A former colleague of mine posted on Facebook asking her friends what we had learned this week. She is a black woman I knew when we both worked in the same group at American Express in Salt Lake City. Her call for reflection is helpful so we can be clear on what we’ve learned and what we will do as a result. My response to her was:
1) Some white people really like to make everything about themselves.
2) The idea of cops having qualified immunity from prosecution is way past its expiration date.
3) Schools should quit having students read To Kill a Mockingbird, and start reading The Hate U Give or any number of more contemporary books, preferably by black authors.
4) The Harlem Gospel Choir is AMAZING.
5) There can be no racial equality until we recognize the injustice that exists. You can’t learn from what you ignore or refuse to see.
I also saw some other things that I have found disturbing, along the lines of #5. While I don’t think these people are hate-filled racists or people who would go out of their way to avoid black people, and I know for a fact that most of them consider George Floyd’s death a murder and believe the bystander cops are accomplices, I continue to hear statements that are in fact *racist*. Maybe I can even call it low-key racist. I know it’s not intentional. It’s just that they haven’t yet taken off their eyeglasses of privilege. To paraphrase M. Night Shyamalan’s whispered revelation, “I see racist people. And they don’t know they are racist.” Here are a few things I’ve heard that qualify:
- “All lives matter.”
- “Blue lives matter” or the claim that nobody talks about it when a cop is killed in the line of duty, but “one black man gets killed and everyone riots.”
- This is a temper tantrum by the black community.
- The “leftists” are chaotic and violent, but the people on the right are for order.
- Black people are burning down their own neighborhoods.
- LOL, everyone out there protesting is going to get Covid!
- Protests = riots.
- Protesters = looters & vandals.
- This is an isolated incident.
- The police have a right to protect themselves.
- These protests aren’t even about empathizing with Floyd’s family!
- Floyd’s death wasn’t a race thing. The cop might have had a personal grudge.
- I have met some really nice black people.
- We need to end the riots and “restore law.”
- If we would just quit talking about racism, people wouldn’t be so angry.
- No matter what Trump does or says, he’ll get criticized.
- We need to let the justice system handle the cops. They deserve due process.
- Violence never solved anything.
- It was one bad cop. Most cops aren’t like that.
- “These people” are bringing this on themselves.
- Floyd may have died from underlying conditions.
- Why do people have to bring up race all the time? It just divides us.
- We have to fight violence (looting & vandalism) with violence and military might!
- If only black people would . . .
- Why doesn’t anyone care about prejudice against white people? That’s racism, too!
- We just need to vote.
- Members on Pres. Nelson’s FB page falling all over themselves in praise that now they know how to feel about things (too numerous to recount here).
- The Church has never been racist or contributed to racist attitudes, and doesn’t tolerate racism. [1]
- The claim that Joanna Brooks’ new book on Mormonism & White Supremacy is just pot-stirring.
- That racist individuals, who are rare, are the problem.
- That all this is just more political correctness, making it impossible for anyone to say anything.
Unfortunately, Pres. Nelson’s statement will not make any of the above people feel like they have lessons to learn or are at all in the wrong. Because they would not have personally killed George Floyd, they are all OK in their minds. They aren’t racists. But you can’t have an organization that welcomes both white supremacists and black people. Joanna’s book is pointing out just how baked in these ideas of white supremacy are in the Church, and so far, we have not fully repudiated them (we’ve asserted we have without doing any actual heavy lifting). These two groups of people really can’t co-exist in one Church, and looking at our membership numbers, they mostly don’t. As we see, these two groups struggle to co-exist in one country.
I’m tired of speaking up to people who say these things. They don’t appreciate it, even when I try to be kind and inclusive in my language, but I will continue to try to keep the conversation where it needs to be. I will advocate for the people who are largely absent from these conversations. I will do my best to care enough to bring people along who may be getting their information from poor sources, who are afraid, or who may be struggling to keep up. I will not be silent, although I will defer to and listen to people of color when it comes to personal experience with racism. My fatigue is nothing compared to the fatigue of my friends in the black community. Nothing I’m doing is enough.
