My kids love to watch Studio C. For those of you unfamiliar with Studio C, it is a sketch comedy show on BYU-TV, and they also publish comedy routines on YouTube. It definitely appeals to the pre-teen, teen crowd, but adults will find some of their routines funny too. Here’s one where Sleeping Beauty has bad breath.
Another where nobody takes good yearbook photos.
One of the funniest sketches they’ve ever done was this video of Scott Sterling, getting pummeled in the fact in both soccer, and volleyball. (I’m amazed at the special effects.)
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The show was even featured on Conan O’Brien’s show for the clean comedy routines. Conan even says his kids watch it!
But what got my attention was the following sketch. BYU and the LDS Church has long had a history of discouraging interracial marriage. Imagine my surprise when I saw this sketch. (Note, you may or may not find this funny, but I was just struck by the portrayal of the interracial marriage, even holding hands!)
Has the church turned a corner with regards to interracial marriage?
It isn’t just this sketch. The black cast member, Stacey, appears as the husband/fiancee/boyfriend of white cast members in many of their sketches. His different skin color is rarely commented on, with a few exceptions, e.g., https://youtu.be/uio0E0Gmyio.
There was that General Authority, Elder Jacob DeJagr, and he married an Indonesian woman, they were interracial
If interracial marriage is still an issue in the church, it must be in a different universe than mine. I know an interracial couple (he black, she white) and he was the bishop in his last ward.
I was taught in my institute class “Preparing for Eternal Marriage” just 5 years ago that interracial marriage is not ideal and that we shouldn’t be marrying outside our own culture and ethnic group. I was also taught this all through high school in seminary when we’d talk about marriage (which comes up every year). I had seminary in Henderson, NV (a suburb of Las Vegas), and institute in Cedar City, UT.
I work for Southern Utah University, and a couple years ago, we featured an interracial couple in our Alumni Magazine. We got multiple letters from alumni who informed us that they would no longer donate for promoting such “filth.”
If the prohibition of interracial mixing is no longer in church handbooks and lesson plans, it is still alive and well in the folk doctrine of southern Utah and the American southwest.
In my experience (which is not vast considering I’m not in an interracial marriage myself and I’m a millennial), I’ve never heard anyone make negative comments about existing interracial couples or complain that they are bad or sinful. My grandmother did try to get my dad to talk my uncle out of marrying a black woman he was dating (this was 40 years ago). My dad told her to give him one good reason why he should do that and she couldn’t think of one so they left it at that. He didn’t end up marrying the woman – I don’t know why I just hope it wasn’t because of her race.
However, in my marriage prep class 8 years ago the Kimball quote discouraging interracial marriage was read aloud from the manual. When I questioned it, it was vigorously defended by pretty much everyone else in the very young class and the teacher who was a former stake president and current bishop of our singles ward.
Overall, I don’t think it shocks younger Mormons to see interracial couples. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed that it was odd if you hadn’t pointed it out. But I do think many younger Mormons who are considering an interracial marriage are still haunted by the ghost of Spencer W. Kimball and that definitely has an impact on how many interracial Mormon couples actually get married.
IIRC on the TV show “What would you do?” there was a scenario on interracial couples and it was shot in Utah, interesting stuff
I remember being directly taught to avoid interracial marriage when I was a youth (early thirties now). Reasons given included cultural differences and the difficulties the children would have fitting in. I’m embarrassed that it seemed logical to me at the time. Life experience has since disabused me of the notion, and I haven’t heard it explicitly taught at church in the last ten years. But I’m certain that many of the generation who are the ones who taught it to me in the first place still believe it. I think we are getting better, but it’s going to take time and modeling to really change for sure folks.
Kol,
Wow, the SUU institute has gone backwards vs. my experience there. Many years ago, marriage was a major topic in one class with the institute director and I do not remember this issue even being talked about at all. Polygamy did come up some, especially the historical rationale, but most of the talk was the nature of eternal marriage and how to make a relationship work. The issue could have arisen, since some of the top athletes were LDS and black.
