Common sensePlease explain how you came to this conclusion.
Common sensePlease explain how you came to this conclusion.
Knick fans used to be rambunctious. Back when they had fans.Uhh, I have news for you, yes, we are all thinking that.
Very bad show by Utah. Adam Silver should clamp down on this horrendous behavior now and call for all games this series to be played in Houston. It is terrible optics for the league to have what we all saw happen in that last game in Utah.
And how can you not bring race into this? I saw two white fans get into the face of a black player. Why didn't those white fans get into Nick Collison's face? I think you know the answer.
Every time I think you couldn't possibly get more idiotic you up the bar. Thankfully, there's an ignore function on this site. G'bye.Uhh, I have news for you, yes, we are all thinking that.
Very bad show by Utah. Adam Silver should clamp down on this horrendous behavior now and call for all games this series to be played in Houston. It is terrible optics for the league to have what we all saw happen in that last game in Utah.
And how can you not bring race into this? I saw two white fans get into the face of a black player. Why didn't those white fans get into Nick Collison's face? I think you know the answer.
Uhh, I have news for you, yes, we are all thinking that.
Very bad show by Utah. Adam Silver should clamp down on this horrendous behavior now and call for all games this series to be played in Houston. It is terrible optics for the league to have what we all saw happen in that last game in Utah.
And how can you not bring race into this? I saw two white fans get into the face of a black player. Why didn't those white fans get into Nick Collison's face? I think you know the answer.
Is the answer "because Nick Collison sucks?" Because that's what my money is on.Uhh, I have news for you, yes, we are all thinking that.
Very bad show by Utah. Adam Silver should clamp down on this horrendous behavior now and call for all games this series to be played in Houston. It is terrible optics for the league to have what we all saw happen in that last game in Utah.
And how can you not bring race into this? I saw two white fans get into the face of a black player. Why didn't those white fans get into Nick Collison's face? I think you know the answer.
I have to compliment Jope for having the most balanced post in this thread. There has long been a culture of extreme sports heckling here in Utah, and some of it is definitely racist. From the high school level on up. If Jope didn’t grow up here, I would be very surprised.
But Utah’s racism is unique among American cultures. It’s on the scriptural level, and takes its cues from Brigham Young who was an extreme racist who condemned blacks in General Conference and sympathized with the South both before and after the Civil War. (How many western states can you think of that refer to their southern region as “Dixie”?)
But not only is the racism in the canon (Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price). It is also on the unwritten level, where many of the Baby boomer generation will still tell groups of teens and missionaries at dinner appointments that blacks have their skin because they were “unfaithful in the pre-existence”.
Read David O Mckay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism by Gregory Prince. The chapter on blacks and the priesthood is worth the purchase price alone. My favorite part of that book describes Nigerians who discovered the Book of Mormon in the ‘60s, converted on their own, and grew to 20,000 strong. They were begging the church to send missionaries to baptize them, and the church hedged in part because they didnt want to give the priesthood to them. McKay suggested just giving them the Aaronic priesthood, but the Twelve Apostles shouted him down. They wouldn’t have it. Then the Biafran war broke out and the church waited for decades to even address these people.
That kinda **** is under the surface for any racist incident that involves anyone who comes from our dominant religious culture.
If anyone wants to read a concise study of why Utahns are still preoccupied with race, scope Paul Reeves’ Religion Of A Different Color, which describes the local response of Mormons being labeled “non-whites” in the 1850s by eastern Protestants.
Mormons have been over-asserting their whiteness (as if they had to) for more than 170 years because the US white power structure chose to lump them in with Jews, Irish, Italians, and other “lesser” caucasians as a function of (i) polygamy, and (ii) the mythic caste system that American Anglo-Saxons have always asserted to stay in control of local politics, business, and real estate.
So it should not shock anyone who can read that Utahns, and especially LDS Utahns, still act like they are better than everyone because they are fronting to cover up for a gigantic case of little man’s disease that stems back to the most racist era of our history.