- Are we learning or is this going to be another forgotten protest in a long string of forgotten protests about the injustices rained down on black bodies?
- What have you personally learned as a result of these events?
- Are you hearing pockets of low-key racism designed to minimize the outcry or are you hearing a rising voice declaring a commitment to change?
- What are you going to do better?
Discuss.
[1] This one takes a lot of chutzpah. And willful blindness.
Wheat & Tares 
Every organization now feels the need to issue a statement denouncing racism. That is fine I guess. But the first thing the reader will do when reading these statements is to determine whether the organization has any credibility on this topic. the more credibility, the more meaningful the statement.
Some readers here think the Church is credible because it’s the true church lead by a prophet. Others might not see it that way, especially if they are aware of the Church’s racist past. And that is the challenge President Nelson faces. It’s not his fault that the Church handled blacks and Native Americans the way it did. It’s not his fault that the BOM contains racist references. It’s not his fault that we once had a “white and delightsome” narrative. But the reality is, until the Church apologizes for these kinds of things (not just construct a clever essay), many readers will read the statement and dismiss it given its source. That’s just the way the human mind works. It’s about credibility and authenticity.
I’m right there with you, hawkgrrrl, on all counts except “all lives matter”. I am not ever giving up on that one. I know what everyone has invested in every side of this issue. I Don’t Care.
I have been an ally in the fight for racial equality — and every manner of equality — for 60 years. To me “all lives matter” is the only way I will approach and live this concept because on the day when all lives matter we will have transcended all the ways anyone wants to be exceptional and to discount someone else’s rights and importance in our culture and in our world and then and only then we will have achieved this aspirational goal.
To me, this is the one that counts! So I will take the heat for my position and I will explain it over and over and over and over and I will accept that I’m going to be misunderstood. But that’s my truth and I”m not giving up on it. Not on my last day on earth.
Chapter 3 of Alma (from last week’s CFM lesson) provides a timely example. In it, Alma (through Mormon’s editorial voice) repeatedly reminds the reader that Lamanites are identified by dark skin as a curse for their supposed wickedness. He proceeds to blame them for their own misfortune. Then, he orders his army to slaughter them by the thousands without a hint of remorse. Alma never once considered that his own people/government could perhaps be a significant source of the Lamanites’ misery. So maybe we should ask ourselves what injustices or oppression in our society are we willfully ignoring. Is our institutional hubris creating a massive blind spot like it did for Alma?
Nobody in my online Sunday school discussion seemed to get this message.
I agree with josh h. The fact that Ben & Jerry’s, a company founded by two nerdy guys from Vermont put out a more forceful, passionate and complete statement than did Christ’s one true church on Earth speaks volumes about both Ben & Jerry and the LDS Church.
I hope we are learning. I have never before seen so many of my LDS Facebook friends speak out in support of a movement like this. A lot of the posts are commitments to do better and calls to action, even from conservative Mormons in my Utah neighborhood. Yes, a lot of people are silent, and a few are still posting some of the racist things listed above. But the racist posts are getting pushback from LDS people in the comments like I’ve never witnessed before. It’s very encouraging, and I hope the momentum continues.
The sad fact is that the Church has zero credibility in addressing racism – and I say that while welcoming Pres Nelson’s statement. The Church’s many decades of racist teachings sans apology has bred many racists; ironically the hippie rebellion that so many older saints & leaders decried was the first significant positive white directional shift on race since the Civil War.
The sad fact is that the Church has zero credibility in addressing racism – and I say that while welcoming Pres Nelson’s statement. The Church’s many decades of racist teachings sans apology has bred many racists; ironically the hippie rebellion that so many older saints & leaders decried was the first significant positive white directional shift on race since the Civil War.
My 16-year-old daughter is black. Here are four incidents (not every one, but representative) that took place in the last year here in the heart of Zion. Which would you call racism and which would you label white supremacy?
1 – While my daughter was helping my wife load purchases into the car in the Lowes parking lot, an older white woman pulled alongside, rolled down her window, and screamed “Go back to Africa where you came belong!” (She was born in Orem, by the way. And it’s very possible that her ancestors were dragged to this continent long before this lady’s kin got to Utah.)
