The Real Cost to Remain Competitive: BYU Confronts Racist Past

Abstract

College sports is a multi-billion-dollar business, and universities are looking for ways to remain competitive, including recruiting and retaining athletes from historically underrepresented groups to predominantly white institutions (PWI), many of which have a documented history of excluding non-white students, including blacks, indigenous peoples, and other people of color (often referred to as BIPOC). This article will examine the legacy of the racist teachings, past controversies, and compromises of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, Mormons) along with persistent struggles to shake off its 130-year-old racist past in efforts for its flagship school, Brigham Young University, to stay competitive in the lucrative Big 12 Athletic Conference. Deeply ingrained in the LDS culture is a politic of religious conservatism. Politics has often been intertwined with organized religion with much influence, and the LDS faith is no different. The cumulation of these interlocking systems generates thoughts, attitudes, and feelings that foster a racial climate at Brigham Young University where black students have reported feeling unsafe and unsupported. While this is a well-documented problem at predominately white institutions (PWIs) across the country, BYU is in many ways unique, given the discriminatory overt policies and practices employed for generations. We contend that the LDS Church’s history of racial marginalization and exclusion of black people made its way into the sports consciousness of the church’s flagship school and is not likely to change anytime soon. Understanding religion in the tradition of Charles Long as an orientation and utilizing Derrick Bell’s notion of racial realism are critical to our analyses. The confluence of politics, religion, race, and sport cannot be easily untangled.

1. Introduction

Just as Texas and Oklahoma announced their exit from the Big 12 Conference for the football behemoth of the SEC (Southeastern Conference), the Big 12 decided to add BYU, Houston, Central Florida, and Cincinnati to their ranks starting with the 2023 football season (Dodd 2021). Joining the Big 12, a power five football conference, immediately increases the national exposure for these schools, opening the door for a wider berth of big-name recruits from across the country, and ultimately resulting in a huge financial boost. Power 5 schools have some of the most talented athletes and garner billions of dollars in revenue (Auerbach 2022). But if history tells us anything, black and brown athletes recruited by the LDS, formerly Mormon. Church-owned and operated Brigham Young University (BYU) should proceed with prudence. To understand why anti-blackness exists and persists in this area of the country—and at BYU specifically, one must first appreciate the religious, cultural, and right-leaning political viewpoints that shape such a conservative social environment (Tanner 2021).

The link between religious group identification, xenophobia and racism in the United States is higher among the religiously affiliated; political conservatives are more likely than their liberal counterparts to adopt ethnocentric and racist ideas (Jones 2020). The backing of former President Donald Trump among the religious right, especially among white men, is the most egregious instance of group conformity centered on these beliefs. As Trump’s rhetoric grew increasingly xenophobic during his presidential campaign and throughout his presidency, support from the far-right surged. And while white men felt angrier, emboldened, and entitled, hate crimes increased in the states the previous president won (Khan 2019; Newman et al. 2020). In an interview with Joe Heim of the Washington Post, Jerry Falwell, Jr., president of Liberty University, was questioned if Donald Trump could do anything to lose evangelical leaders’ support. His unambiguous response was “No”. As long as their agendas—traditional marriage, prayer in schools, gun rights, anti-abortion, and pro-capitalism—are met, Christian conservatives either fully endorse the racist and sexist beliefs of the former leader of the free world as divinely inspired or willfully turn a blind eye to his moral injuries. However, the underlying angst is rooted in white grievance of feeling under assault by forces of the left and baseless racist fears of being supplanted.

Like many other sectarian religious groups, Latter-day Saints embrace much of the same conservative notions of the world as largely a scary and dangerous place to be controlled and ruled by “tough guys”. Thus, it is not unexpected that Trump defeated his Democratic opponent in Utah by a wide margin in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and maintained a high job approval rating in the state throughout his presidency. What is it about the Republican party platform and the LDS Church that would cause the members to cast their ballot for a candidate who does not promote the wholesome, pure, and positive public image that they champion? Much like the evangelical right, whose value-laden language does not align with their voting record, this hypocrisy stems from a sense of the disappearance of nostalgic whiteness. By romanticizing former ages of white dominance, the negative white racial framing of Black, indigenous, and people of color in the United States flourishes in the LDS religion.

