Thomas S. Monson and the Paradoxes of the Utah Jazz

“You go live in Utah.”

– Point guard Derek Harper to reporters, explaining why he refused to report to the Utah Jazz after being traded to the Salt Lake team

I’ve been alarmed to note that a particularly symbolic cultural recalibration that the Monson administration has wrought has gone largely overlooked.[1]  We used to have a church president who visited the locker rooms of the BYU football team in order to instruct the players not to “muff it.”   Today, however, the team that reaps the undoubtedly vast rewards of prophetic beneficence is the Utah Jazz. [2]

Now, granted, Thomas Monson may be indifferent to the larger circles of meaning rotating around his choice of entertainment, and nothing more than a pro basketball fan.  These are not unusual creatures along the Wasatch Front  However, as will be further explored below, the cultural significance of their presence there is often missed.  So it behooves us to think a bit more deeply about the sport and its particular manifestations in the geographical and cultural landscapes of Mormondom.

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“[I]t is a moral evil for any person…to deny any human being the right…to every privilege of citizenship”: Civil Rights in General Conference, 1963

Although it has been described as such, the following document is not an official declaration by the First Presidency supporting civil rights. It wasn’t even written by the First Presidency, but rather by Sterling M. McMurrin. However, President Hugh B. Brown read the statement as part of his October 1963 General Conference address with the approval of Pres. McKay and it was later reprinted in the Deseret News as a quasi-official statement of the Church’s position on civil rights. The statement was drafted in an attempt (that proved to be successful) to avoid protests at conference by the NAACP, which had requested and was denied a meeting with the First Presidency to discuss the Church’s position on civil rights legislation in Utah. Despite its semi-official status, the document is an anomaly, a lone representation of racial liberalism in a sea of conservatism.

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“[T]he only thing that distinguishes Utah from Georgia is that it does not have jim-crow cars”: Wallace Thurman, Mormon Utah, and Blacks in the West

Although it may be surprising to many today, during the nineteenth century anti-Mormons often denied that Latter-day Saints were white. Mormon authors fiercely contested this argument, using republican discourses to portray themselves not only as literal but also ideological descendants of the Revolution. As Patty Limerick has argued, anti-Mormons waived aside these objections and gave the Mormons the same choice given to Native Americans during the 1830s–either renounce your cultural distinctiveness, or move west of the Mississippi River, where no whites live.[1]

Once the Mormons resettled in the Great Basin, they discursively constructed their territory as a place of refuge in contrast to the tyranny of the East. Perhaps due to their insistence on claiming whiteness, their Great Basin refuge had borders that were not only geographically defined but also racially delimited. Although sporadic attempts were made during the first few decades of settlement to live peaceably with Native Americans, by 1850 Mormons in Utah Valley

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Teaching About Racism (Including the Priesthood Ban) in Sacrament Meeting

This is not one of my normal posts, which are usually pretty detached and scholarly. Rather, I’m going to share a personal experience about bringing in academic history to the ward setting. Sunday before last I gave a talk in sacrament meeting, with the assigned topic being scriptures and their value in my life. Initially, the second counselor in my bishopric asked me to address the FLDS situation and continuing revelation, a topic that I was initially excited about but with further reflection I realized that it would be altogether too difficult to do justice in a 10 minute presentation that is supposed to be faith promoting. So I backed off, opting instead to tackle a slightly less

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Nobody Knows to be Shown in Idaho on May 9

From Margaret Young:

The Idaho Black History Museum is proud to present

Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons

Followed by a discussion with the filmmakers

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“I Was Told That It Was True, and It Was a Marvelous Day”

Such, more or less, was Darius Gray’s summary of his initial reaction to the 1978 revelation.

Today was the Ogden screening of Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons. I along with Christopher, Ben, and our female companions drove up from Provo to support Margaret and Darius. Margaret told us afterward that we couldn’t use such words as amazing or incredible to describe this documentary, but such words do indeed fit. But I’ll humor her and give a more substantial response to the film.

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Latino/a and Mormon

This is cross-posted at Times and Seasons, the last of my guest stint there. 

America, as they say, is browning. Latina/os recently surpassed African Americans as the largest minority group in the United States, and the Church is experiencing that browning along with the rest of the nation. “According to Church statisticians, the future of the Church does not lie in Europe, Canada, or the United States but rather in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and among the ethnic groups in this country.”[1] Given this fact, it is surprising that so little is known about the history and experiences of those that identify themselves as both Latino/a and Mormon. There is only one thin book on the subject, written by BYU historian Jessie L. Embry that is based on oral histories of BYU students and handful of Latina/o Mormons from Southern California. “In His Own Language”: Mormon Congregations in the United States is a start, but according to Ignacio M. Garcia, Lemuel Hardison Redd Chair of Western History at BYU, we need to know much more about Latino/as Mormons themselves.

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Narrating the Priesthood Ban and Constructing Selves

This is cross-posted at Times and Seasons.

The way we see and define who we are is usually closely related to how we understand the past. Most of us have overlapping identities that require us to negotiate compromises between them and these compromises shape our narratives of history. African American members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have two dominant identities, black and Mormon, and as such, they have the burden of negotiating a compromise between these identities

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