Have We Come Far Enough?

Recently I went to lunch with two LDS friends who’ve lived in Utah their entire lives and our conversation turned to politics and race. “I don’t know why everyone keeps talking about people not voting for Obama because he’s black, I haven’t seen any racism,” said one of the women. That night I mulled over what she’d said and why she said it. I was raised in Utah, but I’d been away for a long time and I’d forgotten the racial isolation of the state’s suburbs. Recalling back to the Sunday school lessons I’d grown up with where blacks were marked for being “fence-sitters” or “less valiant” in the pre-existence, I realized that somewhere in my mind those teachings had given me an initial hesitation toward blacks. Right away, their dark skin color marked them as people who’d messed up even before they got to earth. In a way, my friend was right, she probably didn’t see much outward racism having never left Zion, where I’d been living in the South and had seen outrageous acts of prejudice. But I’ll ask you, which is worse—to experience blatant racism and know it for what it is, or to have it be something passive and unconscious that hides in people blind to racism because of their racial dominance in an area?

The Salt Lake Tribune had an article on the 30th Anniversary of the “all worthy men” revelation. www.sltrib.com/ci_9497769 I thought the last line from Tamu Smith was a great place to start an open discussion, “For racism to stop, we need to hear it condemned at Conference as often as pornography or abuse are.” What do you think?