focus on some polarity between suburban whiteness and uban blackness. A more interesting dynamic is to look at — for example — the proliferation of third-world folk art in the Ensign and the aggressive church sponsorship of international art through the Church Museum.

No rap music, but lots of baticks, hopi pottery, molas, etc. We are certainly a very long way from this stuff drowning out the Dale Parson’s tripe (a glorius day to be looked forward to), but it is definitely on the rise.

Another move is the regionalization of art in Mormon temples. There is a push for the decor and art in temples to be more closely tied to the surrounding cultures.

By: Nate Oman

Nate Oman — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Melissa: If you want Mormon defense of whiteness, look at the rhetoric of Mormon polygamy defenders. If you read the speeches that Cannon made of the floor of the House as territorial delegate, for example, you will see that Mormons were very eager to associate polygamy with the values of fidelity, respect for home, hostility to sexual promiscuity, etc. In other words, Mormons were eager to differentiate themselves from the “Asiatics” to whom they were constantly compared. Furthermore, I think that you will notice a trend in this rhetoric. In the 1850s and the 1860s, Mormon leaders are willing to entertain the idea that maybe they are kind of like the Muslims. (There is a great George A. Smith sermon in the JD on this). Even as late as 1879, Cannon makes arguments in the constitutional context in favor of Mormon polygamy based on supposed Founder-generation tolerance of “Muhammadeism.” However, even in his 1879 pamphlet, Cannon has a couple of arias distinguishing Mormon polygamy from the barbarous practices of suttee and the depravities of the Indians. (I actually gave a paper at MHA — my only appearance there — that discussed, inter alia, the jurisprudential arguments surrounding polygamy, suttee, and non-Western legal systems. I can send you a draft of that if you are interested in that particular issue.)

All the talk of Mormon harems, clearly stung and folks wanted to distance themselves from it.