I really only got to interact a lot with 3 of the teachers in my time in Cedar, but they were older and more senior, and clearly had all read many other of President Kimball’s writings.
I had no idea. We’ve had lots of interracial couples in various wards in which I lived over the last 3 decades, although all east of the Mississippi.
One young couple went on a music mission to Nauvoo for a summer, and one usually has to supply a picture for that.
I once had a friend who was saying in church that interracial marriages were not a sin and the Lord was not bothered by them in the least bit. He drowned a week later. I would be very careful about what comments you make on this board.
“He drowned a week later. I would be very careful about what comments you make on this board.”
That is nothing more than promoting superstition.
Do you have something of substance to contribute to the conversation?
I took Zach’s comment to be a joke. I thought it was morbidly funny.
El Oso,
I think there has been a lot of regression in the Cedar Institute over the last couple years. I had a really thought provoking Pearl of Great Price class before my mission, then when I came back it was almost like every class was just a folk doctrine “look at how much I know” kind of situation. I did enjoy a Book of Mormon and Isaiah class, but it was mostly because of how sweet the teacher was. I finally stopped going after I was the president of my class and we had a large group meeting of class leaders, instructing us not to go to a Convocation where Joanna Brooks “The Book of Mormon Girl” was speaking. That just opened my eyes to a lot of the crazy that was going on.
I’m sorry. I thought everyone was familiar with Apostle Delbert Stapley’s letter to George Romney. If you read it, my lame joke will be a lot more enjoyable.
http://www.mormonmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/delbert_stapley.pdf
Alice the question was do I think the church has turned the corner and I was trying to show how much the church has changed since 1964. I thought that was adding substance to the conversation. Sorry I offended you.
Sorry Zach, I read the letter but still don’t get the joke.
Here’s another one with Stacey that references his skin color at the very end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VH8lvZ-Z1g
From the Gospel topics essay on LDS.org or in your Gospel Library app under Church History:
Race and the Priesthood
Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.
This is only a small piece of the essay, which is groundbreaking and important. I have heard that it will soon be required reading for all incoming freshmen at LDS colleges.
Just curious what you all think of this quote in the current Aaronic Priesthood manual.
See https://www.lds.org/manual/aaronic-priesthood-manual-3/lesson-31-choosing-an-eternal-companion?lang=eng
This is another example of the principle that it is easier to create new doctrine than to destroy. A quote like the Kimball quote that MH gives can be repeated and cited in official and unofficial settings unless and until it is soundly rebuked. The gospel topics essays, as good as they are, really are not enough to get rid of this kind of thinking: they are not attributed to authority and not well publicized. The church almost never rescinds what leaders have said in the past, and without doing so the words of the former leaders, however out-dated, can continue to be cited to support this kind of teaching.
I had a seminary teacher that said the church USED to teach that interracial marriage was bad, but does not officially teach it. But then he followed it by saying that if an interracial couple came to a Bishop planning to get married, that he might, you know, take them aside, nudge nudge, and advise them to think about what their kids will look like, or grandkids, and ask if that is really what they want. And what is really terrible is that at that age, and with my privileged background, I really didn’t realize how racist that line of thinking was. And this is a particularly nefarious way for it to persist in the culture as it is not openly acknowledged and therefore is difficult to openly correct. But I have been hoping, and continue to hope, that this is limited to a small and diminishing percentage of the church.
But my hope is probably not enough. In my ward and among my friends are several interracial families, and they would be harmed by the idea that they are somehow less than other families. Merely hoping for change seems like a poor way to support them. So cheers to Studio C for normalizing interracial marriage. It’s time to bring the church out of the 1960’s.
This is a direct quote from the “Race and the Priesthood” gospel topic on LDS.org:
“Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.”
So mixed-race marriages are not in any way sinful.
Well if the Race and the Priesthood essay becomes required reading, as Heather suggests it might, that would go a long way. Although I think it needs to reach the adult sunday schools or else it is going to take 20 years before a substantial portion of the membership has read it.
This is poor journalism. No data or quotes to back up the notion that the Church/BYU strongly discourages interracial marriage.
