Ethnic Differences in the Book of Mormon

Listening to Saints this morning

Ultimately, Brigham trusted that the gospel of Jesus Christ would continue to unite and protect the people of God, including the youth.

The restored gospel, he reflected at the start of 1869, “has sent forth its teachers to the ends of the earth, has gathered people of almost every tongue and creed under heaven, of the most varied educations and the most opposite traditions, and welded them into one harmonious whole.”

“A creed that can take the heterogeneous masses of mankind and make them a happy, contented, and united people,” he stated, “has a power within it that the nations know little of. That power is the power of God.”

I expect that we are going to see increasing levels of ethnic strife tear the world apart, and there is exactly one real solution and it is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/saints-v2/part-2/23-one-harmonious-whole?id=p57-p59&lang=eng#p57

>there is exactly one real solution

Aren’t you forgetting someone?

Great post and modern day parallel of light and dark that to the white American cultural norms flies under the radar.

The modern day, “am I a racist” white person can obviously see the difference in skin color, but to them those groups you identify are all “black”. But when that’s all you have to go on, in their African frame of reference one is going to be a lot lighter than the other.

So I can see how where you’ve got two groups of differently tanned skinned people and one is described as more light.

Where it is admittedly difficult is the Bible doesn’t seem to address race. My take from my historical reading is the middle east area was obviously an amalgamation of black African and tan Mesopotamian and skin color and modern day notions of white/black racism wasn’t really a thing until the Europeans were introduced into the mix.

At least we don’t see any of it permeating the text of the Bible and skin color in general is only tangentially mentioned in other rabbinic writings. So it just wasn’t important to them.

Its a question and an otherwise uncomfortable one (if I didn’t have a fixed testimony) why the BoM even has racism as a theme. And the perspective of it is not necessarily enlightening for our anti-racist world. Indeed, if there are any elements of the BoM text that seemed confused by the 1800s time period its the ones on race. Frustrating on one hand and question provoking on the other.

I vehemently dislike the way we just uncomfortably jump away from the issue entirely as though we have nothing to learn from it.

Racism is a massive issue in our world, and it just so happens that modern day scripture has something to say about it and we don’t really understand how to use what it says in the text — other than all are alike into God. Fair enough, but what to do with these other verses?

Just blame the racist BoM Jewish descendants, who developed a seemingly 1800s view of race even though their ancestors never wrote or talked about it like that?
I’m not saying that’s true (the 1800s bit), but since we haven’t really engaged much on the issue we seem to just textually place it in that sphere and move on.

Im partial to the approach of God is working through their biases and also with the idea that maybe the way JS translated it came out of his mind in 1800s racial worldview, but he should have worded things a little more metaphorically, like a light vs dark countenance. But it’s not something he ever got back around to based on his own assumptions and the fact that he was doing more than anyone ever has to build up the kingdom of God on the earth.

I think the best match for the Lamanites, in our day and age, is the Muslims. They can be destructive and violent, but as a whole, they are far, far more poius than most so-called Christians. The Lord has great plans for them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zanj_Rebellion&useskin=vector
White people very much did not invent race or racism.

I wonder if the curse in Nephi’s day might have been like that apologetic cope about the “skin of darkness” being an angry countenance, which developed into an ethnic difference by the reign of the judges but began to fade after the post-Amalickiah open period.

Viewing Nephite/Lamanite relations as caucasian/negroid is limiting, imo; Christian/Muslim would be much better and remember that there really might have been skraelings running around that nobody even wrote about. As racist as the 1800s were they would not let a rare pokemon go uncommented on.

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Your link makes no reference to skin color or rationale for inferiority. At least what I read is tribalism enslaving members of another tribe.

Obviously that can be construed to being similar to racism, but what we’re talking about here of rhetorical justification for “light skin is good, dark skin is evil.”

The Bible has none of that. The BoM implies it in certain instances, it could be argued.

The Bible had no connection to Europe. The BoM was translated by one who did. That’s the key distinction. The BoM peoples were closer to Isaiah in time period but they seem to share a racial world view more similar to Joseph Smiths.

This isn’t an attempt to blame all bad things on Europeans.

Plausible to me that the mark was self-applied, a black tattoo or paint

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/demythicizing-the-lamanites-skin-of-blackness/

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/understanding-the-lamanite-mark/