The Bible and the Book of Mormon are among the “Standard Works” revered by Latter-Day Saints as hallowed religious texts to be read and interpreted by top church officials. LDS doctrine has long concerned itself over the spiritual worthiness of Black people during the “preexistence”, a time in LDS scripture where souls remain before getting a body of flesh and bone. White LDS have been taught racist mythology by the church’s leadership for more than 200 years. Church officials established racist perspectives on the descendants of Ham and Cain by propagating the belief that blacks might not be able to choose a side in the Great War between Michael, the archangel, and Lucifer, the son of the morning. This and other differing explanations for why blacks were denied the priesthood in the LDS Church are used to justify its prejudice, and some members feel obligated to spread these myths to their relatives, friends, and black church members.

The persistence of race-based mistreatment and white supremacy are fundamental aspects of our republic woven into every sphere of life, including politics and organized religion. In this paper, we seek to unravel some of the potential challenges awaiting black college athletes, especially non-LDS black student-athletes, at BYU in the new era of BIG 12 recruitment. We will address the region, as well as the theology that underlies LDS anti-black views and the racial climate in the college town of Provo and on BYU’s campus. Further, the lead author fully discloses his affiliation as a non-practicing member of the LDS Church, former Provo resident, and BYU alumnus. His experiences and observations as an insider/outsider bring depth and richness to this essay, with the goal of shining light on how intergenerational racist scripts, narratives and commentary foment the development of white discriminatory attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, whether conscious or unconscious. We use an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates sociology, Afro-pessimism, Mormon studies, and whiteness theory, as well as Derrick Bell’s notion of racial realism found in the critical race theory literature, to explain why the environment in which these athletes attend school, practice, and socialize may be particularly challenging. Within this filigree, we seek to understand the intersectional dynamics of race, religion, and sex and how these factors play out for African American student-athletes at BYU.

2. Brigham Young University, the Conservative LDS Church, and a History of Racism

The scenic campus of BYU lay in the shadows of the Timpanogos mountains, just one-half mile from the local Provo LDS temple. Though the world headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lies 50 miles north in Salt Lake City, the city of Provo is often considered the home of LDS Church, housing both the faith’s flagship university and its Missionary Training Center. Despite its evident topographical beauty, the general feeling around the town from an outsider’s perspective can be described as sanitized. The area around the campus is neat and tidy with a mixture of university-approved student housing and the majority-LDS Provo residents coexisting in peace. In these neighborhoods, you will not see frat houses festooned with Greek emblems or hear noisy, beer-guzzling parties until the early morning hours. Stores and restaurants in the area typically close by 10:00 p.m., and there is a notable lack of bars compared to non-LDS college campuses. Tumbleweeds may adrift along a desolate University Avenue on the Christian sabbath. The religious make-up of Provo is 89 percent LDS, and people take their faith seriously.

Utah County’s manufactured aesthetic with its emphasis on a lifestyle trapped in 1950s nostalgia is reminiscent of the 1998 film Pleasantville, as seen by clean city streets, the nuclear family, well-maintained dwellings, fashion brands, and a feeling of group conformity. Just as in the movie, when change is introduced into a conservative setting, those in power will attempt to maintain order, using fearmongering, gaslighting, and other divisive stratagems. In this lived reality, Black students at BYU must quickly adjust to being in a white religiously conservative space where the student body blindly follows authority (Smith 2016).

