I think of myself as anti-racist. That doesn’t mean I don’t have biases that I need to overcome. I work at this consciously, but perhaps I should work at it even more conscientiously.
It is difficult for members of my faith who are my age and older to reconcile our connection to historical institutional, structural racism with our belief that God is not racist and that we shouldn’t be.
To this day, I remain a faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At the time of the Church’s founding, leaders welcomed members of African descent in full fellowship.
When the body of the Church left Illinois and moved to what is now Utah, Church leader Brigham Young was accompanied by a few African American “servants,” as I was taught in my youth. Recently, historians have determined they were enslaved people owned by the Prophet.
Under the leadership of Brigham Young, the Church excluded Blacks from participating in Temple ordinances and receiving the priesthood.
That exclusion r…