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Racism in the Book of Mormon

Read the entire Book of Mormon, or even just all the relevant chapter headings, and tell me you figured out a way to miscomprehend this clear structure of Lamanites v. Nephites (698 uses of the former word; 372 uses of the latter), their tense back-and-forth battles, setting curses on groups, removing curses, setting the curse back after the coming of Christ, etc. (The mentions of the groups actually far outnumber the combined mentions of “Jesus” and “Christ” and “Son of God” in the Book of Mormon, 189 + 399 + 51 = 650, by the way.)

Nephi is shown that Jesus’ Mother Mary is White, Fair, Beautiful

1 Nephi 11:13–18:

… and in the city of Nazareth I beheld a virgin, and she was exceedingly fair and white. … A virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins. … And [the angel] said unto me: Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of [the Son of] God, after the manner of the flesh. (“the Son of” was added in 184X?, not in 1830, 1837, Skousen’s The Earliest Text)

Which means that JS Jr. / Nephi / God consider Jewish people to be exceedingly fair and white, beautiful, etc. (See 1 Nephi 13, below to drive home Nephi’s equating of Jewish and Nephite appearance.)

The Mound-Builder Myth

Here is Nephi’s (JS Jr’s) racism reflected directly, where Nephi in a vision sees the future of the Lehite civilization, and sees the future white Gentiles (Europeans), which he compares with his seed (who were Semitic or near-Eastern, which we should point out, is not “white” in the Northern European sense, but JS Jr. conflates this), 1 Nephi 13:14–15:

And it came to pass that I beheld many multitudes of the Gentiles upon the land of promise; and I beheld the wrath of God, that it was upon the seed of my brethren; and they were scattered before the Gentiles and were smitten. [See also Manifest destiny and Native American genocide in the US.]

And I beheld the Spirit of the Lord, that it was upon the Gentiles, and they did prosper and obtain the land for their inheritance; and I beheld that they were white, and exceedingly fair and beautiful, like unto my people [the Nephites] before they were slain [by the Lamanites].

This language echoes that in 1 Nephi 11, so we know that Nephi thinks his people look just like the white European Gentiles of the 19th century, living in the Americas, and that Mary, mother of Jesus, is described the same way: white, exceedingly fair, and beautiful.

The second verse encapsulates the Mound-Builder Myth in a nutshell, where God had the white Gentile’s backs in obtaining the Americas “for their inheritance,” because the wicked dark race had killed off the righteous white race.

God’s Curse, splitting Lehites into Nephites (white) and Lamanites (dark)

2 Nephi 5:21–24 goes on to state:

And he [the Lord God] had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.

And thus saith the Lord God: I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities.

And cursed shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed; for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing. And the Lord spake it, and it was done.

The curse is genetic, called by God/Nephi/JS Jr. “loathsome,” a skin of blackness.

And because of their cursing which was upon them they did become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety, and did seek in the wilderness for beasts of prey.

And the Lord God said unto me: They [the Lamanites, freshly cursed with a skin of blackness, mere verses ago] shall be a scourge unto thy seed [the white fair Nephites, see 1 Ne. 13:15 above], to stir them up in remembrance of me; and inasmuch as they will not remember me, and hearken unto my words, they [the Lamanites] shall scourge them [the Nephites] even unto destruction.

The last part is the key point, because it plays out over and over again, in nearly a quarter of the chapter headings of the Book of Mormon.

In Nephi’s sweeping vision of the 19th century, or JS Jr’s day, 2 Nephi 30:4–6 (1830 edition, 1837 edition, and Royal Skousen’s The Earliest Text edition all agree—“they shall be a white and a delightsome people” was changed to “they shall be a pure and a delightsome people” in 1840 by JS Jr. in Nauvoo):

And then shall the remnant of our seed [Lehites, i.e. Lamanites / American Indians] know concerning us, how that we came out from Jerusalem, and that they are descendants of the Jews.