Along these orthodox lines, the LDS Church caters to conventional gender norms that promote white heterosexuality as the patriarchal standard-bearer and keep women largely involved in household tasks. This arrangement between men and women in the Church is believed to be sanctioned by God. These responsibilities are instilled in rank-and-file members from an early age through LDS teachings of scripture and reinscribed in church meetings and conferences (Toscano 2022). LDS meetinghouses, known as branches, wards, and stakes, are organized in ways that reflect the nuclear family. These places of worship are managed by an unpaid ministry led by laymen who serve as guardians over the congregation’s administrative and spiritual affairs. (It is important to note that these same mostly white men also provide endorsements for BYU students before they are allowed to matriculate on campus).

Women also serve in the church as child caretakers and mentors to other women and girls socialized to find a suitable, “worthy” man and train for the role of motherhood. In the Church, a woman’s worth is frequently determined by her family management skills rather than formal education (Bribiescas 2021). Native Utahn LDS females are less likely to complete university and college than LDS female students from outside the state (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). This disparity highlights the pressure, whether actual or imagined, that women living in the shadow of the LDS Church’s headquarters confront. These feelings toward women are not unique to LDS culture but are reified by it. Found within these androcentric frameworks, attitudes, ideas, and actions are unattainable beauty and parenting standards.

Furthermore, BYU students and LDS Church members have been socialized to accept the patriarchal rule found in the “protestant work ethic” that encourages invention, industry, and profit as benefits for fulfilling God’s commandments (Looft 2014). By this end, Utah LDS society is firmly ingrained in Western global capitalism. They encourage such entrepreneurship among its constituents, and several Fortune 500 companies are owned by members of the Church, such as JetBlue and SkyWest Airlines, The Marriott Corporation, 1-800-Contacts, and Black & Decker. But more so, the LDS Church itself has expansive business interests, including ties to huge corporations, massive financial holdings with well-known businesses and conglomerates, and ownership of over 1.7 million acres of land and properties all over the world (McKnight 2022). As it turns out, Church headquarters has funneled excess membership tithes into investment funds that have bloomed to over $100 billion (Stack 2020). The largest of one of these so-called “rainy day” funds, is managed by Ensign Peak Advisors (EPA). A 2020 disclosure to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by EPA revealed a portfolio of almost $38 billion investment in over 1600 for-profit stocks and mutual funds, including Apple, Google, Amazon, Walt Disney, Exxon, NIKE, and many more (Mohamed 2020).

What is absent from this analysis is how white masculinity’s weltanschauung undermines the safety and well-being of men, women, children, and the planet. The LDS Church often encourages anti-black perceptions and attitudes that are particularly problematic for BIPOC women (Keigan 2021). It should be noted that most present-day Latter-day Saints espouse the belief that “all are equal in the eyes of God”. The image-conscious church, however, has never fully acknowledged and reconciled its racist past, which leaves room for unconscious prejudice among more accepting but naive members and continuing anti-black attitudes among older and more orthodox LDS adherents. One simply needs to consider the uproar that erupted in February 2022 over a video that purported to capture BYU theology professor and church leader Brad Wilcox making racist remarks (Woodruff 2022). In his comments from the previous night, he outwardly dismissed the question of the LDS Church’s prejudice of denying blacks the priesthood. The priesthood the authority and power of God given to human beings. The power and authority include performing ordinances and holding leadership positions. He felt a more pertinent question should focus on why whites had to wait so long to get the priesthood, despite being granted priesthood rights 149 years earlier when the Church was founded by Joseph Smith in 1829. But Wilcox neglects the discussion on why a Black priesthood ban occurred in 1852, more than twenty years after the founding of the Church, and why it was not lifted until 1978 (Reeve 2015). In fact, the faculty member’s open rejection of the question of Blacks and the priesthood implies a complete disregard for the pain that Blacks have undergone at the hands of white Latter-day Saints.