2 – While riding as a passenger in a car with three white girls, the driver was pulled over for failure to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. My daughter (with her hands on the dashboard, mouth shut, and looking straight ahead) was the only one who was asked for ID.
3 – Chased down outside a Calvin Klien store by a clerk. An exit alarm had sounded. The clerk didn’t confront my wife who had a bag. She didn’t confront the gentleman from India (he was the one that walked too close to the detector and set off the alarm by the way). Just the black girl.
4 – Just last week, leaving an upscale, secure apartment building, she held the door as an older woman approached. The woman had been dangling her purse in one hand. Seeing my daughter, she immediately clutched the purse to her chest, crossing both arms over it.
My point: There are times when there are clearly identifiable points that you can call “racism”. But with white supremacy, those attitudes and fears can be decades in the making.
Was that not-to-be named officer racist or full of white supremacy? I don’t know. Clearly, his attitude was that he could do as he wanted with Floyd George’s black body and get away with it. When Floyd said he couldn’t breathe, the officer could mockingly say repeatedly, “Then get in the car” – while three men were on top of him.
I am disappointed with the RMN’s wimpy statement. He has real influence with millions of people and he dropped the ball. He has the opportunity to make a real difference in the lived, day-to-day experience of black members and in the encounters white members have with people of color. Take up that prophetic, apostolic mantle and do something real with it.
That this post was written by the same person who recently, here on W and T’s, made racist comments about Joe Biden is absolutely stunning.
“What have you personally learned as a result of these events?”
I’ll answer this one.
Mass unemployment and economic anxiety due to a pandemic cause interesting and unpredictable outcomes. I have every reason to believe that absent severe economic anxiety, protests, mass arson, and mass looting wouldn’t have occurred. Compounding that anxiety is political anxiety due to it being an election year and a deeply unpopular president. Three plus years of Trump delivering divisive rhetoric has become intolerable under poor economic circumstances. There is a deep psychological component to these protests that go beyond just racial injustice.
Alice, here is the problem with the All Lives Matter slogan. It is said as a reaction to the slogan Black Lives Matter and ignores the context in which that slogan is said and is almost a sort of mockery of it. Saying Black Lives Matter is an acknowledgment of an unfortunate and well-documented fact that blacks are treated more poorly in this country than non-blacks and simply have it worse off than about any other group (except Native Americans). For a black person to succeed in the US, they have to try a lot harder and be a lot luckier than the average non-black person. By saying All Lives Matter, it sounds like a tone-deaf, soft denial of that reality as if to say, “stop whining and get to work.”
You left out health anxiety John. Basically, fear of imminent death from causes against which we have no defence at present. We are powerless. And, to make matters worse it appears that, at least in the UK, the BAME population may be at greater risk of death from covid. Existential fear.
All lives WON’T matter until Black lives DO matter.
That’s logical. So we ask, “Do White Lives Matter”? Yep – pretty much. Check that off and move on to the lives that don’t seem to matter as much.
To me, “All Lives Matter” is empty of constructive meaning. It is at best a deflection. The vibe I get from most people I hear say it is: because, universally speaking, all lives matter – I don’t need to pay attention to your life or do anything about your concerns or those of your demographic. It is dismissive, uncompassionate, and antithetical to LDS baptismal covenants and biblical teachings attributed to Christ.
It’s an excuse for doing NOTHING in the face of a plea to do something – anything – to lift the hearts and lives of our fellow travelers.
Following on John W.’s comment at 11:37. “All Lives Matter” is a racist slogan because it belittles the concerns expressed by “Black Lives Matter.” I have no doubt that a person like Alice is speaking in good faith, but this is a situation where Alice’s private meaning for the phrase doesn’t count for anyone except Alice. The rest of us correctly understand it to mean something else. As long as “All Lives Matter” has a public meaning that is defined in contrast to “Black Lives Matter,” people like Alice are aligning themselves with racism, however much they might wish it were otherwise.
