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For
more than a century the Mormons clung tightly to their
well–documented, race-tinged dogma that blacks
were an inferior race, could not be priests, serve on
missions or be married in the Temple. They repeatedly
cited the Old Testament curse of Ham as a cover for
their unabashed racial bigotry. Mormon church leaders
didn’t budge from making pronouncements about
God’s alleged curse against blacks even when other
fundamentalist groups backpedaled at least publicly
from using the Bible to justify racism. Sharpton may
in fact have been moved to take his shot at the Mormons
because he is a Pentecostal minister, and his church
has at times been at odds with Mormonism. The Mormons
finally backed away from their bar against blacks after
church leaders claimed they got a revelation from God
in 1978 that declared blacks were now equals.
That
was a decade and a half after the great civil rights
battles of the 1960s. The Mormon leaders claim that
they have convincingly junked their racist past. They
tout their much-publicized genealogical research on
African-American families, their aggressive missions
in Africa, and the handful of blacks that serve in the
important church body known as the Quorum of the Seventy
to proof it. Yet Mormon leaders have also have rejected
calls for the church to apologize for its century plus
defense of Biblical touted racism.
The
closest they came was in 1998 when under pressure from
influential African-American Mormons the Mormon ruling
council’s The First Presidency and the Twelve
Apostles debated whether to issue a “clarification”
of the issue. It didn’t happen. The council told
reporters that they’d let the revelation speak
for itself and quietly let the matter drop. That angered
some black Mormons. They rightly insisted that while
the church had reformed its teaching and practices,
the stigma it put on blackness still stood, and that
it had made no effort to educate it flock why that was
wrong.
Mormon
change efforts are certainly commendable. But Mormon
leaders in refusing to go any further than the “revelation”
on race stirs strong suspicion that the attitudes of
many rank and file Mormons toward race and gender issues
are still frozen in time. The inherent social conservatism
in the Mormon faith and practices further deepens the
suspicion that if Romney is the GOP chosen one and actually
beats a path to the White House he isn’t likely
to make diversity the watchword of his administration.
He’s even less likely to do what President Bush
did and appoint a bevy of high profile African-Americans
to top echelon positions.
His
record as Massachusetts’s governor is even less
reassuring on diversity. In his last year in office,
the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association pounded
on him to appoint more minorities and women to the state
bench. He did. But by then Romney had his eye firmly
on a presidential bid. That put him in the national
public spotlight, and his record on diversity would
be closely scrutinized.
During
his excursion to Morman headquarters in Salt Lake City,
Sharpton said and did all the right things to show that
he’s ready and willing to make peace with the
Mormon faith. But he did not apologize to Romney for
his blast. Romney for his part chalked Sharpton’s
knock against him up to bigotry. Romney was right.
However,
Sharpton’s remark did refocus attention on the
Mormon’s shameful past, a past that church leaders
have not totally rebuked. While religion shouldn’t
be an issue in determining who’s fit to sit in
the White House, it is an issue if it blinds a president
to the crucial need for diversity. The jury is way out
on Romney on that issue.
Earl
Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst.
His new book "The Latino Challenge to Black America:
Towards a Conversation between African-Americans and
Hispanics" (Middle Passage Press and Hispanic Economics
New York) in English and Spanish will be out in October.
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