Wow. This thread reminds me why I left the church. This was the issue that did me in.
SWK's remarks about Navajo kids in the Indian Placement Program getting whiter skin indicates a deeper - if not fundamentally belligerent - form of racism than we can't really relate to (to say nothing about Navajos being 500 year recent emigres from the North who are likely not "Lamanite", at least in the literal sense).
Mike is right. In the context of theological/ideological racism - if not (it is argued), in hindsight, strict & literal doctrine - the wording can reasonably construed as inherently racist.
Brigham Young was a racist. SWK was a "kinder, gentler" form of racist, probably unwitting, though he had a pivotal role in breaking down more overt racism (a very welcome thing). SWK came from an upper leadership environment in the LDS church (at the time) that included Mark E. Petersen, the same who proclaimed that blacks can get to the Celestial Kingdom as servants. Unless SWK had very strong disagreement with Petersen on the topic (somewhat unlikely, it seems to me, among the highest level leadership), he was likely influenced by & arguably tacitly accepting of, at some level, the toxic thinking.
How can somebody of this background be considered to be comprehensively non-racist?
It was a different time, racism existed in the church, in the fundamental ideology. (I rejected that thinking & left.)
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