In this recent General Conference, President Gordon B. Hinckley talked about racial strife that is still present among the Saints, and he urged priesthood holders to do everything in their power to wipe out racism in the LDS Church.I have found that as I listen to President Hinckley's conference addresses, he often talks about things that are troublesome to him as well as things that he is elated about. President Hinckley asked himself this question: “How can any man holding the Melchizedek priesthood arrogantly assume that he is eligible for the priesthood whereas another who lives a righteous life but whose skin is of a different color is ineligible?”
Although I know many people in the Church were shocked that this situation, as expressed by President Hinckley, still occurs in the Church, I was not shocked at what was said and I was not surprised that he said it during a conference address.
Since you are reading this article, you also know that my contact information is posted on the Internet. This posting attracted several emails from Church members describing incidents that were described by President Hinckley. These emails have come from as far away as the Netherlands to as close to home as Davis, Salt Lake, and Utah counties. In addition, I have been stopped in the hallways and on the streets of Salt Lake City to discuss such incidents. With the Church membership being a segment taken from the world population, it is not unusual that Church membership would also contain some characteristics of the general population. Some of the emails and conversations are shared with our priesthood leader who serves the Church as a general authority, where these emails and conversations can be appropriately addressed.
President Hinckley mentioned that he has spoken a number of times on diversity and how we must make an effort to accommodate diversity. Two years ago I was privileged to be invited to BYU to speak about diversity, because although we embrace diversity as a concept, our students, as well as some adults, have a very difficult time accommodating a diverse society.
Why is it this way?
I believe that it is because the natural man instinctivey forces us to categorize people we meet into mental buckets so our minds will know how to react to them. This takes place in all of us, regardless of our race or background. Once we categorize someone (which takes place instantly and automatically based upon our knowledge as well as the use of our five senses), it is very difficult to change the categorization that was made even when we receive new light and knowledge. Although this ability is a gift from Heavenly Father, Satan uses all of Heavenly Father’s gifts for his advantage.
However, Heavenly Father has also shown us how to not get caught in Satan’s snare. When Alma fled from the servants of King Noah, he went about among the people and began to teach the words of Abinadi:
And he commanded them that there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another. (Mosiah 12:21)With “one eye, one faith, one baptism,” they dealt with one another in unity and love. What a remarkable thing to be “knit together in unity and love” with the family of Saints.
I presume that Alma and his people succeeded in their “knitting,” for their story continued in Mosiah 18:22, “and thus they became the children of God.” How did they do it? How can we do it with the multitude of different races and cultures that make up the Church of the Saints?
Clearly, we must want to do it. We start by recognizing that being a literal son or daughter of God is not enough. We must also become the spiritual children of God, something that does not occur, as Alma's people experienced, until we bond together. This bonding is more than sitting or talking or listening or singing together. To become the children of God, we must be knit together. This bonding means believing, covenanting, and working together in loving unity. The bonding that makes us the children of God also truly makes a family of us.
In your family, do you focus on the things that make each family member uniquely different, or do you focus on things that are similar and bind your family together? I have learned that when anyone in my family focuses on things that bind us together, we become knitted together.
Is this difficult to do with people who are not in our personal families? I used to answer yes to this question until someone introduced me to a Web site called “gospelink.com” and I found an article about a man who did not have access to the priesthood, yet he was able to knit people of different races together. How many of you have heard of Booker T. Washington? I have asked this question of people who belong to the Church as well as those who do not belong to the Church; most people knew about him, but knew him. Look at these facts about Booker T. Washington:
- Booker T. Washington was born a slave on a Virginia tobacco farm plantation in 1856. His mother was a cook and his father was a white man from a nearby farm.
- After emancipation, his family was so poverty-stricken that he worked in salt furnaces and coal mines beginning at age nine. Always an intelligent and curious child, he yearned for an education and was frustrated when he could not receive good schooling locally. When he was 16, his parents allowed him to quit work to go to school. They had no money to help him, so he walked 200 miles to attend the Hampton Institute in Virginia and paid his tuition and board there by working as the janitor.
- He believed that education would raise Blacks to equality in this country, and he became a teacher.
- In 1881, he founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama.
- As head of the Institute, he traveled the country to raise funds from both Blacks and whites; soon he became a well-known speaker.
- He believed that Blacks could secure their constitutional rights through their own economic and moral advancement rather than through legal and political changes. Although his conciliatory stand angered some Blacks, who feared it would encourage the foes of equal rights, whites approved of his views. Thus his major achievement was to win over diverse elements among southern whites.
- When William McKinley became President in 1896, a movement was set in motion to name Washington to a cabinet post, but he withdrew his name from consideration because he preferred to work outside the political arena.
- He died on November 14, 1915, at the age of 59. In March of 1913, two years before his death, he visited Utah.
Washington also argued that Mormons had been misrepresented. He said that “the people who speak in the most disrespectful terms of these people are the ones who know least about them.” Washington also testified that “the Mormons are not an immoral people,” and that “no immoral people could have such strong, fine bodies as these people nor such vigorous and alert minds as they.”
Washington reported that, having addressed schools across the nation, he could say without hesitation that he had "never addressed a college anywhere where the students were more alert, more responsive, or more intelligent than is true of the students in these Mormon colleges.” Washington added that he had met a daughter of “Joseph H. Smith Sr.” during his visit and found her to be “an intelligent, modest, fine young woman with a strong body and alert mind.” He noted that he had been told that the other 48 children of Smith's were of the same caliber. He did not delve into the subject of polygamy, but he noted that he did not know how many wives President Smith “has or had.”
Washington reported there were about 1,000 Blacks living in Salt Lake City that were “above the average in intelligence and in other respects.” He wrote that what was especially striking to him as exceptional were “two good [Black] churches with very intelligent ministers.” He expressed dismay over the fact that the city, like others he had visited, featured a club house for drinking and gambling rather than a “commercial organization to promote business and industrial interests of colored people.” But he had spoken to them about the matter, and he expressed optimism that the situation would improve.
Utah, he reported, was also the home of Black Mormons, many of whom “came here in the old days.” Brigham Young, he noted, had brought Blacks to the area, “and they or their descendants have remained.” He was undoubtedly referring to Black pioneer Samuel Chambers when he said that he had met one Black man from Mississippi who “was 82 years of age . . . a staunch Mormon, and neither the Baptist church nor the Methodist church can get hold of him.” He described the man as “a fine-looking old fellow, a kind of colored Brigham Young” with a farm worth $25,000.
Although Washington came under fire from within his race for his words, he responded that “he was trying to be truthful and fair.” And he explained that his own race had suffered so much through misrepresentation, that he naturally had a kind of fellow-feeling for any group of people that was likely to be misrepresented.
Although these were difficult times for a man of color to speak up for Mormons, Washington was easily able to do it because he focused on things that knitted people together in unity and in love. If a man without the priesthood could focus on the “knitting of men” by focusing on commonalities during the most difficult of times, then certainly we as Saints can do it today.