In 1966, Ezra Taft Benson, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, referred to Martin Luther King Jr. as the "Communist leader of the so-called civil rights movement," according to John-Charles Duffy, moderator of the Mormon Studies Brown Bag Series.
As part of the campus-wide celebration of the life of Martin Luther King Jr., a group of four panelists offered their perspectives on race relations between the LDS Church and its minority members in a Tuesday afternoon panel in the Union Theater.
"Mormons try to excuse the racial discourse that goes on within their society, and that, to me, is very troubling," said Darron Smith, a BYU professor in the education, culture and society department.
However, Smith also said the racist mentalities some Mormons hold are typical of most of the American population.
"Mormons are no more prejudiced or racist than anyone else in the country...the notions and representations Mormons in Utah have of minorities in Utah come from socially constructed representations they see on TV," he said.
Muriel Lee, relief society president of the black Mormon group Genesis, was born to West Indian parents in London. She said she looks to the vision of King when examining the LDS Church.
"To me, the issues of Martin Luther King become one of identity...I want to know what keeps minorities in the [LDS] Church when the things that happen to them are ridiculous," she said.
As an example, Lee recounted that after evaluating a woman for physical therapy, the patient asked if she could stroke Lee's hair.
"How humiliating for me, as a minority...but those kinds of things happen to minorities in the [LDS] Church all the time, and it's ridiculous," she said.
Debora Wrathall, a member of the group Mormons for Equality and Social Justice, said the economic hardships blacks face go hand-in-hand with social injustices.
According to Wrathall, black families are denied mortgages on homes 217 percent more often than white families, and the black median household income is 60 percent less than those in white households.
"These figures make me shake. We haven't gone far enough in working toward civil rights," Wrathall said.
Wrathall compared King's work in achieving equality and social justice with Brigham Young's original message.
"For Brigham Young, the spiritual and economic were not separate...Those issues became an artificial separation, and I think King believed the same thing," she said.
Panelist Annette Daley, an employee of the Mayor's Office of Community Affairs, said she can empathize with the struggle of being a minority in an overwhelmingly homogeneous state.
"Salt Lake City is 25 percent minority, which people tend to forget," Daley said.
Daley, Lee and Smith, who are all black, agreed that in order for change to occur, it must happen from within the LDS Church itself.
"Based on Mormon history, Mormons should be the most equality-oriented religious body in the country," Smith said. He added that for racism to be totally eliminated from the LDS Church, "the history has to be rewritten."
Lee agreed, adding that the members of today's LDS Church leadership do not accurately reflect all of its members.
"There needs to be a difference in the faces of the leadership of the [LDS] Church before any change can happen," she said.
For Smith, bringing equality about in the LDS Church is a lifelong effort.
"The discourse that goes on in the [LDS] Church is troubling to me," Smith said. "That'll stop as long as I'm around to have a say in the matter."
abenson@chronicle.utah.edu
