Realizing My Church Community was Racist: Situation #1:

In 2018 I was a primary teacher for the 11 year olds. The lesson was on a story where believers were being persecuted for their beliefs. Our discussion became really rich when we started talking about bullying and racism and how important it is to love others no matter how they might be different from you. It was the best discussion that primary class ever had.

Later the primary president called and said that there’d been an anonymous parent complaint about the lesson. When I told the primary president my side of the story, she apologized for even bringing it up and told me not to change a thing I’m doing. Still, I was left wondering why I bring my children to a community where if you mention “racism” someone gets offended.

Realizing My Church Community was Racist: Situation #2:

In 2019 I was a gospel doctrine teacher. The adult Sunday School lesson was on being more inclusive. I pulled up the gospel essay on race on a projector and led a discussion on how, when we are in a church with a negative/ complex history regarding race, we can foster inclusivity. I knew that people might get frazzled about the gospel essay which is why I pulled it up on the projector. That way they had to know that I was reading directly from the church website and it was all officially “approved.”

But that didn’t stop the old white man from calling me out, saying my lesson was too critical of church leaders (REMINDER: WHAT I READ WAS FROM THE CHURCH WEBSITE!). He stayed after class even longer to make sure I understood how bad my lesson was. I said to him, “If we can’t have conversations like this, there is no room for me in this church.” I walked away and burst into tears.

I cried and cried and cried. I wanted to brush it off as some old white guy that I didn’t have to listen to. But I knew that the real problem in my mind wasn’t really about that man. It was that I was choosing to raise my children in a community where it is okay to be openly racist but not socially acceptable to be anti-racist.

And that’s a tough pill to swallow. Church should be a place where a community helps me teach my children values. But what if I don’t share values with that community?

President Nelson Asks Us to Root Out Racism

In 2020, President Nelson asked us to root out racism. I heard a couple people talk about it for a second, but not much changed either at a local or churchwide level.

In order for local church communities to recognize their racism and ROOT IT OUT, the Church would benefit from a few important small things:

1. If Church headquarters made a formal apology about Black individuals not getting the Priesthood, it might do a lot to help Black members feel heard/seen. It also might help the old white men in Sunday School to recognize that the Church hasn’t always been perfect and we might need to do some repairing and discussing now.
2. If Church headquarters made a bigger effort to call leaders of color, it would be nice because representation matters! (Check out Ramona’s blogpost on that very idea if you haven’t already)
3. If local leaders made a bigger effort to call out and talk about racism, the subject could become less taboo and we could try to get to the root of it.
4. If individuals got over their fears and discussed it openly, there may be some backlash (and the backlash hurts because it’s hard to realize that the people in your community are racist!), but I do think those little comments will eventually help create change.

What do you think? How can we root out racism in our church communities?