This is consistent with the theory that white people do not perceive their own group as a race but rather an unmarked category. Sociologist Joe Feagin and other research analysts have written at length on how white people produced racist fictions, scripts, or narratives of themselves as conquerors and rulers over people of color. The white racial frame is a lens through which white people see the world. These frames are mediated by norms, customs, and everyday practices centered on whiteness (Feagin 2009). Such unexamined attitudes and beliefs prevent white people from seeing the humanity and dignity of oppressed people.

The video of Professor Wilcox prompted indignation among the university’s few black students. BYU’s Black Student Union president Nate Byrd gathered a group of like-minded black students who planned to dress in all black as they marched to Wilcox’s class, where he was giving a lecture (Graves 2022). When the students arrived at their destination, they were welcomed by university security, who had been dispatched to maintain “order”. These young people, however, were not there to disrupt; they came to speak with Wilcox and underscore the tremendous pain they experience anytime someone in a position of authority goes off script with a racist diatribe. This is not the first time Wilcox has made such public remarks, nor is he the only professor or prominent Church member to make similar disturbing statements in recent years. This latest faux pas sparked a blaze of criticism, prompting the mainline LDS Church to apologize publicly (Stack and Kemsley 2022). But without a nuanced discussion and active unlearning of a new contemporary reality, individuals like Wilcox, Randy Bott, and others will continue to invoke blatantly racist commentary (Smith 2013). Consequently, such discourse persists inside the LDS faith, particularly among white members. This is the racial climate and atmosphere that young black athletes will encounter; historically, it has been less affirming for those of African descent (Soelberg 2021).

3. The Politics of Sport on a Right-Leaning College Campus

Spectators like to think sport is a neutral zone, but this is not the case. Religion has become a highly influential factor in the sporting world. Many secondary and collegiate sports juggernauts are religiously affiliated schools, while sports are filled with religious rites and symbols that athletes publicly express during competition, such as kneeling in prayer after a crucial score, making the sign of the cross before an at-bat or kissing a crucifix before a penalty kick. Additionally, politics and sport are inextricably linked. Sports are organized and function within the greater framework of contemporary society. Who can engage in the game and who can profit from the game is determined by politics. Even though the game itself and the pitch it is played on should be level, elite white men control who is allowed in or out of the “old boys’ club”. In past couple decades, black and brown players have learned to utilize their status, money, and access to the master’s house to influence political and social change. It is unsurprising, then, that race has a long history in the sports industrial complex, playing a crucial role in the black male experience from slavery to continued marginalization (Rhoden 2007).

Black male athletes have parallel realities at all predominately white institutions (PWIs) in that they are marginalized wherever they go. Despite some privileges they may enjoy as athletes, the burden of tokenization on campus is a tireless endurance test for black men. All student-athletes consider a bevy of factors in their recruitment selection, including coaching staff, academics, playing time, and media coverage, but Black student-athletes should also “read the fine print” of the school they ultimately attend. The difference at BYU is that it uses LDS theology is the basis of all understanding and decision-making while racist tropes of the very existence of blacks as a fallen people are baked into the religion’s early origins.

Black male student-athletes, particularly in the high-revenue sports of football and men’s basketball, are grossly over-represented at most PWIs compared to black non-athlete degree-seeking students. And BYU is no exception despite its overall low numbers of black and brown students (Smith 2016). According to Whitney Johnson, associate athletic director for student-athlete development, diversity, and inclusion at BYU, about 50 members of their football team out of 130 players identify as black or biracial, a number that has increased over the last decade. Referencing a 2018 report on black male-student athletes’ representation in football and basketball within the sixty-five Power 5 schools, BYU is comparatively among a dozen schools with the lowest percentages of black student-athletes. And yet, black and biracial students are still over-represented at ~33% in the high revenue sports, as only 0.4% of overall matriculants at BYU are black. For a school that boasts over 36,000 student enrollments, this is the lowest rate of any major university of its size or caliber (Brigham Young University 2020).