Things like the Olympic committee bribing scandal, the over-the-top American patriotism, and even the Jazz fan fear of non-acceptance by the larger US NBA community of players and media all stem from the Antebellum notion that Utah = Mormons = sub-whites, so Utah is always forced to try harder to prove that they belong to this country.
TLR - It’s not just the demographics. It’s the history of those demographics. And if you are a non-Mormon reading this, all I can say is that if you want to avoid contributing to the intentional ignorance on these matters, then you should absolutely own this history so that you aren’t a party to a tradition of doubling down on a matter that is older than the state.
Damn. You are speaking some truth here. And if it isn't all truth it is still pretty revealing about the unique nature of racism in Utah.
I've always said, Utahns in general are not racist the way some KKK jackass in Alabama is racist. Utahns are racist in a similar way to how Japanese people are racist. They just think they are special, and by extension, other people are ordinary. It's probably more insulting and disgusting than the KKK jackass, but it is a little different.
But Nazis and KKK types are easy to spot and easy to counter. Although if they achieve a tipping point their goals are to kill and/or expel people who are not like them. It's just that this subtle superiority concept is hard to root out and the people who believe it are generally not committed to it consciously, they just think that's the way things are.KKK style of ideological racism is FAR worse. The kind of racism you ascribe to Utah exists to some degree in every culture I've personally seen, not just Japan (although Japan's is really bad and borders on KKK territory). People are naturally tribal, and they generally have to work themselves out of it. But not everyone makes it into some kind of militant religious ideology. Nazism is absolutely crazy, and unusual.
But Nazis and KKK types are easy to spot and easy to counter. Although if they achieve a tipping point their goals are to kill and/or expel people who are not like them. It's just that this subtle superiority concept is hard to root out and the people who believe it are generally not committed to it consciously, they just think that's the way things are.
Agreed. There is an assumption that the KKK type of racists do more harm than the passive racists who tolerate the kind of systematic racism that goes on in real estate, hiring, retail, schooling, law enforcement, incarceration, etc. It’s not less harm at all. It is just more socially acceptable.
But the problem in Utah is unique. The fear here isn’t as much about miscegenation as it is not being included in the lie of the “pure race”.
I think that as the culture surrounding DNA testing rises, more and more people will abandon the idea that there ever was a “white” race to begin with. Melanin production is an epigenetic matter relative to proximity to the equator, not some genetic identifier of a “chosen people”.
I should rethink listening to people's experiences, especially people that have a different background than I do?
I'm sorry, but the way I just read your comment is "I'm a ****ing dick." If I'm misreading you or you misunderstood my point, then I apologize. If not, you're a ****ing dick.
I would argue, that of all "American" cultures, Utah is a lot more open. Very few "white" populations have as much experience with other cultures as Mormons.
None of them come home not respecting what they went through.
Living for a while in Russia helped me to understand the United states of the 50's a lot more when it came to race relations. It also served as a good focal point for the progress we have made.
Yet all of that experience still yields a culture where the following can easily occur:
http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=5116879&itype=CMSID
Quote from the article:
"I have been a member nine years and have been told many times on many different occasions how I'll be white in heaven or how my skin is a sin/curse."
White in heaven? I’m sorry, but if this black convert is being told by members in Philadelphia that her skin will change to white after she ascends into the presence of God, then this particular brand of racism is not absent from Utah.
Utah is the cultural hub of LDS culture and religious understanding. As the article also shows, it harbors an alt-right subculture.
More of what the outside world observes of us:
https://www.google.com/amp/www.nyda...s-dating-site-whites-people-article-1.2483055
And the local teens offer their own barometer on what they think of blacks:
https://www.sltrib.com/news/educati...g-racial-slur-being-investigated-by-district/
That’s just recent ****. We don’t have to get into whites-only drinking fountains and restrooms in Post-bellum SLC.
Sure, Mormon missions do expose young LDS missionaries to many cultures. But it also trains them to distill those cultures through an LDS lens that cannot be extricated from the LDS scriptural understanding of race.
