This week, we in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be studying, Mosiah 18-24. It is a curious case study on how the Lord helps the oppressed deal with their oppression. We have two stories highlighting the oppression of two groups of people. Both groups were in bondage and facing physical and emotional abuse. They couldn’t do much about it as they were outnumbered and outgunned. Both groups, unable to fight back or reason with their abusers, submitted to their subjugation and prayed to the Lord for help. This led to their deliverance in the form of exodus.
I reread these stories in the middle of yet more black death, this time, the young man Ahmaud Arbery. Just in the last five years, we’ve seen literally hundreds of headlines about unarmed black men being gunned down by police officers and white vigilantes under questionable circumstances. There have been few arrests, even fewer convictions - I can count the latter on one hand - and no significant reform as a result of any of the killings. Each one hurts, but this one hit different. As an incident on video where the victim is an unarmed black man posing no threat to anyone and the killers are armed civilians, it might be the most glaring example of the intoxicating power of whiteness in recent memory.
Somehow, those white men who killed Ahmaud felt justified in chasing him down while he was in the middle of a jog, commanding him to stop while brandishing firearms, and subsequently killing him when he ignored them, despite having no evidence of him committing any crime, no threat posed by Ahmaud, and no authority to do any of those things. What power other than whiteness made these men feel comfortable with any of the decisions they made that day? What power other than whiteness allowed the authorities to not just lie to Ahmaud’s family about the circumstances surrounding his death, but also implicate him in a crime that he didn’t commit? And what power other than whiteness led the man who leaked the video to genuinely believe, reportedly, that it would clear Ahmaud’s killers? These men wielded their whiteness like a badge for whiteness is premised on the idea that they deserve their power, that black life is expendable, and that black life is theirs to control. This is the same force that powered slavery, Jim Crow, etc. In short, Ahmaud’s death was an especially rude reminder that our transition from slavery to Jim Crow to the present day wasn’t so much progress as it was white supremacy shifting into a more comfortable position.
Returning to the two liberation narratives from this week’s Book of Mormon reading, there a few things worth noting: The first is that neither population was oppressed all that long before God delivered them, relatively speaking - three generations at most. Black America has been dealing with it for sixteen. Though I suspect time wasn’t the primary variable at play in their deliverance, I find it somewhat comforting to know that we at least meet the time requirement for deliverance and then some, assuming there is one.
The second thing is that the Lamanites, the oppressors in Limhi’s narrative, made an oath that they would not kill Limhi’s people, yet they took liberty to harm them in other ways if they felt like it. Many days after starting a physical confrontation with Limhi's people that did not go in their favor, the Lamanites got mad at the Nephites for whatever reason and decided to come into their city and physically abuse them (Mosiah 21:3). This kind of interaction (operating within established parameters to oppress) is very familiar to Black America. For example, at the abolition of slavery, America couldn’t legally enslave black people anymore, so it wrote the black codes. With them, America could restrict the freedom of blacks, get them to work for low wages, and arrest them for vagrancy, which would inevitably lead to convict leasing i.e. slave labor. That is just one of many examples that demonstrate simply changing the name or methods of an oppressive system does not necessarily mean progress, particularly if the engine behind that system remains the same.
The third thing is that the Lord’s solution to the problem was not to continue to try to reason with their captors or try to fight them. The solution in both cases was a non-violent escape to a place free of oppression. Limhi’s people were dwelling in a land that his ancestors had built, but one that the Lord told his ancestors to leave. I don’t imagine it would be easy to leave a land built with the labor and sweat of your ancestors for your enemies to take, but after failing to reason with them and defend themselves, what other options remained?
The fourth thing that I noticed is the lack of apparent divine involvement in the people of Limhi’s exodus after Ammon arrived. Limhi's people had been praying for deliverance. What they got was a group of scouts led by Ammon and sent by Mosiah to find Limhi and his people. At that point, Limhi's people had the necessary tools for escape. They organized, developed a plan that exploited the weaknesses of their captors, and followed Ammon to freedom. We're accustomed to lots of divine intervention in The Exodus narrative, but in Limhi's story we find the least. There isn't even an apparent warning/invitation from the Lord to get out. Even still, the people had prayed for deliverance and upon Ammon's arrival, they had everything they needed to get it. The rest was up to them.
And yet another thing I noticed is that the place both groups were led to, the land of Zarahemla, was the same place their stubborn ancestors had come from. It was their intended home. The idea of home - a place where we can dwell and operate in peace without fearing for our health and safety - has rich symbology in the Black American tradition. Probably the most common and significant theme in the invocation of that symbol is that “home” is not here. And further, before "home" meant heaven/glory/paradise/et al., it meant the literal land from whence we came.
Pondering this in the midst of the mess happening in America, I asked what I feel are the obvious questions: Is it really worth fighting for equality and liberation within the parameters of a system that was built on denying us these very things? Or do black people need to get the hell up out of here?