While the black student-athlete graduation rate at BYU is not available, the graduation rate of black students at BYU (58%) is above the nation’s average (46%) (Brigham Young University 2020). This rate is not appreciably different to their white counterparts. With about half of BYU students (mostly men) serving an LDS mission, not all of them re-enroll in school upon return from their mission. But because the overall black student enrollment is so low at around 144 students, you can estimate that BYU is graduating around 13–14 black students out of 3500 graduates in a year (using a 6-year graduation cycle). The number of athletes appears to be on the rise, and the graduation rate seems to be improving; however, there is still work to be done (Harper 2018).

Like other religious and secular colleges, BYU has rules and codes of conduct that students must follow. However, their regulations go far beyond the ethical violations with exam cheating. Embedded in the policies are codes of behavior that control, among other things, sexual relations, facial hair, language, dress code, and alcohol and caffeine intake. One need only look at the institutions policies posted on their official website. The school’s honor code is directly linked to church-based rules. Hence, the BYU honor code enforcement office is primarily geared toward practicing, predominantly white LDS students who view the requirement as a religious commandment. In general, non-LDS students (many of whom are black male student-athletes) are unfamiliar with the honor code and how the faith-based rules still apply to them. Black athletes who are LDS or who wish to convert during their academic careers have access to the Church’s disciplinary procedure should they violate the honor code, which allows them to potentially escape more impactful school sanctions. Black student-athlete recruits must recognize that not only are the BYU honor code standards distinct from other colleges, but history demonstrates that these standards have been unfairly applied, especially along racial lines (O’Brien and Smith 2011). Since the 1970s, there has been a revolving door of expelled black male athletes at BYU (Smith 2016).

4. Consider the Political Views on Race and Sex before Signing Letter of Intent

Long-held gendered stereotypes of black males as beasts, brutes, indolent, oversexed, ignorant, and violent emerged throughout the conquest of the new world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Smith 2016). Racist imagery captured the white imagination and further objectified black men as big, strong, and feckless. These racial frames are part of a large corpus of pseudoscientific writing over three centuries, branding the black male body as a spectacle to be feared and commodified in the minds of white people. As Smith observed, “By marking the Africans’ blackness as abnormal and therefore deficient, white America endorsed and legitimized stolen labor and land theft during the trans-Atlantic slave trade and beyond (Smith 2016, p. 3)”. But this imagery contained a sexual element that preyed on white fears of black male sexuality and the presumed threat to white womanhood.

In the pre-Civil War era, the idea of black male hypersexualization became rooted in politics of race and religion. A gendered stereotype emerged in which black men desired white women while white men were held up as keepers of white female virginity. Under a system of white male supremacy, Black men and boys were typecast as sexual predators, criminals, and thugs—all white racist myths intended to limit and contain the advancement of black people in white society. The ideologies of danger and violence have led them to be the least likely to be hired, most likely to be imprisoned and die at an earlier age. As a result, many job opportunities were off-limits to black people, especially males, and the small sphere of sports competition served as an additional escape route from servitude and poverty.

In an orthodox religious setting like Provo, where morals and virtue are taken seriously, sport is also the arena where the sexual myths of black men reign supreme. The black male athlete has long been subjected to a variety of white racial assaults and attacks on his intelligence, anatomy, and athletic ability/performance while fending off the supposition of an insatiable sexual drive (Smith 2016). And yet, being a collegiate athlete on a winning team garners a lot of positive attention, especially when you are one of a handful of players representing a stigmatized minority group in a predominately white and conservative landscape like Provo.

Since the dawn of time, young adults have had sex, and BYU students are no different. Hormones are powerful peptides that require maximum effort to inhibit sexual attraction, curiosity, and arousal. Sex happens whether you offer religious teaching, abstinence, or sex education. Given that adultery is a significant sin in the LDS faith, the BYU honor code punishes these infractions. There have been many expulsions because of passion-related violations. When prominent student-athletes elicit interest from the opposite sex, how do BYU authorities cope with interracial curiosity and sexual desire?