I distrust people who communicate with absolutes like this. I can tell you first-hand that there are many returned missionaries that do not respect what they went through. One guy on my mission in California outright admitted that he only came out because his brother received a Bronco upon returning home, and that he fully expected a similar gift. Others essentially sat on their suitcases for 2 years. So cut the PR talk.
Part of the problem of passive racism is that it always makes comparisons like this. That’s all good and fine that Utah is ahead of the global curve. What I would be shocked to see is the rank and file like yourself address LDS racist issues from the past and present forthrightly instead of consistently being forced into it politically by outside forces.
I have to compliment Jope for having the most balanced post in this thread. There has long been a culture of extreme sports heckling here in Utah, and some of it is definitely racist. From the high school level on up. If Jope didn’t grow up here, I would be very surprised.
But Utah’s racism is unique among American cultures. It’s on the scriptural level, and takes its cues from Brigham Young who was an extreme racist who condemned blacks in General Conference and sympathized with the South both before and after the Civil War. (How many western states can you think of that refer to their southern region as “Dixie”?)
But not only is the racism in the canon (Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price). It is also on the unwritten level, where many of the Baby boomer generation will still tell groups of teens and missionaries at dinner appointments that blacks have their skin because they were “unfaithful in the pre-existence”.
Read David O Mckay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism by Gregory Prince. The chapter on blacks and the priesthood is worth the purchase price alone. My favorite part of that book describes Nigerians who discovered the Book of Mormon in the ‘60s, converted on their own, and grew to 20,000 strong. They were begging the church to send missionaries to baptize them, and the church hedged in part because they didnt want to give the priesthood to them. McKay suggested just giving them the Aaronic priesthood, but the Twelve Apostles shouted him down. They wouldn’t have it. Then the Biafran war broke out and the church waited for decades to even address these people.
That kinda **** is under the surface for any racist incident that involves anyone who comes from our dominant religious culture.
If anyone wants to read a concise study of why Utahns are still preoccupied with race, scope Paul Reeves’ Religion Of A Different Color, which describes the local response of Mormons being labeled “non-whites” in the 1850s by eastern Protestants.
Mormons have been over-asserting their whiteness (as if they had to) for more than 170 years because the US white power structure chose to lump them in with Jews, Irish, Italians, and other “lesser” caucasians as a function of (i) polygamy, and (ii) the mythic caste system that American Anglo-Saxons have always asserted to stay in control of local politics, business, and real estate.
So it should not shock anyone who can read that Utahns, and especially LDS Utahns, still act like they are better than everyone because they are fronting to cover up for a gigantic case of little man’s disease that stems back to the most racist era of our history.
Things like the Olympic committee bribing scandal, the over-the-top American patriotism, and even the Jazz fan fear of non-acceptance by the larger US NBA community of players and media all stem from the Antebellum notion that Utah = Mormons = sub-whites, so Utah is always forced to try harder to prove that they belong to this country.
TLR - It’s not just the demographics. It’s the history of those demographics. And if you are a non-Mormon reading this, all I can say is that if you want to avoid contributing to the intentional ignorance on these matters, then you should absolutely own this history so that you aren’t a party to a tradition of doubling down on a matter that is older than the state.
Agreed. There is an assumption that the KKK type of racists do more harm than the passive racists who tolerate the kind of systematic racism that goes on in real estate, hiring, retail, schooling, law enforcement, incarceration, etc. It’s not less harm at all. It is just more socially acceptable.
But the problem in Utah is unique. The fear here isn’t as much about miscegenation as it is not being included in the lie of the “pure race”.
I think that as the culture surrounding DNA testing rises, more and more people will abandon the idea that there ever was a “white” race to begin with. Melanin production is an epigenetic matter relative to proximity to the equator, not some genetic identifier of a “chosen people”.
And I would be surprised to see you address any LDS observations by stepping outside your prism of hatred toward the religion. . .
I want to hug the guy who made that sign.