Although Christians have been advised not to grumble and gnash their teeth during their earthly existence, if one keeps their ears close enough to the Mormon gossip they are ensured to hear chompers (teeth) across America on the cusp of being ground to smithereens. 

 Lately, most of the debate revolved around whether children should be subjected to critical race theory in their school curriculum. 

From my comfy warm Caribbean Island of Barbados, most of these conversations generally float over my head. In my four years of membership, I have been able to decipher which conversations warrant my attention or need to be discarded like the empty noise that some of them are. 

 As a rebellious member of the LDS blogger community, I knew that it was impossible to avoid this conversation. After dealing with several racist encounters both in person and online, I have recognized that being silent is simply a comfortable compliance with not being willing to be deemed difficult and rebellious. 

There is some form of PTSD that comes with being one of the few black women in the LDS blogger-space after facing more than one encounter with racism over the years. I recall how a former friend called me a monkey and made several accounts to harass me over the period of a week. I see clearly how my content is viewed and interpreted differently than my peers. When I shared my experiences two semesters ago during one of my class meetings, one of my white classmates worked triple-overtime to invalidate my experiences with the racism I had faced and called it simple ignorance from ignorant people. 

In this case, how long is ignorance allowed to continue?

Recently when I spoke about my mental health struggles, the unfollows poured in in comparison to the very vague and often bland posts of those who follow along with what is expected. In other words, I should play along and not rock the boat too much because anything than the norm is rebellious. 

But, I’m getting off topic here. Let’s talk comfort.

Back when the critical race theory debate circulated among the mom bloggers and LDS influencers alike, I took an extremely vocal stance on the matter. As expected, I was unfollowed by many who believed I was being way too involved. 

What really struck me was a concerned DM from a mother who followed me arguing as to why learning about critical race theory would impact her “precious six year old” who would be told that he was bad and evil because he was white. As calmly as I could, I explained why in homogenous states like Idaho and Utah and especially those who were “landlocked by whiteness” could benefit from learning from a curriculum that would make them uncomfortable. 

Now I’m not the most informed about critical race theory and how it looks in the American educational system. However, coming from somewhere that most Americans class as a third-world country, it’s shocking that the curriculum teaches only the bare minimum, and I can often spend more time educating my American friends on things THAT THEY SHOULD KNOW! I look back to my experiences in Utah when I was called the “n word with the hard r” when no one thought I had heard or when the returned missionaries who had served in my mission assumed that I had come to America to receive handouts from my host family.

I remember the video made by a missionary who returned home and wondered why people in the Caribbean had large screen televisions and nice cars  but lived in not so fancy houses or the missionary who referred to the people in the Caribbean as poor in each weekly email. I’d like to think that learning about critical race theory would’ve been beneficial for them so that they could learn about economies of different countries and that they could grasp the basic understanding that black people are often at a disadvantage in relation to their white counterparts. 

 One shouldn’t have to be taught these things only when they attend BYU or any university. It shouldn’t even have to be taught when they serve missions outside of America. Because if we are really being honest here, attitudes dripped in subtle racism and elitist classicism follow them even when the missionary tag is snapped onto their white shirt or on whatever dress they buy from one of the modest “Molly Mormon” boutiques.

Still, in our church culture, we believe highly in the unspoken theory that to be a good member is to be the one that’s the most comfortable. What is comfort really? I often say that passivity is not of the spirit and that most if not all members should get comfortable with healthy confrontation when we see things we don’t like or when someone hurts us with their words or actions. In my eyes, if I have reached that point where my anger has boiled to such a level that I want to run you over with an imaginary car, then it’s a good time for us to hash out our issues. 

The same thing goes for our attitudes regarding things within our church culture or even in our family culture that don’t seem quite right. As my friend Lina always says, “if you see something wrong and you want to stand up for it, SAY IT WITH YOUR CHEST!”. Instead of being fearful of “rocking the boat”, when things are wrong, we acknowledge and learn from them. To me that’s where learning and acknowledging the horrible injustices in our history come in. 

It’s not to say that teaching styles won’t be more passionate depending on where the curriculum is taught. I fondly remember sitting in a Race and Ethnicities class at BYU-Provo where the teacher (who happened to be white) taught with great passion and his first hand knowledge of living in Chicago which allowed him to connect with the curriculum he taught. I remember leaving that class as one of the few black people in the room saying “I hope someone got it!”. 

The path to understanding is acknowledging past hurt. It isn’t about hiding our heads in the sand and only acknowledging it when our leaders speak or when we identify with one of the LDS super-celebrities and instantly forget about it when the message has gone through from one ear to the next. Most persons of color don’t expect someone from another race to ever fully understand. Still, we hold on to hope that with learning and anti-racist attitudes that mindsets will change and bit by bit the culture will change as well. 

For our culture to change as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, we have to get comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable. 

Afterall, no scripture verse says that comfort is of the spirit.