The BYU leadership and general authorities have largely opposed “race mixing” throughout the church’s history, and many prominent people have openly expressed concern about the potential of such interracial unions happening (Smith 2016). There was a determined effort in BYU’s history to discourage persons of African heritage from attending the school due to racist fears of miscegenation. When Africans were first recruited to BYU in the 1960s, they were promptly returned to Africa when white girls developed love interests in them (Smith 2016). This fear may have affected the low number of black athletes who graduated from BYU since the late 1960s. Other PWIs battle issues of race on campus, but they are not constrained by the LDS faith and the political entanglements that deepen their framing of blacks as undeserving. Some members of the LDS faith will continue to see themselves as preferred by God and see black people as forever subordinate. In this case, black athletes are lionized for their ability to win games so long as they do not enter the white family’s living room.

5. Contemporary Racial Climate at BYU

The LDS Church and their President Russell M. Nelson likely felt societal pressure to address racial issues in the wake of the so-called racial reckoning that took place across America following the March 2020 killing of George Floyd, a black man, by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. As most of the world was sheltering in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people all around the globe were compelled to watch the last nine minutes of a black man’s life held down by a callous knee crushing his neck as he cried out for his deceased mother. This time, America could not look away. Suddenly, many PWIs took an interest in addressing racism and BYU followed suit, directed by the Church President. In June 2020, a Committee on Race, Equity, and Belonging was formed at BYU after a joint op-ed was published by President Nelson and the NAACP, advising all followers to “root out racism” (Swensen 2020). The Committee published its sixty-page findings the following Spring of 2021 after conducting an internal review (Committee on Race, Equity, and Belonging 2021). A former BYU professor in the department of history was on campus and attended some of the meetings held by the Committee. He intimated in a personal interview that the report had no real teeth and was more theatrics than anything substantive.

Despite the report’s recommendations, the question remains as to whether this has altered the campus climate. This year, during a Women’s Volleyball game in late August 2022, at least one black female athlete and members of her coaching staff from Duke University complained of racial taunts (Shepardson 2022). And this was not an isolated incident. Several players of the USC Woman’s soccer team had a similar experience when they played in Provo. Five black members of the lady trojans soccer team heard the “n-word” yelled from the Cougar student section as they kneeled during the anthem before their match against the BYU women’s soccer team. Meanwhile, other teammates noted that they could not hear the slur amid a torrid of boos from the BYU fandom. Both events occurred after the release of the Root Out Racism report and a call to action by Nelson. And in both situations, the host school did little to intervene in the situation.

Following the volleyball match, someone was identified as the perpetrator and banned from athletic events on campus. But after the school held an internal investigation where the university interviewed attendants and combed through video and audio, BYU ultimately revealed that they found no evidence to substantiate the claim, and they overturned the decision to ban the fan. But given its history, one questions whether BYU can police itself, especially when it comes to issues related to race. Just because the BYU “investigators” could not hear the slur in taped audio when listening the largest recorded capacity crowd of 5500 spectators does not mean it did not happen. This is not unlike the soccer game, where only several players could hear the racial epithets from their vantage point. No explanation was given as to why members of a visiting team would, without prompting, seek security and claim verbal abuse. But it is quite commonplace for those who have suffered from racial micro-aggressions to have their lived experience denied.

These public interactions are not secluded to athletes or non-LDS visitors. Many black BYU students have reported being the target of anti-black racist behavior periodically on campus, having heard the n-word hurled in their direction as they walk about the university grounds and through the college town. A group of five black BYU students chose to combat their racialized experiences by documenting their white peers on social media. These BYU students, who call themselves the Black Menaces, have developed a TikTok channel in which they pose probing questions about racial identity to their predominantly white peers. The questions cover a wide range of themes, including the significance of Juneteenth, the persistence of institutional racism on college campuses, and LGBTQ student friendships. Responses range from introspective and reflective to unsettlingly uninformed. The actions of these students have shown the tremendous ignorance of their white classmates when asked to discuss racial issues. Over the past few months, the Black Menaces have expanded from a small group of university friends to a horde of students with over 729,000 followers and 30 million likes on TikTok. The campaign by the menaces is part of a long tradition of black activism at PWIs, in which black individuals advocate for their own humanity despite white-imposed racial abuse.

