What's new
By:

Yuck yuck yuck

Ron Mexico said:
It's not an either or thing. Yes, it happens everywhere. But it happens in Utah more. Utah also gets a higher blame for things.

Horribly behavior is everywhere I've ever been. But that doesn't excuse it.
Click to expand...
Maybe gets publicized at Utah games more (any amount is inexcusable) but seriously dude, I’m telling ya, I’ve heard and seen many more things in the south that shook me. A **** is a **** no matter where it is, but I’m telling ya eastern Texas/ Houston / Louisiana has some blatant and obvious and openly out there that’ll racism that will raise the hair on your back.

With that being said, I feel the mountain west definitely has there own unique form of racism that stems largely from ignorance. Where the south seems like some people find a literal friction between races, IMO, I feel that the mountain west is often just pure ignorance.

This is largely just based off my experience though so it’s very subjective. I lived down south for awhile and dated a black girl up here (I’m white) so my experience is obviously different being white, but dating a dark girl really opened my eyes up to all the crude comments she heard as “jokes”. She cried often, super hurtful and just ridiculously ignorant things.
 
Saint Cy of JFC said:
What do you expect when you in a majority trump state?
Click to expand...
Nah nah nah, none of that. I get Trump is divisive, Biden is divisive, whatever, but comments like that only increase the division and erode common ground. I respect a decent amount of your posts but it’s dangerous to make large sweeping derogatory generalizations about any group- that’s how you ended up with people increasing in hate and division. I’ll respect anyone’s opinion that’s different that mine, but I despise false and dangerous logic. That hurts everyone.
 
idiot said:
I agree to some extent with your second and third sentences. One's relationship (or lack of) with Mormonism shouldn't be seen as a dividing line to position oneself as "part of the solution" vs "part of the problem."

But at the same time, the role of Mormonism in the racism that does exist in the area's culture does need to be acknowledged and confronted (with the goal of improvement).
Click to expand...
The LDS church has taken a very forward stance on racism in regards to talks on it in general conferences, donations to groups such as the NCAA, and all kinds of church media and short videos talking about the need for unity and charity etc. IMO the leaders are very aware, I believe it’s very influenced by an ignorance factor that stems from lack of diversity in the Mountain West. Any ideas that the church is perpetuating any form of racism is blatantly false.
 
Max Porter said:
So I left the church and am definitely not Mormon. I’ve lived here all my life. I don’t think those racists or racist views have anything to do with Mormonism so I don’t know what you are talking about. You’re trying to criticize generalizations by generalizing.
Click to expand...
Being an exMormon does not mean antiMormon. Most times, in fact, it does not. But, for antiMormon folk, you better believe they see something like this and assign 100% blame for this or anything bad that happens in the State of Utah to the LDS church.
 
MCarter said:
The LDS church has taken a very forward stance on racism in regards to talks on it in general conferences, donations to groups such as the NCAA, and all kinds of church media and short videos talking about the need for unity and charity etc. IMO the leaders are very aware, I believe it’s very influenced by an ignorance factor that stems from lack of diversity in the Mountain West. Any ideas that the church is perpetuating any form of racism is blatantly false.
Click to expand...
I'm very aware that the institutional church these days is more racially progressive than many of its members (as becomes clear whenever the Deseret News allows one of its NAACP partners to publish an opinion piece). But it's absolutely the case that it had a role to play in helping to create and perpetuate the racist attitudes of the area that have been slow to dissolve among some. There's plenty of good histories out there that document this.

I also think it's fair to say that the church's unwillingness to fully confront the racism in its own past may (for some) legitimate the larger American unwillingness to fully confront the US's racial past.
 
framer said:
Kind of a funny thing. I served my mission in Oklahoma/Arkansas and had a 6'4 300 pound Tongan companion. He was straight off the island and still learning English. It was interesting to see the people there try to come to grips with him because they had likely never seen a Polynesian and didn't know how to process it. They were familiar with Native Americans, and he wasn't that. They knew he wasn't black. But because he was so big, we would often be greeted with guns at the door (which frankly wasn't all that uncommon there, especially in the country.) His first area was in Kansas, where he worked to get a drivers license and got one. So when people asked him, "Where are you from, son?" he would say "I from Kansas!" with a big grin and show him his license.

The lesson is that, in Utah, most people are familiar with Poly culture and Polynesians and wouldn't bat an eye over seeing a Polynesian at Walmart. Utah doesn't have a big black population, and probably never will, just for normal demographic reasons (the entire Intermountain West is the same.) Without personal exposure to black culture, it will be hard for people to become familiar enough with black culture to not make occasional mistakes or misunderstandings. That can't be fixed with classes, or hectoring, or twitter posts. It can only be fixed with more people in Utah having experience with black people, which will likely happen as Utah grows and diversifies its economy.

None of this excuses the flat out racists, who should be called out as they were that night. But if you try lumping in some 75 year old lady from Salina, Utah who has probably never met a black person into the same bucket as these morons because she doesn't share the opinion that racism is institutional isn't really helping. Most of the people demanding that we "understand" really aren't interested in that. They just want a club to beat their political enemies, and turn a blind eye to the racism (or recent antisemitism) in their own tribe.
Click to expand...
If it were only the 75 year olds from Salina that had the problem, we'd probably all be a lot less worried about Utah's racism ,,,

(I agree that unfamiliarity with different group plays an important role in Utah's particular racism, but that's why we need more education, not less. And I really don't agree with your characterization about "most" of those those promoting more "understanding", though understand why you might see things differently.)
 
idiot said:
I'm very aware that the institutional church these days is more racially progressive than many of its members (as becomes clear whenever the Deseret News allows one of its NAACP partners to publish an opinion piece). But it's absolutely the case that it had a role to play in helping to create and perpetuate the racist attitudes of the area that have been slow to dissolve among some. There's plenty of good histories out there that document this.