In fact, I believe that “Black Lives Matter” already expresses the things that Alice wants to say. We cannot affirm the universal value of human life without first acknowledging the ways in which particular lives are devalued. Affirming the value of life actually begins with addressing specific and particular needs. If we don’t do that, our universal affirmations are platitudes.
Those who state that black lives matter never suggest that other lives don’t. They are simply pleading with our society to recognize that black lives, which have been considered expendable or commodifiable for centuries, matter.
It’s a profound message.
Fred: Reverse racism (the idea that affirmative action is racism against white people) is a conservative myth that ignores that 1) there’s no evidence that white people are discriminated against in our systems, and 2) minorities and women don’t have the power to harm the interests of white cishetero males. I do understand that erosion of privilege feels bad, but calling it discrimination doesn’t make it so. Noting that Biden is “another white male” isn’t the same thing as “being racist.” We need more diverse representation in our country’s leadership!
I look at “All Lives Matter” and kneeling for the National Anthem as similar actions, where the person expressing it may intend for a specific message, but it can be (and usually is) interpreted by others for something altogether unintended. And then we talk past each other based on assumptions about it (or possibly in pursuit of a particular agenda)… hopefully we are learning and we can keep communicating in a respectful way as to overcome our racist assumptions.
“I look at ‘All Lives Matter’ and kneeling for the National Anthem as similar actions”
Let’s compare. What motivated kneeling for the National Anthem? The belief that blacks and minorities are unfairly treated by the justice system. The fact that blacks serve on average 20% more time for the same crimes as whites is but one of the many testaments to the fact that there is perpetual unfairness in the justice system. There most certainly was and is something for Kaepernick to take a knee about.
What motivated the All Lives Matter slogan? Was injustice gave rise to this cry that All Lives Matter? Nothing. It is said almost exclusively as a veiled criticism of the slogan Black Lives Matter as if to suggest that saying Black Lives Matter unfairly elevates the importance of black lives over the importance of non-black lives. This is utterly absurd. No one is saying that black lives are inherently more important. However, we have decades of systemic oppression against blacks that devalues their lives.
I get what Alice is saying, and if that is how she manifests in her daily life, God bless her. Perhaps she could say that she values all life equally and then tries to live in way the exhibits that belief. Hooray. But I have to agree wholeheartedly with John W. Nobody, and I mean nobody, said All Lives Matter except in response to the rise of Black Lives Matter. If black lives mattered equally, there would be no reasons to use either slogan. Given that they are connected, it is difficult to not read the former as an attempt to repudiate the latter. Timing matters.
Angela, I call BS. Go back and read your post about Joe Biden. It was an ugly, dismissive statement that denigrated him based on his race, his gender and his age. You are blind to your own racism. Until you fix your own heart, youre never going to persuade others to fix theirs.
Please feel free to delete this post and block me from this site. It makes no difference to me. I am NEVER coming back. The hypocrisy and echo chamber group think is more than I can stand.
While youre here day after day waging your heroic war against injustice in the world (and all the while perpetuating it in your own heart) I will be out enjoying peaceful walks with my dog in nature and time with my family and time trying to do good in the world. Bye, bye and best of luck.
John W – Thank you for your response above.
Just to be clear, I am not offended by either of the actions noted nor do I assume a malicious intent by those who express either. Based on your comment, maybe I should be more critical about why people used “All Lives Matter”… but I still believe well-intentioned people were trying to promote a message with unintended interpretations following (e.g. by kneeling for the anthem I disrespect America and veterans, by removing “black” and saying “all” we should not prioritize addressing a current problem of systematic oppression in black lives).
I personally don’t promote either action, understanding how these unintended offenses were created and are apparently not overcome even when clearly expressed that is not what is intended.
Interestingly, I wonder if some of the downvotes for my comment were partially based on my moniker and an assumption that I think my comments should be considered truer than others, unaware the use of An Honest Dude was based on an inside joke. Come on – admit it if that was the case 🙂
Still I should have said “prejudiced assumptions” instead of “racist assumptions” at the end there – I should not be assuming everyone has assumptions based on a racial characteristic.
Thanks.
