Posted on 01/04/2014 1:53:36 PM PST by Anton.Rutter
One of the peripheral aspects of the already-tangential Kierangate media kerfuffle over a Melissa Harris-Perry show segment is the host’s Twitter apology, specifically Harris-Perry’s invocation of her own Mormon background. A review of Melissa Harris-Perry‘s past commentary about Mormonism reveals an apparently genuine affection and admiration for her ancestors’ religion, as well as something of a blind spot for the Mormon Church’s history of racially discriminatory policies.
As part of her apology, Harris-Perry tweeted “As black child born into large white Mormon family I feel familiarity w/ Romney family pic & never meant to suggest otherwise,” apparently as a way to crystallize her positive intent for the segment. On MSNBC’s website, she explained “The intent of featuring the photo was to celebrate it— I often speak to the issue of the increasingly diverse American family. Whatever the intent, the segment proceeded in an unexpected way that was offensive.”
Those howling for Melissa Harris-Perry’s head might be inclined to see this as a convenient fig leaf, especially since she, herself, was not raised as a Mormon. However, Harris-Perry has spoken frequently of her Mormon roots, starting with her cable news Mormon “coming out” as fill-in host of The Rachel Maddow Show in November of 2011. She eschewed any “theological debate” about Mormonism, but spoke with pride about the church’s struggle against exclusion, and detailed her own family’s history with the LDS Church, including “a great-great-grandfather who was imprisoned for polygamy.”
“My American story is both the story of enslaved ancestors, sold on the street corner of Richmond, Virginia, on my father’s side, and of a persecuted religious minority in the American West on my mother’s side,” she concluded.
That’s a weird position for an avowed feminist to take, defending Anthony Weiner by citing religiously indoctrinated polygamy as a stellar example of “consent,” when Mormon founder Joseph Smith had many wives who were under age 18, and as young as 14 years old.
In an interview with NPR pegged to the start of her new show, Harris-Perry again spoke about her Mormon ancestors with pride, telling David Folkenflik that “my people were Mormon pioneers,” and that “Mormon people are not elitists! Mormon people were ejected because of their identity.”
But for someone who is usually adept at identifying and calling out racism, Harris-Perry seems to have a gargantuan blind spot for the Mormons’ history of racially discriminatory policy and doctrine. Just this month, the church offered an explanation, but not an apology. for failing to grant black people equality in the church until 1978.
It’s an issue that the media seems to have agreed to ignore, as it didn’t come up much during Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns, nor is it ever raised with Mormon Democrats like Harry Reid, but the decision to allow black men into the Mormon priesthood in 1978 isn’t treated by the church as a change, or a reversal. It is seen as a “revelation,” that the exclusion was part of God’s plan, as was the eventual inclusion.
When it came to Mitt Romney, Harris-Perry was much more likely to use the LDS church in his defense than anything else. In one March, 2012 segment, MHP used that Anthony Weiner defense again to shield Romney from his Republican primary critics, and devoted several segments of a June 2012 show to dispelling Mormon “myths.” In one of those segments, she delivered a brief history of Mormonism that abruptly leapt from 1847 to the present, just missing the 1852 announcement of the policy excluding black men of African descent from the Mormon priesthood. In the several other Mormon-centric segments of that show, she never brought the policy up, and when another panelist did, Harris-Perry glossed over it as “complicated,” while at another point, she opined that “Mormons are the black folks of the Republican Party.”
Earlier this year, though, Harris-Perry did bring up the policy on her own. During a talk about school segregation, she volunteered that “My mom, who went to Brigham Young University, likes to say that the Mormon Church changed its mind about black folks and having souls when the football team started to lose."
Harris-Perry’s feeling of connection to the Mormon Church is clearly more than a matter of convenience, as her current critics might surmise. Although it is unlikely and unwelcome to happen, it would be supremely ironic if Melissa Harris-Perry, who has been such a staunch Mormon apologist, were to be taken down for trying to celebrate one of its most famous members. Her explanation seems ridiculous at a glance, but after watching and reading the depth of Harris-Perry’s emotional connection to Mormonism. it is entirely possible that she just didn’t see that photo the way her panelists did.
Hopefully, and probably, Melissa Harris-Perry’s show will go on, and if it does, she ought to devote a few segments to examining why it is that she can so eloquently and thoroughly expose racism almost everywhere, yet seems blind (or at least mute) to its existence in her ancestral church.
In a guest shot on TRMS earlier that year, she also used her Mormon history as a sort of defense for Anthony Weiner. Responding to Maddow’s assertion that consenting adults “have a right to be icky,” Harris-Perry agreed. “I am descended from Mormon ancestors. And I had Mormon ancestors who were imprisoned for consensual bigamy. And, you know, I‘ve always had a lot of anxiety about that because—you know, my sense is if people are adults making a choice to be in complicated marriages, you know, what does the state have to say about that?”