I also think it's fair to say that the church's unwillingness to fully confront the racism in its own past may (for some) legitimate the larger American unwillingness to fully confront the US's racial past.
Click to expand...
No group, conservative or progressive, "confronts" the "sins" of its past. None of them do. That is never what this is about. It is different groups trying to whitewash their troublesome past and current policies by believing they are on some holier ground than the people they despise. Everyone is always interested in showing what THOSE other people are wrong about.

When do you ever see, "these are the things that I adopted in my personal life to hate others a little less today? "
 
framer said:
No group, conservative or progressive, "confronts" the "sins" of its past. None of them do. That is never what this is about. It is different groups trying to whitewash their troublesome past and current policies by believing they are on some holier ground than the people they despise. Everyone is always interested in showing what THOSE other people are wrong about.

When do you ever see, "these are the things that I adopted in my personal life to hate others a little less today? "
Click to expand...
I understand your cynicism on this. I share some if it, but not all of it. Arguably a very clear difference in how this plays out has been Germany vs. Japan after World War II. The former has been seen as a model for taking accountability (however imperfectly), while the latter is often seen as the opposite. Closer to home, Canada has arguably done more to take responsibility for its actions toward First Nations than the U.S. has done toward Native Americans. The point isn't that any of this is perfect, but rather that it's possible for some institutions/groups to do better than others.
 
idiot said:
If it were only the 75 year olds from Salina that had the problem, we'd probably all be a lot less worried about Utah's racism ,,,

(I agree that unfamiliarity with different group plays an important role in Utah's particular racism, but that's why we need more education, not less. And I really don't agree with your characterization about "most" of those those promoting more "understanding", though understand why you might see things differently.)
Click to expand...
OK, I would probably rephrase that to "most" of those those DEMANDING more "understanding." I can actually full get behind promoting understanding. Understanding comes through teaching and friendship, not at the point of a metaphorical gun.

I mean, I talked to a person that REMEMBERED the Tulsa race riots as a little girl living in the community. I've lived in towns where the segregated areas of town pretty much remain that way. I've knocked doors in cities where we didn't encounter a single black person, when the surrounding areas were probably at 25-30% black. That didn't happen organically. I lived in Russia, where in the late 90's, racism against black people was pretty out in the open and certain degrees were not available to members of certain races (you could be a nurse but not a doctor.) Utah's race "problem" isn't in the same stratosphere with stuff like that, and as a Utahn, it is hard to comprehend that stuff without seeing it personally.

The trick is to find the way to "see it personally" when that history isn't THEIR history. Everybody has their top concerns and are unlikely to kindly let someone else dictate what the order of those concerns should be, especially for an issue which barely, if ever, touches their lives.
 
idiot said:
I understand your cynicism on this. I share some if it, but not all of it. Arguably a very clear difference in how this plays out has been Germany vs. Japan after World War II. The former has been seen as a model for taking accountability (however imperfectly), while the latter is often seen as the opposite. Closer to home, Canada has arguably done more to take responsibility for its actions toward First Nations than the U.S. has done toward Native Americans. The point isn't that any of this is perfect, but rather that it's possible for some institutions/groups to do better than others.
Click to expand...

But HAVE they done better? It's anecdotal, but my friend who served in Germany was lectured all of the time about how poorly we treated the Native Americans. He was inwardly thinking "some of you, and most of your parents were around for the Holocaust!" Germany has outlawed the Nazi party, OK, but that was kind of not going to be a thing going forward anyway. The biggest thing about Germany and Japan is that they were freely offered a chance at redemption, far and above the level that they had earned and they took full advantage of it. They "wiped the slate clean" because they were allowed to do so by the rest of the Allied nations. A marked difference between the results of WW1. Offering a chance for redemption like that is pretty rare in today's climate.

I am not sure that the US has done nothing lately to help Native Americans. I would argue they have done plenty of the wrong thing. Of the 5 Indian boys my age I grew up with, 3 are dead and 1 is in prison. All three due to accidents involving alcohol. At this late point, I'm not sure what government could do to fix that. Any one of those kids could have went on with any type of schooling, fully covered financially. None of them had the desire to. They went to the same schools I did, so there was no difference there. They just had a different culture.

Because of those boys, and the time I spent in Oklahoma, I'm sensitive to Native American Issues, but I understand that it doesn't cross the threshold of most other people. I don't really have a solution I feel like I can fully get behind either other than piecemeal stuff that shows up on the ballot form time to time.
 
framer said:
No group, conservative or progressive, "confronts" the "sins" of its past. None of them do. That is never what this is about. It is different groups trying to whitewash their troublesome past and current policies by believing they are on some holier ground than the people they despise. Everyone is always interested in showing what THOSE other people are wrong about.

When do you ever see, "these are the things that I adopted in my personal life to hate others a little less today? "
Click to expand...
Well I just go the opposite route and work on hating everyone equally. But usually my pissy neighbor the most. I can tell you some of the things I've done in my personal life to hate him more. It's not hard. If you look up douchebag in the dictionary it just refers you to his picture.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page
Back
Top