“Silence is Violence.” Newspeak?
Fred: My original statement about Biden was “I’m meh about Biden as a president (I find him personally likable when he’s not challenging people in the audience of a town hall to a fist fight), but he’s just another old white man, far less of a leader than several of the women who dropped out of the race, and several more who never entered it.” The phrase “just another old white man” is I assume what you object to as “an ugly, dismissive statement that denigrated him based on his race, his gender and his age.” I’m just another middle aged white woman. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren would both be better POTUS than I would. Biden is also a better candidate than I would be.
I had a colleague many years ago. He wasn’t personally a racist, never treated people as inferior based on race, but in response to affirmative action goals that required us to show that we were considering diverse, qualified candidates for executive positions we were hiring, and in response to diversity-based mentoring programs he said he felt that it was a disadvantage to be a white male, and we needed a diversity group for white men like we had for women and minorities. Erosion of privilege is not discrimination.
If you think Biden was the most qualified candidate, more than any of the women or other diverse candidates, good for you. I will vote for him either way, but his candidacy doesn’t excite me as many of the other candidates did. I stand by my first response to my friend’s FB post: some white people really like to make everything about themselves.
“What … are we learning” indeed! I’m with Fred on this one. “just another old white man” is appalling & utterly tone-deaf in the context of this otherwise fine commentary.
Fred’s right. Walks in nature are joyous experiences.
Fred, fake outrage. You come off as mocking those concerned with racism against racial minorities.
John W, thank you for explaining it to me. I’ve been in the civil rights movement since I was 16 years old. I’m 73.
One thing I’ve learned after fighting for Blacks’ rights, women’s rights, gay rights, handicapped rights, etc. is that no one’s rights are secure until everyone’s are based on their essential human dignity.
You choose your battle. Mine is full equality.
What have I learned?
Our country is on a murky path into the unknown future. It is dark and full of pitfalls and dangerous perpetrators that we will have to climb out of and defend ourselves from and even with all that work, we do not know what will be on the other side. Who knows, maybe we are carving through this jungle and will find when we emerge that we had been stumbling around in a circle and here we are, back where we started.
My FB feed is full of polar opposites: People who consistently post for social justice and people who consistently post conservative talking points. I love both groups as individuals, but my opinion of some of them is suffering greatly.
I have determined that what black people seem to want from me mostly is for me to say nothing. They don’t want to hear my voice. They want me to hear them. So I say nothing. And it’s hard, because I want to defend myself. I want to say “I’m not a bad person” but it doesn’t matter to them. My life experience and their life experience is so different as to be alien I think.
“Black Lives Matter” has always sounded like an angry battle cry. It put me off, it made me want to rebut with “All Lives Matter”. Then, someone posted their Ah Ha moment and it became my Ah Ha moment “Blacken Lives DO Matter” It isn’t a battle cry , it’s an impassioned, desperate plea. They are begging for their dignity. How could I have been so blind? How can we not give them so basic a right? Worthiness is our birthright.
alice, you sound like your more on my side than not, so I don’t want to discharge any friendly fire here. But of course all lives matter. The issue is that the phrase has been sloganeered (and largely by right-wingers who deny the reality of systemic racism) to discredit those fighting for equality and try to entrap people by saying they’re guilty of a double standard by ignoring the non-existent reality of white racism or some nonsense like that, and I think it’s important to recognize that.
That you’ve spent decades devoted to social justice is respectable, but unfortunately internet discussions with anonymous folks can only be based on the quality of am argument. I have a PhD in Middle East studies and it irks me that people online think they know more than me about the middle east. But internet discussions are what they are.
When Hurricane Harvey hit Houston hard in 2017, it garnered much attention, national aid, assistance, and volunteerism. Rightfully so. Someone made a bumper sticker:
All Cities Matter.
Are you suggesting that the cops do not deserve due process, and that to suggest otherwise is racist?
Due process is most important when the mob (in 18th century usage) is certain that it is right and that “justice” demands that the wicked be punished without benefit of law. See, e.g., Sir Thomas More in “A Man for all Seasons.”.
