Coggins7 wrote:It would be very nice if you were actually attempting argument here, as opposed to one unsupported assertion after another without any logical argumentation or evidence to back it up. It would also be nice if you would stop tap dancing around my points and actually engage them.
LOL! Funny how your quote specifically excluded the material I offered in evidence, and then you say I made no attempt at an argument at all. Cute.
Coggins7 wrote:Traditional white racism, at least in this country, has never, under any circumstances targeted blacks and blacks alone as uniquely inferior while other non-white peoples were given equal treatment. Jews, Latin Americans, Indians, and Asians have all been cast, along with blacks, into a general hopper as inferior races (along with Irish and Italians as inferior Europeans), by those given to this kind of prejudice. The idea that the early LDS church and its leaders would have been actively seeking converts among all these groups except blacks simply isn't plausible in a strictly racial context. It does make since, however, within the context of lineage in which "race" coincides with lineage but does not determine, by itself, the actual positions taken toward those of that lineage. Otherwise, many Samoans and Tongans with skins nearly or equally as dark as anyone of African heritage would not have gotten the Priesthood until 1978 either.
I think there are a few obvious problems with your contention here, Coggins. First, you assume that LDS racism, in order to be racism, must follow exactly the same model as the larger society. I see no reason why, given the fact that a large percentage of membership was not American, and the LDS movement made a concerted effort at distinguishing itself
from American society. In some ways, LDS positions on race are a response to American society, not simply a parroting of it.
Second, that the LDS people grappled with racism differently does not mean that they and their ideas were not in any way racist. I think the evidence stands in favor of them operating under racist assumptions with emphasis falling on the race issues that most directly affected them at any given time. In the Book of Mormon era the issue was the origin and destiny of the Indians. As the LDS Church moved South, and accusations of their Abolitionist sympathies were noised abroad, the issue was how to deal with African Americans. When they moved West and Chinese people entered the picture, there was some concern about how the Chinese fit into the LDS schema.
At each turn, however, the revelations addressed issues of race, and the answers provided fit pretty well into the racist assumptions predominant in society at the time. Speculations that never rose to the level of revelation fit the foundation already established. Whether the determinations of 'lineage' are favorable or not, and they were mixed with reference to the Native Americans and Jews, and tending toward more negative with regard to African Americans and the Chinese, lineage is still identified clearly by race. Ergo, LDS lineage concepts operate by racist assumptions.
Coggins7 wrote:I've already conceded that cultural factors may have played a part, at least in the later doctrinal explanations for the ban, but that just isn't enough for a crusading bigot with an ax to grind is it? Since you clearly have no evidence or rational basis for the kind of certitude you display in your claims of the racial basis of the original ban, it of course follows that most of your disagreement with me will come in the form of statements of opinion and special pleading, as opposed to engaging in sustained, logical argument and providing some compelling rebuttal to my points.
The whole kit'n'kaboodle is informed by the racist views of the day from start to finish, whether the outcome was favorable or unfavorable. I fail to see why this is so objectionable or shocking. And just why am I a bigot? Because I believe that the early LDS Church was very much a creature of its age? Distinctive, yes, but hardly the sui generis construction you make it out to be with regard to 'lineage.' For your information, other Christians had explained race by use of different Biblical lineages. It didn't make their schema any less racist. It simply shows that they used the Bible as a way of understanding race. Racism is more than an insult. It was a way of viewing the world. It was an incorrect and very harmful way of viewing the world, yes, but it is not as though in saying this I am simply aiming at an insult. I am making a simple historical observation.
Man, you are a piece of work. Everything you write drips with a sludge of superiority and disdain that comes from... where? I have no idea. I see nothing especially cogent or persuasive in anything you have written, and yet you act as though I write complete tripe. Simply because you do not agree with me is not a good reason to insult me at every turn. Your insults are unwarranted. I am reasonably educated in these issues, in spite of what you say. If you care to dial it back a notch and continue to discuss this reasonably, I am willing, but if you continue in the current tone, I will simply ignore you.
I also ask, what is it that I have written that is so skewed that I should qualify as a 'bigot with an axe to grind'? Is that how you generally characterize people who disagree with you?