Black Lives Matter
A Statement and Commitment from the MMHA Board of Directors
The MMHA Board joins its membership and the collective nationwide and worldwide community in grief, mourning, and outrage over the senseless killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and a long list of other black men, women, and children killed by the violence of police officers in the US.
According to our mission and purpose we are listening to the words of black Mormons, black clinicians, black people, and black leaders in their calls to action with the protests and uprisings now spanning worldwide. We passionately support Black Lives Matter and the messages and coalescing demands of the current uprisings and protests.
Coming out of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint tradition and culture, we acknowledge our Board and membership is predominantly white. We non-black board members recognize our lives, identities, and experiences were nurtured and rooted in the white supremacy and anti-racism of the LDS Church and Mormon culture. We recognize and validate that black Mormons across the belief spectrum have suffered and continue to suffer tremendously due to systemic anti-black racism in the US broadly, and in the LDS Church specifically. Black Mormon Lives Matter.
Non-black members of the Board are turning the focus on ourselves and our organization. We commit to doing the hard word of critically addressing and dismantling anti-black racism in ourselves and systemic anti-black racism in our organization.
- Black Lives Matter
- 8 Can’t Wait
- Campaign Zero
- Sunstone podcast Episode 66: Mormonism and White Supremacy. Joanna Brooks and Mica McGriggs talk with Stephen Carter about how racism became part of the Church’s structure and what we can do to dismantle it.
- Joanna Brooks book Mormonism and White Supremacy: American Religion and The Problem of Racial Innocence
- Mica McGriggs online anti-racism training, (sold out but she will be offering again)
- Latter-day Faith podcast: Racism, Consciousness, Grief, Hope, with LaShawn Williams, Kimberly Applewhite, and Jameson Holman:
- Brooks, J. (2018). The Possessive Investment in Rightness: White Supremacy and the Mormon Movement. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 51(3), 45-82. doi:10.5406/dialjmormthou.51.3.0045
- Max Perry Mueller book: Race and the Making of the Mormon People
- W. Paul Reeve: Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness Reprint Edition:
- Confronting Anti-Black Racism PBS Learning
- The Atlantic – American Nightmare article
- Washington Post – Around the world, the U.S. has long been a symbol of anti-black racism
- Anti-Black Racism Curriculum