Plomb bob, not pendulum.
What I’ve learned in 50+ years is that I’m the only one I can change and it doesn’t matter what I say or how I say it; what matters is what I do and how I live.
Mark B., cops deserve due process. The problem is deeper than that, however. The Justice system barely ever convicts cops and has some racism embedded in it. Blacks serve on average 20% more time for the same crimes as whites. At what point does the court of public opinion count? We’ve all seen the footage of Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd. It would unfair for courts to get hung up on technicalities, as is so often the case, and ignore the larger jury’s verdict.
Mark B. – that was my initial reaction as well, but what I think was meant was that people are saying “there is no need for all these marches and protests, the criminal justice system will take care of these policemen now”. It’s not whether cops deserve due process (they obviously do), it’s dismissing the need for activism in the face of systemic inequality and assuming that justice will be delivered for the oppressed so they should just be quiet and go home.
Fred, enjoy your walk with your dog, free from the fear of racial profiling or death at the hands of police officers or fellow citizens for walking in the “wrong” neighborhood.
Alice: “All lives matter” may work to eradicate individual racist prejudice, but it does not address systemic racism.
Dr. Kendi, in his book Stamped says that his research shows that we haven’t really progressed on issues of race. Racism has progressed side by side with anti-racism. Both have existed for millenia. Racist ideas don’t create unjust systems. Unjust systems create racist ideas (that people use to justify the unequal outcomes). If more black people are killed by cops than white people, an anti-racist will say that’s because of discrimination in the system. One racist justification would be to ask why that person was doing the wrong thing or in the wrong place or had the wrong appearance (meaning black behavior, appearance or incursion into white spaces is the root problem). Those ideas exist to justify the apparent injustice.
Angela, I understand that. And I understand that gay people faced the same challenges to their civil rights and often the same fear for their lives. And not merely from police but from any random person (or church) who thinks they were the ones who got to decide who gets rights. While women haven’t faced the same physical danger — tho far too many do — it’s been 50 years that our right to a clear protection of equal rights has gone ignored and many women are as financially vulnerable as they ever were.. Handicapped people face a much softer form of discrimination but that still impacts on their ability to earn a decent living day in and day out and who can even calculate the emotional costs they endure?
To focus on any one of these as the probleme du jour (as if we ever give any of them more than lip service) is to, ignore the others and take resources from the essential fight for equality for all.
I agree with you and Dr. Kendi that unjust systems create their own justifications and rationalizations. They will do it whatever individual they are responding to. And they will continue to until we eradicate all the -isms and elevate everyone to full human dignity.
Anyone who watches what’s happening in cities all around the country and thinks that an unjust application of authority can’t be turned on them just as easily as it can be on a Black American or a gay American is a fool. Note the 75yo man in Buffalo who was thrown to the ground and hospitalized.
Until everyone’s rights are secure and enforced with equanimity, Blacks will remain vulnerable. This is far less a matter of official practice than a movement in individuals hearts and minds. We may able to say where it needs to begin first or which institutions need to address it most profoundly but only justice for every one is enough.
Not just around the US. Have you seen what is happening around the world? I believe the pandemic sparked something in people. And now when we see injustice we are so done with it, The normally more timid are speaking up. With the noise of the noise makers quieting down, it is time for people to say: we are done and call BS. Unfortunately the biggest empty noise maker has a gigantic steel plate in front of his face and keeps japping nonsens. Nothin good comes from his mouth and he doesn’t even realise how ridiculous he sounds. Please people of the USA, next time around; choose yourself a real president and not a clown.
For the rest of us who live in real life. The pandemic seems to have broke the mold, let us see what is important: life, breath, loved ones. And tolerance for injustice, racism, sexism, materialism… are out, are done with. No more.
I really hope we can keep this wind of change going for a long time. Well, the fact is that this pandemic is far from over. We are still in for a very bumpy ride. Corona is simply here to stay. Let”s start making the changes that are long over due to make.
Out with the old….in with the new!
Alice / Angela,
Thanks for so eloquently bookending a thoughtful and timely discussion.
The allure of the Mob.