I am aware of how the Book of Mormon narrative progresses, specifically the integrated utopia in 4th Nephi. And I know that one of the most explicit principles of Christ’s New Testament church is not just an end to otherization, but a full diversification and integration. Christ’s people are intended to function as a community where no one is privileged above another due to earthly constructs.
That said, the exodus narratives in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon indicate that there is a time for separation and oppression is the reason behind all of them: The Israelites from the Egyptians, these two stories in Mosiah, and two more exodus narratives earlier in the Book of Mormon - one of God telling Nephi to separate from his brothers (2nd Nephi 5) and another of God telling Mosiah to flee out of the Land of Nephi (The Book of Omni). In every exodus, the ability to live in peace according to their will and pleasure was threatened, much like black folks. In fact, as I explored social media this week, I saw several post a list of all the simple activities (riding a bike, going to a bachelor party, sitting on their own porch, walking through a park, etc.) that black people can no longer do because of their skin color. There was a name etched next to every single activity of someone killed by law enforcement officials or vigilantes for doing that very activity. Needless to say, it’s a long list and I have too much confidence that it will get longer.
If that wasn’t enough, in every American institution, 400 years later, Black Americans still suffer from massive discrimination. White supremacy never went anywhere. It persists in spite of our best efforts. It has been intellectually debunked by our best and brightest, we’ve mobilized against it, and have drawn attention to it our entire existence in this country and yet here we are. If history is any indicator, so long as we’re in a country that was built on and maintained by white supremacy, it will continue to find its way into our lives.
It is in that spirit that I propose we consider the Israelites and the Nephites.
It is in that spirit that I propose a Black Exodus: a physical withdrawal of black souls from the United States and into a new space where we can establish a new and open institution rooted in active anti-racism rather than the othering, subjugation, pretense, racism, and racial capitalism of white supremacy.
I have far more confidence in our ability to build this new society than to work within one built on our dehumanization. Though I don’t want to give racists the satisfaction of doing exactly what they always tell us to do every time we protest injustice, I find myself in a position where I’m out of better ideas and, frankly, tired of defending my right to simply exist.
But, I also find something brilliant, poetic, and almost humorous about such a suggestion. The cruelest irony of whiteness is how much it needs us; it depends on us by devaluing and dehumanizing us; without blackness, whiteness has no power, no meaning, no identity, and no life. Whiteness is a parasite. Our presence has been so fundamental to American life that America as we know it would eventually cease to exist. And in the most prophetic and poetic of ironies, black folks would at last recover what white supremacy has stolen from us - our dignity, our freedom, and our peace - while anyone clinging to whiteness loses the same. So shall the scripture be fulfilled that “many that are first shall be last; and the last first.”
The Black Exodus will mean the death of American white supremacy and the birth of Black liberation and that liberation shall free others as well, especially white folks from their dependence on us for their power and sense of self. Dr. Martin Luther King once said “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. What affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, [no one] can be totally healthy. … Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.” The Black Exodus will mean a better world and eventually, with white supremacy dead and white people no longer dependent on our subjugation for their sense of worth and sense of self, true integration will at last be possible. A society comparable to that spoken of in 4th Nephi will at last be possible.
What this exodus will look like and how it will be accomplished will be a conversation for another day, but the short version is that we construct the Black nation-state of New Wakanda in the American South-Atlantic upon securing reparations. I am not tied to the name. New Stankonia, Beyoncéland, and Rhythm Nation are also being considered. Levity aside, I can also say that it will be a process. Based on our history, it is not likely that the full realization of such a project will happen in our lifetime or our children’s. Special care will need to be taken to ensure that the mistakes of the American Colonization Society and more are not repeated.
Overall, there are many implications to consider, not the least of which will be what such an exodus will mean for the Saints. How would the church respond? Would they view it as a step forward or backward? Would they be sympathetic to our cause considering the Saints’ own exodus narrative due to the oppression they faced? Would the black exodus encourage the church, which has its own issues with white supremacy, to engage racism in a way they hadn’t before? Would the MTC finally prepare missionaries to be in black spaces now that Black America is officially a new country? How will the worship and ministry experience change among the Black Saints now that they no longer go to church with a bunch of people who support political policies that oppress people that look like them? How would it change among the saints remaining in America, if at all? Could American saints, having become demonstrably complicit in white supremacy by their choice to remain there, justifiably call themselves followers of the same Christ who worked actively to tear down oppressive institutions? Questions that need answers.
I know that the Lord has delivered His people before and that He takes the side of the oppressed. Why wouldn’t He deliver us if we did our part? The path to civil rights has been too exhausting and too violent and I want my people to live in a world where the recognition of basic human rights are principle rather than our highest aspiration.
#NewWakandaForever
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