Racism At BYU?

Hey y’all… I mentioned this vid on the ol’ podcast. I hesitate to post it, actually, because the taste level of the makers of the video is almost as questionable as that of those being “exposed”. But I talked about putting it on, so… here you go:

Here’s the thing: Having interacted with this kind of Mormon my whole life, I can attest to the fact that these are not isolated cases at BYU, they are the norm. HOWEVER, I want to come a little bit to the defense of these poor, deluded dipshits. As we said on Episode 17, to some extent, their racism is more benign than it might seem. In most cases (there are some notable exceptions), their racism is born out of ignorance and lack of exposure rather than hatred.
I don’t say this to excuse them. Truly, this video makes my skin crawl. Its just that I know this culture, and at their root, I believe them not to be hateful. For the most part, they simply haven’t been taught ANYTHING about what is and isn’t ok when it comes to people of other races. Actually, the same applies when it comes to other cultures, or other religions… they’re pretty much terrible at anything that could be considered “other”. When you live in absolute confidence that yours is the “correct” life (they “know” their church is true, and they “know” that their prophets speak to God, they “know” how life is supposed to go), everything that differs from that is, well… wrong.
This stance keeps people like these BYU students from ever exploring beyond what they know and are extremely comfortable with. After all, if they don’t know it, it could easily be “evil”. Better not to take the risk. Unfortunately, BYU students grow up to be adults who pass on this tradition of avoiding all outside influence. Some of them even become BYU professors, who then go on to come up with the worst racial theories of all time.
Ugh. BYU really creeps me out.

4 thoughts on “Racism At BYU?

  1. Honestly, that could be anywhere in America, I’ve witnessed much more offensive and clueless people than that outside of Utah. That’s just ignorance as you said…and fairly harmless compared to the violent and evil racism around the country. Yes, it is sad to see, but not even close to as offensive as I have seen. Try getting a cab in NYC if you are black…..and look at all the racism directed at out president in the year 2012.

    The blackface is actually the most offensive part of the video, because the interviewer is not ignorant to racism, so there is no excuse for the blackface. White people in Utah might laugh uneasily about how clueless Utahns are about race, but black people from outside the state may be more offended at how some white guy that thinks its OK to wear blackface make-up. Its equivalent to a white person saying the “N” word and thinking its OK because he has black friends or because he doesn’t see himself as racist. The blackface thing is embarrassing, and another example of how Utahns are truly ignorant to racial issues.

  2. Wow. Seriously, this is just the ignorance of many people all over the world that don’t know as much as they should not because of what the Mormon church influences them to know but rather the influence of many other aspects of their lives. These people are not purposely trying to be offensive. They are harmlessly uneducated on the subjects they were being interviewed about, like many other people around the world. This video, like most propaganda, probably excluded a lot of intelligent answers from other students on campus to make a point. This guy interviewed about 25 BYU students and there are over 34,000 students in all there. If you’re going to make such a generalization at least get some accurate proof of this nonexistent “racism” that you’ve found in 0.0007% of the Mormons at one Mormon school.

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