And the gospel of Jesus Christ shall be declared among them [the Lamanites / American Indians]; wherefore, they shall be restored unto the knowledge of their fathers, and also to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, which was had among their fathers.

And then shall they rejoice; for they shall know that it is a blessing unto them from the hand of God; and their scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes; and many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a white and a delightsome people.

The curse of dark skin after Nephi

Jacob 3:5:

Behold, the Lamanites your brethren, whom ye [Nephites] hate because of their filthiness and the cursing which hath come upon their skins, are more righteous than you; for they have not forgotten the commandment of the Lord, which was given unto our father—that they should have save it were one wife, and concubines they should have none, and there should not be whoredoms committed among them.

. . .

O my brethren, I fear that unless ye shall repent of your sins that their skins will be whiter than yours, when ye shall be brought with them before the throne of God.

Wherefore, a commandment I give unto you, which is the word of God, that ye revile no more against them [the Lamanites] because of the darkness of their skins; neither shall ye revile against them because of their filthiness; but ye shall remember your own filthiness, and remember that their filthiness came because of their fathers.

Enos 1:20:

And I [Enos] bear record that the people of Nephi did seek diligently to restore the Lamanites unto the true faith in God. But our labors were vain; their hatred was fixed, and they were led by their evil nature that they became wild, and ferocious, and a bloodthirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness; feeding upon beasts of prey; dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins and their heads shaven; and their skill was in the bow, and in the cimeter, and the ax. And many of them did eat nothing save it was raw meat; and they were continually seeking to destroy us.

Alma 3:5–13:

Now the heads of the Lamanites were shorn; and they were naked, save it were skin which was girded about their loins, and also their armor, which was girded about them, and their bows, and their arrows, and their stones, and their slings, and so forth.

And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men.

And their brethren sought to destroy them, therefore they were cursed; and the Lord God set a mark upon them, yea, upon Laman and Lemuel, and also the sons of Ishmael, and Ishmaelitish women.

And this was done that their seed might be distinguished from the seed of their brethren, that thereby the Lord God might preserve his people, that they might not mix [(like a heavenly anti-miscegenation law)] and believe in incorrect traditions which would prove their destruction.

And it came to pass that whosoever did mingle his seed with that of the Lamanites did bring the same curse upon his seed.

Therefore, whosoever suffered himself to be led away by the Lamanites was called under that head, and there was a mark set upon him.

And it came to pass that whosoever would not believe in the tradition of the Lamanites, but believed those records which were brought out of the land of Jerusalem, and also in the tradition of their fathers, which were correct, who believed in the commandments of God and kept them, were called the Nephites, or the people of Nephi, from that time forth—

And it is they who have kept the records which are true of their people, and also of the people of the Lamanites.

Now we will return again to the Amlicites [(Nephite dessenters)], for they also had a mark set upon them; yea, they set the mark upon themselves, yea, even a mark of red upon their foreheads.

Note that the mark on the Amlicites was set upon themselves, a mark of red upon their foreheads, not the same as the curse that is passed down, the one explicitly mentioned as a skin of darkness or a skin of blackness.

Curse can be removed

We learn that God can remove the curse. In Alma 23, the Anti-Nephi-Lehies are so righteous that “the curse of God did no more follow them.” In fact, they are so un-cursed that in Alma 55, Captain Moroni is forced to find a single Lamanite among his men (which strongly implies he looks different enough that a Nephite would not do the trick, nor could a Nephite be disguised to do the trick, i.e. they have different skin color, as 2 Nephi 5:21 says) for a plot to get the Lamanites drunk. Also, Captain Moroni cannot just use any one of the 2,000 Anti-Nephi-Lehies / Ammonites / stripling warriors, because as we saw in ch. 23, they had the curse lifted.

