This reached its nadir when we learned that even foster parents were assigned by race. I’m still puzzled as to how a few weeks, that wouldn’t be remembered consciously, with a white family might damage a black infant’s so-called racial identity.

That is the main thing you will share when dating/marrying another LDS individual from another culture/country. I ended up marrying a man from Tonga. He grew up very differently from me. The one thing we both grew up doing was FHE and church. That was basically all we had in common from our childhoods. We have had our ups and our downs.

My main advice is to discuss EVERYTHING prior to marrying. This includes how you celebrate holidays (i.e. anniversaries, birthdays… etc), how you “help” when family members are in need, where his/her priorities are (i.e. are they aligned: God first, your immediate family, THEN the extended family). These are all things to take into consideration.

I’m not going to say it has been easy… and even at times, I wish I would have married within my own culture. Particularly when I realized there is no emphases put on anniversaries where he grew up (hint, hint). But praying for your spouse helps a tremendous deal. It is a challenge, but as JKS says all the way at the top, you need to heed the spirit when you pray about it. That’s what I did.

At BYUH, it is never looked at as “bad” to date interracially, but you find that those who survive will give forums and speeches on the difficulties of inter-cultural relationships. That always helps me. Make sure if you decide to tie the knot that you seek counsel from someone who has been through it before. You will not go into it blindly, and you will feel better about your decision… although every situation is different.

You will gain great experiences by dating interracially, and you will be stronger having survived it. GO FOR IT

About maybe we have unsupposed roots, see this recent article in “The New York Times”:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/30/opinion/30sat4.html?incamp=article_popular

Seth, well said!

It seems that the temporally-comfortable among us frequently look at “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Matt 25:40) as an opportunity for some spiritual extra credit beyond a now satisfactory station. Would that we recalled as well the negative of that verse that follows: “Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.” (Matt 25:45)

JKS, since you asked … But this is really off-topic.

I have lived with both the “elites” and the “non-elites.” Both have their good and bad points.

Of course, I disagree with both labels and I would be hard pressed to apply either label to anyone I actually know. Besides, I also disagree that you have to be college-educated to be an “elite Mormon.”

“He who is greatest among you, let him become as a little child.”

In any case, my point was that the educated in America often tend to be woefully unaware of the latent ignorance, violence and despair surrounding them even in their own towns, and certainly in the world at large.

My comment above might be read as an arrogant condemnation of the meek and lowly of the earth. This is not my intention. Wealth and ease does not automatically grant a person the moral high ground and neither does poverty and hardship. Both may be misused.

I am reminded of the words of the second spirit in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” when he lifts his robes and reveals two wretched children. Scrooge asks him if they are his:

“They are Man’s” said the Spirit looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

There are of course, many lessons to be taken from the Spirit’s statement. My take is that Want represents the sins of the downtrodden in society and Ignorance represents the sins of the privileged. The poor hunger after what the wealthy have. The wealthy aren’t even aware that the poor exist.

Want and Ignorance.

Blindness is the sin of the privileged in America. They don’t know who they are rubbing elbows with and they couldn’t be more detached from the ugly realities their brethren still live with.

Some poor wretch gets drunk one night and goes and vandalizes a Jewish synagogue leaving vile racial epithets scrawled on the walls. Educated Americans recoil in disgust at such behavior. They offer up long sermons couched in the moral sensibilities they have acquired at school. They theorize about the rightness and wrongness of theoretical anti-Semitism.

But this is as far as it goes. The educated rarely venture beyond speaking of THEORETICAL evils and actually speak of REAL evils. Few are willing to descend to the level of this poor bigot and really understand the hatred, fear, and despair that he lives with every hour of his life.

Instead, we separate ourselves from him and erect a barrier of intellectual theories and moral platitudes around him to keep him at a distance. Then we silently congratulate ourselves on our intellectual and moral superiority. But we prefer to keep him caged and intellectually accounted for. We fear to really touch him lest he contaminate us in some way.

Again, Ignorance belongs to the privileged and usually, the ignorance is willful.