CobaltTungsten

I've delayed answering this ask for a little bit because I wanted to be thoughtful with it, even though your ask itself honestly says most of my opinion 🤣 It is an insane verse!! Shock and cringe are absolutely the correct response to it!!

Church scholars have discussed this verse and the surrounding sections at LENGTH. Apologists have tried to downplay or deny how obviously racist it is; some people I've talked with will instead distance it from the Church's current viewpoints. When I was in high school, my seminary teachers emphasized that the "cursing because of their iniquity" and the "skin of blackness" were separate occurrences: the Lamanites were cursed by being cut off from God's presence, and then, as a separate thing from a curse, they were marked in a way that would make the Nephites avoid them. God isn't a racist, but Nephite society might have been racist. When i was in college at BYU, my Book of Mormon professors talked about the possibility that Nephi himself held racist views, and/or that Joseph Smith Jr. did, and those opinions affected the way they wrote. Again, the point they held was that God is not racist and that black skin is not a curse--but that God's prophets, being imperfect mortal humans, might have thought so.

My wife, who is proudly American Indian and a staunch member of the Church (and has the most beautiful skin of brownness in the world), has a different opinion of this verse: she interprets the talk of white and black skin to be less about literal skin color and more about health and wellbeing. "Fair and delightsome" can refer to a skin that is bright, well-hydrated, vitalized, and soft. On the other hand, when someone is dirty, malnourished, and unhappy, their skin can get grey and sallow. This interpretation recognizes that people all descended from the same bloodline will probably all have the same general amount of melanin, and God is not going to magically change that based on how good or bad they are. The visual difference between the Nephites and the Lamanites would instead be a natural consequence of their different lifestyles and values.

Unfortunately, the idea that Good Nephites Are White and Bad Lamanites Are Black was so disgustingly pervasive throughout the Church that it saturates almost all the spiritual art we grew up with. Book of Mormon heroes were consistently portrayed as pale Europeans by cartoons, comics, novels, and iconic paintings, not just in their skin tone but in their features and even their clothing. In those same media, Lamanites--the villains and the outsiders--were dark-complexioned Mesoamericans wearing loincloths and feathers. Shock and cringe are the correct response to this!!!

Here at Book of Mormon Memes, we recognize that neither the Nephites nor the Lamanites fit into our modern definitions of White or Black. Lehi's family came from the Middle East, and later populations in the Book of Mormon lived in Central America and integrated with the indigenous people there. Realistically, they should look like people from Palestine and Lebanon and Mexico and Guatemala. They should not look like this pasty travesty that somehow became a cornerstone of our religious culture holy crap

I believe that where there was tons of white-washing back in the day, I don't know if I'd call it intentional racism by Joseph Smith Jr., but that doesn't mean it wasn't, just not malicious. Now, Mr. Young was EXTREMELY maliciously racist, making it so Black members couldn't hold the Priesthood (When they could at inception), and that gay folk couldn't be part of the church (When they could be at inception), and then turned the white-washing into VERY racist and homophobic views.

I believe the scriptures, both BOM and Bible (Pronounced BOMB and Bibble in this house), some things are straightforward but not well understood. Like, in a day in age where you don't know the cause of disease or what causes the ground to go fallow, of COURSE you're going to assume it's a curse from God. When you don't know melanin is a thing in your skin that changes both from lineage and sunlight of COURSE you're going to assume God is the one doing it. I believe they literally didn't have the science to understand a great many things, and thusly had to say things in a more metaphorical way.

And when there was no explanation, the easiest person/thing to blame is an Almighty God. Your people have a good harvest? Couldn't be because you settled in an area that's GOOD for farming, God did it. Your enemies starving and their food is rotten? Couldn't be because there was an unfortunate MITE infestation, noooo, it was the Almighty God judging them.