Originally posted by: Steeplerot
Racism in book of mormon
Book of Mormon
1 Nephi 11:13 (Mary) "she was exceedingly fair and white."
1 Nephi 12:23 (prophecy of the Lamanites) " became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations."
1 Nephi 13:15 (Gentiles) "they were white, and exceedingly fair and beautiful, like unto my people [Nephites] before they were slain."
2 Nephi 5:21 "a sore cursing . . . 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."
2 Nephi 30:6 (prophecy to the Lamanites if they repented) "scales of darkness shall begin to fall. . . . they shall be a white and delightsome people" ("white and delightsome" was changed to "pure and delightsome" in 1981).
Jacob 3:5 (Lamanites cursed) "whom ye hate because of their filthiness and the cursing which hath come upon their skins. . . ."
Jacob 3:8-9 "their skins will be whiter than yours... revile no more against them because of the darkness of their skins. . . ."
Alma 3:6 "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."
Alma 3:9 "whosoever did mingle his seed with that of the Lamanites did bring the same curse upon his seed."
Alma 3:14 (Lamanites cursed) "set a mark on them that they and their seed may be separated from thee and thy seed. . . ."
Alma 23:18 "[Lamanites] did open a correspondence with them [Nephites] and the curse of God did no more follow them."
3 Nephi 2:14-16 "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 . . . became exceedingly fair. . . . "
3 Nephi 19:25, 30 (Disciples) "they were as white as the countenance and also the garments of Jesus; and behold the whiteness thereof did exceed all the whiteness. . . . nothing upon earth so white as the whiteness thereof? and behold they were white, even as Jesus."
Mormon 5:15 (prophecy about the Lamanites) "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. . . ."
Doesn't the Book of Mormon say that dark skinned people are evil and that they turn white when they repent? Why doesn't that happen today?
This common allegation is based on a misunderstanding of the whole issue of race in the Book of Mormon. First, here is a short answer to a related question, answered by Paul McNabb, from FAIRLDS.org's page, "Letter From a Youth Pastor: Four LDS Responses to Frequently Asked Questions":
"Did I misread the BoM that God made people dark skinned because they were evil and sinned against Him?"
Yes, you misread it, or at least misinterpreted it, but some LDS do as well. M
ost Book of Mormon scholars believe that the phrase about darkness was metaphorical and have shown examples of this usage in ancient near-East writings, including the Bible. In any case, the r
eferences are not used to apply to blacks or other ethnic groups, nor is it meant to imply that skin color is a measure of righteousness or acceptability before God.
For further details on this issue, I'll quote from Hugh Nibley's discussion in Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol.7, Ch.8, pp. 215-218:
But if we are to take the Book of Mormon to task for its ethnological teachings, it might be well at first to learn what those teachings are. They turn out on investigation to be surprisingly complicated. There is no mention in the Book of Mormon of red skins versus white; indeed, there is no mention of red skin at all. What we find is a more or less steady process over long periods of time of mixing and separating of many closely related but not identical ethnic groups. The Book of Mormon is careful to specify that the terms Lamanite and Nephite are used in a loose and general sense to designate not racial but political (e.g., Mormon 1:9), military (Alma 43:4), religious (4 Nephi 1:38), and cultural (Alma 53:10, 15; 3:10-11) divisions and groupings of people. The Lamanite and Nephite division was tribal rather than racial, each of the main groups representing an amalgamation of tribes that retained their identity (Alma 43:13; 4 Nephi 1:36-37). Our text frequently goes out of its way to specify that such and such a group is only called Nephite or Lamanite (2 Nephi 5:14; Jacob 1:2; Mosiah 25:12; Alma 3:10; 30:59; Helaman 3:16; 3 Nephi 3:24; 10:18; 4 Nephi 1:36-38, 43; Mormon 1:9). For the situation was often very mobile, with large numbers of Nephites going over to the Lamanites (Words of Mormon 1:16; 4 Nephi 1:20; Mormon 6:15; Alma 47:35-36), or Lamanites to the Nephites (Alma 27:27; Mosiah 25:12; Alma 55:4), or members of the mixed Mulekite people, such as their Zoramite offshoot, going over either to the Lamanites (Alma 43:4) or to the Nephites (Alma 35:9--not really to the Nephites, but to the Ammonites who were Lamanites who had earlier become Nephites!); or at times the Lamanites and Nephites would freely intermingle (Helaman 6:7-8), while at other times the Nephite society would be heavily infiltrated by Lamanites and by robbers of dubious background (Mormon 2:8). Such robbers were fond of kidnapping Nephite women and children (Helaman 11:33).