I grew up in the Church and married a man of another race. No one ever gave me any grief for it. We got married in the Oakland temple and there were many other interracial couple being sealed that day. I’ve never heard anything being taught or preached over the pulpit about this. Any discrimination that couples I know have gone through is all within the family and not having to do with the Church.
Hmm. There was an interracial family in the ward I grew up in, so I guess I didn’t see it as unusual. There were those in the singles ward I later attended (with my now husband) who espoused the Kimball quote though. My own marriage is an interracial marriage (English – Japanese), and we’re aren’t the only interracial couple/family in our ward or stake.
Before my husband and I married at a time when I was in Tokyo the ward we attended was just by the mission home, and one Sunday the mission president’s wife took it upon herself to come and speak to me, saying that one of her tasks in her current role was to steer the missionaries away from marriage to a Japanese member. I hope she didn’t express that view to those in interracial marriages in the ward where RMs had returned and done just that very thing!
I was heartened when Elder Gong was called to the presidency of the 70, not just because I think he’s pretty cool, but also because his marriage is an interracial marriage, and it’s great to see that in higher echelons now, as it were.
The amount of interracial marriages in my area of the world is pretty high, unnoticeable, and is some cases encouraged. It is more noticeable when you watch or see things out of the US as it seems forced.
As to the kimball quote I actually think it is reasonable advise in certain circumstances. In fact I gave my daughter similar advise the other week. I think it is loaded because of the things attributed to BY regarding race so people get sensitive about it. Probably with good reason as I perceive that racial tensions are still very high in the US??
Much ado about nothing. I’m amazed that people take offense so easily today. I’ve always heard the interracial marriage instruction to be a warning of that there is more to marriage than love. It can be difficult enough for a marriage to work and if you add to that different cultures (which see different roles of husband and wife) and support families in different countries are a few of the concerns to take into account. How is it when the grand kid never meets grand parents (your parents) and your spouse’s can. Is there an ideal…. nothing is perfect but understand that it can affect your marriage.
I haven’t heard that officially from the church for decades.
MH, that’s not the current Aaronic Priesthood manual.
I bought into that reasoning at one point, too. But if those were really the concerns, why not say, “be cautious about marrying someone who has different expectations for gender roles than you have,” or “be cautious about marrying someone whose family lives far away”? Race is not a useful shorthand for being thoughtful in entering marriage.
There is not a potential marriage between Stacy and the other girl. The other lady is already married. They are acting that’s all.
Maren, this wasn’t intended to be journalism, but since you asked.
See Greg Prince and Robert Wright, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, p 64.
In 1998, Bush wrote, “Writing ‘Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview’ (1973): Context and Reflections, 1998,” Journal of Mormon History 25(1):229-271 (Spring 1999). It is available at http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/mormonhistory/vol25/iss1/ retrieved 6/2/2012. Bush is paraphrasing a personal meeting he had with Elder Packer in which Packer stated this, as well as his discomfort with Bush’s upcoming paper in the 1973 issue of Dialogue.
Deseret News, June 17, 1978.
Left Field, if that manual is not current, why is it still up? What is the current manual?
President Kimball is my Great Great Uncle. In all my interactions with him never did the topic of interracial marriage come up. I married someone from a different culture (some would say race though I don’t consider Hispanics to be a different race). The only racism that we have ever experienced and that our kids have experienced has been from the Hispanic community. For me I don’t care all that much as it does little to impact my life. But, my wife was greatly impacted by her family’s unwillingness to accept me. Over the years this changed with my father-in-law and we had a solid relationship before he passed. My kids are consistently told they are not Mexican because they don’t speak Spanish from the kids they go to school with. My kids have learned to move on from this and continue to enjoy the parts of both cultures they have roots into.
That paragraph wasn’t where I was going with this post. My wife and I are from different cultural, educational, and economic backgrounds. The advice to marry someone from a similar background in those areas is fantastic advice. As someone mentioned marriage is hard enough, when you add in all the other differences it becomes difficult. My wife and I have been married for 26 years and the early years were far from wedded bliss. I often tell people we stayed married in those early years because we were both too stubborn to admit we might have made a mistake. And the majority of those difficulties arose because of our differing backgrounds. We still run into the occasional difficulty and those still are related to our difference in background. I advise my kids to date people who come from similar backgrounds because it will make marriage easier but, race never comes into the conversation.
