From Preparing The Battlefield To A Reconnaissance In Force
To date we have been predicting and seeing signs from the Obama lovers in the press (NYTimes) that come the general, the Mormon card would be used to play the race card and things would get really ugly. It’s been lightweight stuff, but one could see the signs. Well, today we discover that The New Republic has made the first overt thrust in this particular direction. The piece by Max Perry Mueller attempts, pitifully, to make the strike appear indirect, but come on. The headline appears a slight feint:
Has the Mormon Church Truly Left Its Race Problems Behind?
“See,” TNR tries to say, “this is not about Romney – this is about the Mormon church.” But then we turn to Mueller’s lede:
It’s looking more and more likely that Barack Obama will be facing Mitt Romney next November. According to recent polls, Romney’s much-debated “Mormon Problem”—considered by some to be a main roadblock to the Republican nomination in 2008—has decreased in salience among the white evangelicals on whom he’ll probably depend in both the primary and general elections. But one element of the Mormon problem that’s yet to be vetted will come into stark relief should this match-up take place: the Mormon Church’s troubling history of racial exclusion.
Guess again folks – It IS about Romney! But that is not what cracks me up, really, it’s this bit mid-way through the piece:
But if Romney himself doesn’t have a “black” problem, does his church?
“NO,” says Mueller, “I’m not calling Mitt Romney a racist (despite the scare quotes), but his church….” That’s almost more double-talk than I can bear. It’s guilt by association and implication, an old political game. It’s the denials, more than the ugly charge itself, that make this particular piece so distasteful.
But that said, two important points. One is the piece reveals nothing not already well-known and well vetted. The facts about the CJCLDS and race have been discussed and discussed and discussed again. There might be a reason for this piece, other than attack, if it actually reported something – ANYTHING?! – that was not already well known. But, of course, there are no such facts, just a trumped up excuse to try and weaken the presumptive Republican nominee.
The second point is one I fear we will be making over and over in the months to come. Every American church, had a race problem. The identifiably African-American denominations did not really spring forth until after the Civil War. Even then, Jim Crow-like policies and practices were evident in the white churches well into the 60′s and in some cases the 70′s. Many denominations, mine included, suffered splits in the years after the Civil War into “northern” and “southern” branches. In most cases the rift was healed, and the churches reunited during, or in the wake of, the civil rights movement. My own denomination did not officially reunite until 1982. Please note it is still a Southern Baptist Convention, though racism left that room decades ago as well.
But our intrepid reporter Mueller could not be troubled to investigate the history of race and religion generally – no he had a political opponent to attack and could not be dissuaded by facts or history.
While the CJCLDS racial policies were more overt than most churches, they are far from unique. As with most attacks the LDS have suffered in the Romney runs, if this one is allowed to stand, the same attack will be aimed at the rest of us of faith at the next opportunity.
You know, it might me interesting to dig into Mueller’s family tree and see if there were slaveholders. I wonder if TNR, which has been around since 1914, has always been so vocally opposed to segregation? After all, segregation was the conventional wisdom in 1914.
That’s it – if you published a magazine in a racist America – you were racist, and if you were racist, you are racist. Ok, now we do not have to pay attention to TNR or its “reporters,” they’re racists.
Posted in News Media Bias, Political Strategy, Prejudice, Religious Bigotry, Understanding Religion | 3 Comments » | 
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coltakashi on 17 Nov 2011 at 2:32 pm #
The best response to the title question is to point people to news stories like this Nov 12 item from the LDS Church News: http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/61666/Minitry-in-Africa-Blessing-the-lives-of-the-people.html#
David G. on 18 Nov 2011 at 4:05 pm #
FWIW, I think a little more context is needed to understand Mueller and this piece. Mueller isn’t a full-time TNR reporter; rather, he’s a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard studying race and religion in American history (with Mormonism as his case study). He’s the current “George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Fellow in Mormon Studies” at the University of Utah, where he’s conducting research for his dissertation entitled “Beyond the Priesthood: Race and Gender in the History of African-American Mormons.” This piece is an attempt by a historian to use his academic expertise as a public intellectual. Mueller’s primary objective in this piece is to call attention to the long-standing desires (i.e., pre-dating Romney’s candidacy) of many black (and some white) Mormons to have the church do more to repudiate publicly racist elements of its past as a means of encouraging healing and closure. While I can’t speak for Mueller, my guess is that Romney appears in the piece mainly as a “hook” to get readers who otherwise wouldn’t care much about a dispute internal to the Mormon community to pay attention. So seeing Mueller as some kind of “left-wing surrogate” for Obama or the Democratic Party whose primary objective is to weaken Romney prior to the general election is to read far too much into the article.
For Mueller’s UoU fellowship, see http://www.thc.utah.edu/?pageId=230
This additional context may not ultimately change the minds of this blogs’ readers about Mueller and his intentions, but I hope it adds complexity to the discussion.
John Schroeder on 19 Nov 2011 at 7:59 am #
David:
You have pretty well described the problem with described the problem with using a presidential campaign as “a hook” for any agenda other than the campaign, you burden the candidate with your agenda – unintended consequence or not.
From purely a communications standpoint it is impossible to make “your” point and excuse the candidate – because you are trying to leverage the candidate’s political capital to your advantage. Therefore, it is an attack piece, regardless.