The dark skin is mentioned as the mark of a general way of life; it is a Gypsy or Bedouin type of darkness, "black" and "white" being used in their Oriental sense (as in Egyptian), black and loathsome being contrasted to white and delightsome (2 Nephi 5:21-22). We are told that when "their scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes" they shall become ... "a pure and delightsome people" (2 Nephi 30:6 [the word "pure" was once printed as "white" but was corrected by Joseph Smith in the 1840 Book of Mormon to be "pure," though later printings missed the correction until 1981]), and at the same time the Jews "shall also become a delightsome people" (2 Nephi 30:7). Darkness and filthiness go together as part of a way of life (Jacob 3:5,9); we never hear of the Lamanites becoming whiter, no matter how righteous they were, except when they adopted the Nephite way of life (3 Nephi 2:14-15), while the Lamanites could, by becoming more savage in their ways than their brother Lamanites, actually become darker, "a dark, filthy, and a loathsome people, beyond the description of that which ever hath been . . . among the Lamanites" (Mormon 5:15). The dark skin is but one of the marks that God places upon the Lamanites, and these marks go together; people who joined the Lamanites were marked like them (Alma 3:10); they were naked and their skins were dark (Alma 3:5-6); when "they set the mark upon themselves; . . . the Amlicites knew not that they were fulfilling the words of God," when he said, "I will set a mark on them. . . . I will set a mark upon him that mingleth his seed with thy brethren. . . . I will set a mark upon him that fighteth against thee [Nephi] and thy seed" (Alma 3:13-18). "Even so," says Alma, "doth every man that is cursed bring upon himself his own condemnation" (Alma 3:19). By their own deliberate act they both marked their foreheads and turned their bodies dark. Though ever alert to miraculous manifestations, the authors of the Book of Mormon never refer to the transformation of Lamanites into "white and delightsome" Nephites or Nephites into "dark and loathsome" Lamanites as in any way miraculous or marvelous. When they became savage "because of their cursing" (2 Nephi 5:24), their skins became dark and they also became "loathsome" to the Nephites (2 Nephi 5:21-22). But there is nothing loathsome about dark skin, which most people consider very attractive: the darkness, like the loathsomeness, was part of the general picture (Jacob 3:9); Mormon prays "that they may once again be a delightsome people" (Words of Mormon 1:8; Mormon 5:17), but then the Jews are also to become "a delightsome people" (2 Nephi 30:7)--are they black?
At the time of the Lord's visit, there were "neither . . . Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites," (4 Nephi 1:17; see also 3 Nephi 2:14) so that when the old titles of Lamanite and Nephite were later revived by parties deliberately seeking to stir up old hatreds, they designated religious affiliation rather than race (4 Nephi 1:38-39). From this it would seem that at that time it was impossible to distinguish a person of Nephite blood from one of Lamanite blood by appearance. Moreover, there were no pure-blooded Lamanites or Nephites after the early period, for Nephi, Jacob, Joseph, and Sam were all promised that their seed would survive mingled with that of their elder brethren (2 Nephi 3:2, 23; 9:53; 10:10, 19-20; 29:13; 3 Nephi 26:8; Mormon 7:1). Since the Nephites were always aware of that mingling, which they could nearly always perceive in the steady flow of Nephite dissenters to one side and Lamanite converts to the other, it is understandable why they do not think of the terms Nephite and Lamanite as indicating race. The Mulekites, who outnumbered the Nephites better than two to one (Mosiah 25:2-4), were a mixed Near Eastern rabble who had brought no written records with them and had never observed the Law of Moses and did not speak Nephite (Omni 1:18); yet after Mosiah became their king, they "were numbered with the Nephites, and this because the kingdom had been conferred upon none but those who were descendants of Nephi" (Mosiah 25:13). From time to time large numbers of people disappear beyond the Book of Mormon frontiers to vanish in the wilderness or on the sea, taking their traditions and even written records with them (Helaman 3:3-13). What shall we call these people--Nephites or Lamanites?
A related question comes from The Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (C.A.R.M.), which provides a popular list of allegedly "Difficult Questions for Mormons to Answer." They ask:
"If the Book of Mormon is true, why do Indians fail to turn white when they become Mormons? (2 Nephi 30:6, prior to the 1981 revision)."
A brief answer by John Tvedtnes is available at
http://shields-research.org/Critics/CARM-JAT.htm as part of the LDS SHIELDS site. For convenience, I quote his answer below:
"White" need not refer to skin color, as is clear from the following passages from the biblical book of Daniel: "And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed (Daniel 11:35). "Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand (Daniel 12:10). In both of these passages, the meaning of the word "white" is most obviously pure; to "make white" is to purify. When Joseph Smith first translated the Book of Mormon, he gave the literal rendering of "white" for the passage in 2 Nephi 30:6. For the 1840 edition, it was changed to "pure," which better reflected the meaning of the word used by Nephi. Subsequent editions, however, relied on the 1837 Book of Mormon, which still read "white." This oversight was not rectified until the 1981 edition.
Finally, I should note that if we condemn the Book of Mormon for alleged racism due to possibly figurative passages suggesting that white is better than dark, then we must also condemn the Bible for similar failings. Daniel 12:10, quoted above, speaks of the righteous being "made white," and Lamentations 4:6-8 equates whiteness with goodness (prior to a moral fall) and a black appearance with sin:
6. For the punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom, that was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands stayed on her.
7. Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire:
8. Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.
This passage is undoubtedly figurative, but those looking for fault may choose to be offended. Similarly, Jeremiah apparently uses the word "black" to refer to an emotional state, not necessarily skin color (as some presume), when he says "For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me" (Jeremiah 8:21). These figurative usages for white and black need to be considered in interpreting Book of Mormon passages as well.
D.C. Pyle notes that the Amorite people, according to Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, I:84, were "depicted ... with fair skins, light (also black) hair, and blue eyes" on Egyptian monuments. Yet, the Sumerians said they were "dark" savages (William F. Albright, From Stone Age to Christianity, p. 166, as cited by D.C. Pyle). This reminds us to be careful about interpreting references to lightness and darkness of peoples in ancient texts.
On the other hand, it is possible or even likely that the Laman and Lemuel's group intermarried with darker-skinned natives in the Americas and through simple genetics became a people that could be characterized as darker-skinned than the Nephites for some period of time (both groups may have eventually experienced a lot of blending of genes due to intermarriage). Intermarriage with pagans was strictly contrary to Old Testament law and would be viewed as bringing a curse upon the Lamanites. The extent and nature of such a curse would be open to debate (spiritual only or genetic), but appears to have played a significant role in the attitudes of the Nephites toward the Lamanites.