There have been many “black menaces” who have long advocated for social justice at BYU and other PWIs over the years. At Brigham Young, the risks have always been much higher because of the LDS Church’s involvement in students’ lives on campus. They find this type of exposure to be an embarrassment to the church and school, and the school often calls on church leadership to reign the students in, lest they be in poor standing with their ecclesiastical endorsement. The Church has long sought to maintain its image as a clean-cut mainstream organization with fair and equitable treatment of all God’s children. Nevertheless, despite repeated highly publicized racial events over the years in the LDS Church and its sponsored school, there has been little meaningful change to course correct its history of anti-black views. Consequently, the LDS Church has long struggled to contain its racial folklore and to properly address its racist beliefs about Black people, who have never been high on the Church’s priority list.

BYU’s new Big 12 membership will likely expose them to more talented prospects who may be interested in their recruitment pitch. The dubious LDS record on race relations, however, is considerably troubling and should give African American student-athletes pause before they consider attending the church-owned school. Going to school in an ecosystem like BYU is not without complications, many of which are difficult to navigate, as former athletes and their families discovered in previous years. It is inside these racist underpinnings that black athletes attracted to BYU must find a sense of belonging outside of their respective sport. These young black student-athletes must exercise caution while choosing a location that is politically conservative in nature, directed by an ultra-conservative church and university system, surrounded by predominantly conservative peers. Such an arrangement is not for the faint of heart. And when sex is introduced, as is typical among college-aged students, the black male student-athlete who is both adored on the field and condemned by LDS doctrine must proceed with caution. Fear of sex is a constant threat for white leadership.

6. Conclusions

The slow and incremental charge to desegregate public schools and postsecondary institutions (e.g., Brown vs. Board of Education ruling in 1954, Civil Rights Act of 1964) put increasingly greater numbers of black youth on a direct course toward the inevitability of daily interactions and potential conflict with apathetic white people, some who were angry at the prospect and others who were committed to acts of violence to impose their will (Goldstone 2006; Harper 2013; Kammen 2009). As a consequence of these volatile and uneven encounters, African Americans disproportionately find themselves among the highest self-reporters for every day forms of mundane race-based discrimination committed at the hands of white people. Black folk have been the primary targets of white racial oppression for one of the longest periods in human history (Feagin 2009). With the exception of Native Americans, the four centuries of sustained savagery with European and European Americans is lengthier than any other group (Martin 2022).

The late legal scholar Derrick Bell believed that working through American institutions such as the legal system was ineffective at undoing white racism, citing the failures of key U.S. Supreme Court decisions to get to the source of the issue (Bell 1980). By following the letter of the law, courts could ignore the origins of social injustice by which race carries power and privilege for a select group. White imposed racism is ingrained in every aspect of our nation, which was built on the premise that whiteness is preferable as evidenced though Native American land theft and African labor theft (Martin 2022). The whole American project was erected from greed, exploitation, violence, and black subordination. Bell’s (1993) notion of “racial realism” is a call to action for black Americans to inoculate themselves against the everyday ravages of racism by first recognizing and accepting the fact that Blacks are victims of white oppression. White folks will find ways to maintain and reinscribe white supremacy. Therefore, inoculation comes through study, reflection, and inquiry regarding one’s racialized status.

The aftermath of our racist past can be observed presently in the distrust and weariness felt in society in general over US-based race relations. It will take more than laws and rhetorical platitudes to undermine generations of material and psychological advantages that most white Americans feel they deserve, not to mention the hierarchal structure of American capitalism. Whether they admit it to themselves or not, these entitled feelings play out in attitudes, actions, and emotions. Most white Americans feel they deserve their place in life and do not question the unearned privileges they have or those that others lack. The insidious nature of white supremacy and its correlated racial bias and discrimination makes it difficult to uncover and address without massive resistance from justice-loving people.

