I attended a Thanksgiving function at the church last week. As I walked into the building, I saw young children with paper pilgrim hats and paper feathers in on their head. It was supposed to symbolize the first Thanksgiving, or as the myth goes where the Native Americans and the Pilgrims came together in friendship. Yet, what that family did not know was they were inadvertently perpetuating a myth about the relationship between Native people and the Protestant settlers. That relationship was not one of joy; the consequences of that relationship were devastating for the Native people. They became dispossessed from this lands, their way of being, and their everything. Yet, Thanksgiving has come to symbolize a relationship of peace; this is not the case.
However, as I walked into the church I was not surprised. Members of the church, or least the ones I know, tend to be white and tend to be rather conservative. I hope not to disparage their good intentions, however, in the wise words of Ivan Illich "to hell with good intentions!" I hope to characterize the social setting, and the institutional environment within the church culture that fosters limited engagement with issues that are pressing and urgent for social change; but more importantly for equitable treatment of all people. But this generic member is often insulated from reality, focused on serving other white members, and often committing numerous acts of microagression on people of color, people of varying sexual orientation, people of lower social class, and most of all of people known to have "sinned." These people, prefer to see people as "children of God." This to me, as indicated in a previous post, is really a veiled expression of "colorblindness." Thus, to say we see these people as "children of God" is to really deny their color/racial/ethnic experience or to deny their own personal experience. The institutions in the church (or the norms that structure the interactions between its members and the members with non-members) have been built and foster these types of expressions.
As a person of color who believes deeply in the gospel itself (another post will come about the scientific and doctrinal claims of what it means to be a Lamanite will be forthcoming), I believe the institutions needs to be evaluated and interrogated to ensure the church does not alienate, dispossess, or otherize individuals. It is said that the Godhead sees us as we truly are, yet that identity is tempered by the mortal experience. Thus mortality and all its experiences eternally shapes our identity. Thus, to deny one's color or to deny one's experience is to deny one's eternal character. This most certainly is not how God see's us, at least I believe. Rather God is able to see with perfect clarity the complexity behind our developing identity and the multiple identities.
Hence, choosing to perpetuate the myth of Thanksgiving in essence denies the shared historical experience and mortal journey of a group of people, denying their experience is thus not Christlike.
