Interracial marriage revisted
The article "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_and_The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints#Teachings_from_1978%E2%80%93present to me is a clear example of POV pushing. Basically it sets out to prove that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints maintained racist resistence to interracial marriage until 2013.
The problem is most clear in sighting a footnote to a talk by Russell M. Nelson. This was a talk in 1996, but was in a footnote, not in his actual remarks. What he said was "The commandment to love our neighbors without discrimination is certain. But it must not be misunderstood. It applies generally. Selection of a marriage partner, on the other hand, involves specific and not general criteria. After all, one person can only be married to one individual.The probabilities of a successful marriage are known to be much greater if both the husband and wife are united in their religion, language, culture, and ethnic background."The commandment to love our neighbors without discrimination is certain. But it must not be misunderstood. It applies generally. Selection of a marriage partner, on the other hand, involves specific and not general criteria. After all, one person can only be married to one individual.The probabilities of a successful marriage are known to be much greater if both the husband and wife are united in their religion, language, culture, and ethnic background."
In this quote President Nelson did not use the term "race" at all. This is a message aimed at a worldwide and not just a US audience. It was given in a time when the internet was just starting to make international marriages more common. As I have written in the article, in what will hopefully survive, the marriage of a white American male to a Ukrainina female runs against at least 3 of these issues, language, culture and ethnic background. The marriage of a black American male, like Elder Peter M. Johnson called as a general authority by Russell M. Nelson, or an Chinese American male, like Gerrit W. Gong, only fails maybe on one of these grounds, ethnic background. Well Gong and his wife may have cultural differences, but it is complex. Raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which some have tried to think of as creating an ethnic identity), heavily influenced by his Dutch "grandfather", Gong and his wife and not as culturally distinct as some may think, especially since Sister Gong served her mission in Taiwan. On the other hand, while Johnson and his wife come from different cultural backgrounds, they met when both playing basketball for Souther Utah University, so that creates a common cultural experience.
This is not the language of denouncing anything as sinful, it is the language of looking at marriage as an experience that has positve and negative stressors and admitting that there are reasons that people marry those with some common factors. Ethnic background is not race, and this wording makes a black child rasied by white parents at least under some conditions likely to be considered ethnically white.
It is also the type of language that moves us toward reconciling a seemingly odd fact. With 86% of the population saying they are OK with black people and white people marrying, why do the most recent statistics show less than 1% of married white males in the US having a black wife? If marriage happened without regard to race the figure should in theory be the 13% to match the percentage of the US population that is African-American. True, this also assumes that people in the whole US marry as one block, when in general people are more likely to marry those close to them, the internet has not yet destroyed that fact, so that different percentages of races in different areas has a factor. It also does not help that is a 9 year old figure, and that some marriages were contracted in places where inter-racial marriage was illegal. This is also the sum total of all married white American men, which in this case includes not just those of European descent but also those of North African and south-west Asian descent (Persian, Arab etc). It thus includes many people who married in places before emigrating to the US where almost all the population would count as white, at least under the complex system used by the census. On the other hand since it excludes those who marked any other race besides black from the wife contingent it ends up excluding some couples who most people think of as black/white because the wife will at least on the census identify other racial origins.
The problem is most clear in sighting a footnote to a talk by Russell M. Nelson. This was a talk in 1996, but was in a footnote, not in his actual remarks. What he said was "The commandment to love our neighbors without discrimination is certain. But it must not be misunderstood. It applies generally. Selection of a marriage partner, on the other hand, involves specific and not general criteria. After all, one person can only be married to one individual.The probabilities of a successful marriage are known to be much greater if both the husband and wife are united in their religion, language, culture, and ethnic background."The commandment to love our neighbors without discrimination is certain. But it must not be misunderstood. It applies generally. Selection of a marriage partner, on the other hand, involves specific and not general criteria. After all, one person can only be married to one individual.The probabilities of a successful marriage are known to be much greater if both the husband and wife are united in their religion, language, culture, and ethnic background."
In this quote President Nelson did not use the term "race" at all. This is a message aimed at a worldwide and not just a US audience. It was given in a time when the internet was just starting to make international marriages more common. As I have written in the article, in what will hopefully survive, the marriage of a white American male to a Ukrainina female runs against at least 3 of these issues, language, culture and ethnic background. The marriage of a black American male, like Elder Peter M. Johnson called as a general authority by Russell M. Nelson, or an Chinese American male, like Gerrit W. Gong, only fails maybe on one of these grounds, ethnic background. Well Gong and his wife may have cultural differences, but it is complex. Raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which some have tried to think of as creating an ethnic identity), heavily influenced by his Dutch "grandfather", Gong and his wife and not as culturally distinct as some may think, especially since Sister Gong served her mission in Taiwan. On the other hand, while Johnson and his wife come from different cultural backgrounds, they met when both playing basketball for Souther Utah University, so that creates a common cultural experience.
This is not the language of denouncing anything as sinful, it is the language of looking at marriage as an experience that has positve and negative stressors and admitting that there are reasons that people marry those with some common factors. Ethnic background is not race, and this wording makes a black child rasied by white parents at least under some conditions likely to be considered ethnically white.
It is also the type of language that moves us toward reconciling a seemingly odd fact. With 86% of the population saying they are OK with black people and white people marrying, why do the most recent statistics show less than 1% of married white males in the US having a black wife? If marriage happened without regard to race the figure should in theory be the 13% to match the percentage of the US population that is African-American. True, this also assumes that people in the whole US marry as one block, when in general people are more likely to marry those close to them, the internet has not yet destroyed that fact, so that different percentages of races in different areas has a factor. It also does not help that is a 9 year old figure, and that some marriages were contracted in places where inter-racial marriage was illegal. This is also the sum total of all married white American men, which in this case includes not just those of European descent but also those of North African and south-west Asian descent (Persian, Arab etc). It thus includes many people who married in places before emigrating to the US where almost all the population would count as white, at least under the complex system used by the census. On the other hand since it excludes those who marked any other race besides black from the wife contingent it ends up excluding some couples who most people think of as black/white because the wife will at least on the census identify other racial origins.
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