I don’t know MH, but all the old “Teachings of the Presidents of the Church” manuals are still available as well.
The current “manual” is an online list of topics and resources for lessons: https://www.lds.org/youth/learn/ap?lang=eng They put up a new list of monthly resources every year.
I am a white, 38 year old woman who has lived in the Salt Lake Valley all my life. I have been active LDS all my life, going to church every week, seminary every school day, and Institute every day offered in college. I have never been taught, nor have I heard, that the Church discouraged interracial marriage. I grew up in a ward that had high rates of other races, let alone of interracial marriages and it was wonderful! We currently attend a ward with several interracial marriages and a stake that has even more. My husband’s brother and sister both married Japanese spouses and their wards are full of interracial couples! It seems to me that there are only pockets of members, usually the older generations who still believe this way. You cannot, n good conscience, say that the majority of church members believe this way.
In fairness, the civil rights era was not that long ago. Go back a few decades and these types of beliefs would have been common in or outside the church. I don’t think this is a uniquely Mormon issue, and it’s definitely on the fall.
“You cannot, n good conscience, say that the majority of church members believe this way.”
That was never my intent. My intent was to address whether the official church teachings are changing. The church hasn’t always been as open.
In the Special Features of a 2008 DVD titled “Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons.” Tamu Smith is black. Her husband Keith is white. Tamu recalled the incident where she was asked to pose for some photos for an LDS publication. “Well they would ask me to bring my—you know is your husband going to be available because we kind of need a guy for this shot also? I would bring Keith, and it was an embarrassing situation for everybody involved I think. I think for me, I was embarrassed, I was more upset, but for the people there, I am sure that it was embarrassing because then they would have to explain why they couldn’t use my husband and why I was with—you know, well we’re going to use you with this guy because your outfit matches better, [Tamu interjects what she felt they were thinking] and your skin is more pigmented like his. [Tamu chuckles] They never said that, but they wanted to.”
Her husband Keith expressed that “we can be bound for eternity in the temple, but the Church isn’t willing to represent that today in the world.”
I’m glad the church is opening up to more images of interracial couples. Perhaps that 10 year old reference indicates some changes in the past decade, and that is a good thing. Perhaps Studio C shows the church is more open to promoting interracial couples. But just 10 years ago, it doesn’t seem to have wanted to publicly espouse Tamu & Keith’s interracial marriage.
I graduated from BYU in 2002 and was taught that Kimball quote while there. It was framed more in the sense of difficulties in marriage when you have two individuals from different backgrounds. I recall getting the impression that the original statement had racist overtones that the church had moved away from (in relation to the priesthood ban). I was never taught that mixed-race marriages were a sin, per se, just discouraged. One of my teachers made it a point to share a story of Ezra Taft Benson giving his approval when a black student wrote a letter asking for clarification since many members were telling him it was inappropriate for him to marry his girlfriend, a white student.
Lois Collins of the Deseret News just published an article where she touched on her husband’s race and his fears of being targeted for the color of his skin (he’s Native American and she’s white) and some of the racism her kids get (“go back to your own country”). Good to see the race issue is getting some traction at places like DN.
I should just do up a keyboard macro for “Late to the party as usual . . .”
Anyhow, from all of the comments above, it seems that we might be able to draw some conclusions. (Was that wishy-washy enough?)
1) The Church is working its way out of the Dark Ages, and discouraging interracial marriages and relationships are no longer official or sanctioned teachings.
2) There should be no question in anyone’s mind that discouraging such relationships was once the position of the Church’s highest authorities, and published in many writings, curricula, and other materials that continue to surface.
3) The openness of members to such relationships still varies widely and depends, among other things, on age, exposure, and the general openness in the area in which one’s ward and stake are located. Thus, relatively white, conservative outstate Minnesota is likely to be less open than cosmopolitan, diverse Minneapolis (to Naismith’s point, we straddle the Mississippi) and southern Utah likely to be less open than New York or Los Angeles.