Later, leading up to the coming of Christ, 3 Nephi 2:14–16, shows again that this could happen:

And it came to pass that those Lamanites who had united with the Nephites were numbered among the Nephites;

And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites;

And their young men and their daughters became exceedingly fair, and they were numbered among the Nephites, and were called Nephites. And thus ended the thirteenth year.

In 4 Nephi 1:10 we learn that once everyone was righteous, after Christ came and taught the gospel among them personally:

And now, behold, it came to pass that the people of Nephi did wax strong, and did multiply exceedingly fast, and became an exceedingly fair and delightsome people.

4 Nephi 1:17 explains this:

There were no robbers, nor murderers, neither were there Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites; but they were in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God.

They all became fair and delightsome when there were no more Lamanites, no more “-ites.” To be clear, that means they return to being white, like the “white, exceedingly fair, beautiful, delightsome” Jewish/Israelite/Lehite (1 Nephi 11, 1 Nephi 13) people they started out as.

In Mormon 5:15, while he watches the Nephite civilization dwindle, Mormon prophesies regarding the remnant of the people of Lehi:

And also that the seed of this people may more fully believe his gospel, which shall go forth unto them from the Gentiles; for this people shall be scattered, and shall become a dark, a filthy, and a loathsome people, beyond the description of that which ever hath been amongst us, yea, even that which hath been among the Lamanites, and this because of their unbelief and idolatry.

Conclusion

In a wonderfully-worded Reddit comment by /u/TesseraEJulie:

There is actually no racism in the Bible because the whole idea of race (categorizing a person by physical features like skin color, hair, or facial features) is a social construct developed in the 17th century to justify slavery. It was difficult for post-Enlightenment colonizers to support slavery so they had to adopt a new pseudo-scientific view that there are somehow distinct groups of people and some are biologically different from others. Prior to that time, discrimination, persecution, slavery, and even genocide certainly existed and they appear frequently in the Bible, but these were based on things like nationality, ethnicity, language, tribal conquest, and religious practices (for example, the Canaanites and the Samaritans). The attention to skin color and racism in the [Book of Mormon] conforms to modern notions of race and shows that the book is a product of a post-17th century context.

We should add that the pseudo-archaelogy of the Mound-Builder Myth was adopted by white American settlers, for the same reason—to give Godly sanction to the very un-Christian Native American genocide they were committing, at scale. Though not unprecedented nor uniquely Mormon, The Book of Mormon just happens to canonize this exact narrative (1 Ne. 13, Mormon 5). (And other unique scriptures produced by JS Jr. canonize racism against those of African descent, which took nearly 150 years to unwind.)

It takes some mental gymnastics of Olympic proportions, gaslighting, cherry-picking, wishful thinking, sloppiness—it goes beyond ignorance at this point, and verges on willful, malicious miscomprehension—to try to actively deny the historical racism of the early white Mormon people (my own ancestors, y’all) and the following dark marks on our history: the Genocide of the Timpanogos in the Battle at Fort Utah; Territorial Governor Brigham Young pushing for and passing the Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners and the Act in Relation to Service (African slaves); or that one episode where misguided Mormons dressed up like Native Americans and slaughtered white Arkansas pioneers—and tried to frame the Native Americans, the Indian Placement Program, and so forth. But here in the 21st century, to ignore or defend or deflect the clear structural racism in the Book of Mormon, and to whitewash history in an attempt to soften this harsh, central message of the Book of Mormon (the other central message obviously being that Jesus is the Christ)—is beyond the pale. Grow up, own up to it, don’t pretend it didn’t happen, admit it was and is not acceptable, repent, move forward. Stop making excuses and developing embarassing, bizarre apologetics. Bad apologetics are bad for faith, no matter your good intentions, no matter your funding source. “If ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” Notably, faith cannot be based on lies and deception, omission and spin. Specifially, one cannot unweave the dark-and-white racism from the entire thousand-year Lehite narrative arc without unravelling the Book of Mormon itself.

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