Double victim card, redeemable for cash and prizes...
During a talk about school segregation, she volunteered that “My mom, who went to Brigham Young University, likes to say that the Mormon Church changed its mind about black folks and having souls when the football team started to lose."
Ah, there's the money quote ;)
Please....your enslaved ancestors or persecuted minority have NOTHING “0”, nadda...to do with you. That was THEIR life. Stop acting like you’re somehow a continuation of THEIR lifestyle.
This bimbo appears to be trying to build a “career” on being a “controversial” dumbass ditz known for making outrageous statements. Hey! It sure beats having to work for a living.
Idiotic American revisionist hogwash. Read “The Imperial Cruise” or other perfectly credible overflowing-footnote accounts. Even Roosevelt (Teddy,) Taft, etc were comfortably public about “****s” or “*********s” not having souls. Africans, Filipinos, Hawaiians, ALL of them.
At least the Mormons don’t try to re-invent their past using the ivy-league-retarded MSM.
As a religious leader in his religion, I am curious what Mitt Romney was teaching about blacks until 1978.
“I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s not a n*gger or a Chinaman. Uncle Will says that the Lord made a White man from dust, a n*gger from mud, then He threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman. He does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice, I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ought to be in Africa, Yellow men in Asia and White men in Europe and America.”
-Harry Truman (1911) in a letter to his future wife Bess
“I’ll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”
— Lyndon B. Johnson to two governors on Air Force One according Ronald Kessler’s Book, “Inside The White House”
“Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them.” — Mary Frances Berry, Chairwoman, US Commission on Civil Rights
“White folks was in caves while we was building empires... We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.” — Rev. Al Sharpton in a 1994 speech at Kean College, NJ, cited in “Democrats Do the Dumbest Things
“Reparations are a really good way for white people to admit they’re wrong.” — Zack Webb, University Of Kentucky NAACP
If Harris-Perry were the only black I’d ever known, I, too, would believe they had no souls...or brains.
This woman has some serious psychological problems..she needs to see a shrink pronto
“Yep, 2nd Division, anyone who makes a business of race, white or black, is a racist.”
- Golux, Free Republic, 2014
I believe that Romney’s father, George Romney gov of Michigan and candidate for president was an early supporter of the civil rights movement.
It’s not enough that Romney was defeated in 2012 for these people... They can’t be satisfied with victory... no, they have to drive that knife into whatever vital areas they can reach and completely humiliate their vanquished opponent.
I still somehow hold out some flicker of hope these people will get a comeuppance someday... but considering we now live in leftist Amerika, that will probably never come to pass.
The good news is that I have been able to remove MSNBC from my cable channel listing of programs. The bad news is that when I channel surf, I still have to stop at all of the channels that I have removed from displaying on the show listing.
So, a few weeks ago while lying in bed one Saturday morning in the Pacific time zone, I came across this person with two last names. I could not believe this total left wing nutcase was allowed out of her house, let alone allowed to have a so-called news TV show. What a blithering idiot, but then I remembered this was MSNBC. The NBC network has no shame.
So--What happened, Al?
I wonder what he and his son Mitt were teaching about blacks before 1978.
Mitt has lied about his reaction to God changing his mind about blacks, and he also lied when he claimed that he and his father marched with MLK, neither of them did, although Mitt pushed the lie through several decades, including his presidential campaign efforts.
I copied the same excerpts for my reply. Great minds...........
This liberal ought to be sent home for some sensitivity training. Her “FEEL SORRY FOR ME” meme doesn’t work.
MSNBC is losing it fast. CNN, why aren’t you jumping into the liberal void of responsible broadcasting?
Liberals are opposed to individual liberty as defined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The only real issue they have with chattel slavery in America two hundred years ago is that the slaves were privately owned.
They are all orgasmic over the idea of slavery to the state.
Democrats never pass up on opportunity to tell us why enslavement by the state is for our own protection and our own safety, because life under the anarchy that conservatives want to impose is just too risky and dangerous. We can't have any of that inhumane"on-your-own economics" that conservatives advocate.
Thereby proving that you no longer have to be black to be an Uncle Tom.
detailed her own family’s history with the LDS Church, including “a great-great-grandfather who was imprisoned for polygamy.”
______________________________________
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
I wonder if shes related to the polygamous Romneys...
Now this Groundhog Day stream of campaign PR for Willard is getting interesting...
This is more about covering for the 180 years of racism of Willard’s religion of choice...
Now they are not hiding behind a poor little black baby with an uncertain spiritual future..
They are being honest about the embarrassment the Mormon business now finds itself..
well and pimping hard for Willard’s political future..
which of course has precedence over any baby with the “curse of Cain” upon him..
In 1978 Willard was so angry when he heard about the betrayal and roll over of the Mormon gods that he actually sobbed like a little whipped girl...
so now this time a big squirrel is being pointed out for the unwashed masses to look at and be distracted...
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