I would add a couple of things based on my own observations; not conclusions, just food for thought:
Mission president couples often discourage marriages to locals for reasons which have less to do with racism and much more to do with getting missionaries to concentrate on their work. (I’m not discounting racism, just saying it may not be the prime factor.)
Many of the commenters above are like the blind men who encountered the elephant; the one grasping the ear insisted that the elephant was like a palm frond, the one on the leg thought it was like a tree trunk, etc. (You’ve all heard the parable, I assume.) None of them had the whole picture. The fact is, each of us has experienced this issue as it is in our own place and time, and none of those experiences are probably generalizable to the church as a whole. In particular, the commenters who have made blanket pronouncements (“I have never . . .”, “The Church does not . . .”, etc.) have failed to hear their brothers and sisters, even though their own experience is true for their place and time. It is not enough to say “here’s the Church’s current statement and so now we know it’s not sinful” and expect that everything fixes itself. As a brilliant recent Twitter thread exposes in re. black members’ experiences, it has not all fixed itself. There is much fixing left to do, and it’s difficult to see what the elephant is really like if we remain attached to one body part with our eyes closed.
We also have to acknowledge that there are going to be difficulties in many places for interracial couples. Unspoken, passive-aggressive prejudice in some places (Minnesota, I’m lookin’ at you) and outright hostility in others (both Dixies, the real one and the Utah one). The answer to that, over the long run, is not to refrain from interracial marriage, but to face that prejudice for the irrational relic of barbarism that it is. Such couples are still pioneers, and go through things for the sake of their marriages that I can’t begin to imagine.
Marriage is difficult in many ways, but today’s course of action should be if people of mixed race fall in love to help support them rather than to point out that there will be difficulties. It is way past time for the Church to include mixed-race couples in it’s media productions, including in the temple films. As others in the media have recently pointed out, there needs to be strong counsel from the leaders that condemns the trend of publicly speaking white-supremist Mormons. Opposition to mixed race marriage is their platform and when the church fails to include positive representation of mixed race couples, it gives those individuals fuel for their arguments. I would offer this link to show that the Church is beyond the Kimball-era cautions:
http://www.ldschurchnewsarchive.com/articles/60838/New-mission-presidents.html
I don’t know President and Sister Martins, but my heart rejoiced when I saw their photo in the Church News. But it is true that there is nationwide opposition to mixed race marriage. It wasn’t that long ago that there was controversy about an advertisement from The Gap, I believe, that showed a mixed race couple. This controversy led to John McCain’s son and his wife speaking out on the ridiculousness of the controversy. The Church needs to demonstrate leadership in opposing racism and we as members need to do our part to build that support at the ward level.
It wasn’t The Gap…it was Old Navy:
https://www.navytimes.com/story/military/2016/05/03/john-mccains-navy-pilot-son-taunts-social-media-racists/83873118/
Here in the UK I see this as an issue for my parent’s and grandparent’s generation.Mixed race couples are just ordinary here and my kids have grown up with pick n mix. Makes for some very beautiful people.
As a tween, I heard my older brother’s BYU roommate taking a phone survey in which he responded he was opposed to interracial marriage on religious grounds. I remember not being surprised at that, so it must not have been the first I’d heard of it. My understanding as a child growing up around the Jello Belt in the 80s and 90s was that it was discouraged but not sinful. In seminary in the late 90s my teacher mentioned that it was difficult enough marrying someone whose “family culture” was different, so intercultural/interracial marriages must be harder. There is some evidence to suggest interracial marriages have a slightly higher divorce rate, but then there are all sorts of random factors that affect divorce rates — age gaps, for example.
I am pretty sure they switched to the Come Follow Me method and did away with the YM/YW manuals only 5-ish years ago, so that Kimball quote was a part of the curriculum until very recently. When I noticed it is still available on LDS.org, I saw red, being in an interracial marriage myself. I suppose if they took it down it would be whitewashing, but since they take everything else down that they want to distance the Church from, it seems they are still implicitly endorsing that.