Just as the American judicial system enacted civil rights laws without confronting and unpacking the history of racism at the country’s roots, BYU released a report in an effort to “eradicate racism” on its campus without addressing its history of racial folklore inflicted upon black people for decades. When the Church lifted its ban on black males holding the priesthood in 1978, it marked a significant shift in policy. Before to June 1978, Church authorities claimed that dark skin was a sign of God’s anger with them, according to numerous LDS mythical beliefs and scriptural interpretations. Throughout the majority of its history as an organized faith, the LDS religion denied people of African ancestry the full rights and privileges that white male church leadership were obligated to protect.

The vestige of this tainted past remains a cornerstone of LDS religious thought yet to be fully rectified. This glaring omission of its past serves to undermine the proscribed claim that the LDS Church has turned the corner on racism and is reformed. Any apparent success can best be understood as peaks of progress that are short-lived and too little to transform the racialized social arrangements. Moreover, these peaks of progress may not occur because folks that are adherents to the LDS faith have a change of heart and suddenly acknowledge the humanity of black people. Instead, like many members of the dominant racial group in America, adherents to the LDS faith act when it is in their interest to do so. In other words, they act only when their interests converge with the interest of a subordinate group and only to the extent that the outcome is a net gain for themselves.

It is dubious at best, then, to think that conservative Latter-day Saints would start a robust justice, equity, diversity and inclusion agenda, no matter if it is cloaked in the blood of Jesus. Such progressive action is antithetical to their core political values based upon their historic and ongoing opposition to civil rights and racial reform. It is for these reasons that despite the athlete activism we have seen in the demand for social justice in the wake of many deaths of black men and women at the hands of white police officers and ordinary white citizens, the experiences of black students, including black student-athletes at BYU, will likely remain unchanged. This environment is stressful for black men, particularly non-LDS black men.

How do Black and Brown folks navigate this space, while deflecting the racist stereotypes and ideas that are swelling among the majority of those around them (aka white LDS)? One way is for black students to establish Black Student Athlete Associations (BSAA) at their institution. Additionally, black student-athletes should endeavor to create community both on- and off-campus with black scholars and black activists who are concerned about them as total persons. Organizations like ABIS (Advancement of Blacks in Sports, Inc.) is once such organizations dedicated to supporting athletes at all-level of competition, including in elite college sports. They should also connect with similarly situated groups throughout their conference and throughout the power five. It is important that black student-athletes at places like BYU shine light on the matters that many may wish to remain hidden. BYU administrators should provide the college athletes with the support they need, including an environment free from retaliation. Any BYU administrator not willing to protect student athletes should be called out and held accountable.

Schools within the power five must be willing to show solidarity with black student- athletes at BYU or anywhere else where it is clear that black lives do not matter. They would do well to take a page out of University of South Carolina’s Women’s Basketball Coach Dawn Staley’s playbook when she cancelled at game against BYU following the incident with the Duke volleyball player. Staley is a champion for social justice issues. She felt it necessary to remove her athletes from an unsupportive environment, which also provided immediate and high-profile awareness for the Duke volleyball player. Other institutions must be brave in this regard, as there is power in numbers.

For athletes who break the rules, the honor code office at BYU has served as the final judge and jury. The university appointed an LDS chaplain to represent non-LDS student-athletes in disciplinary proceedings, although this has had little effect. Changes in some of the NCAA’s rules may work to the advantage of black student-athletes who feel duped shortly after stepping foot on campus. Specifically, changes to transfer requirements have led many college athletes to “vote with their feet” by transferring to other institutions. But questions remain. What happens in the modern BIG 12 football era when these “offenses” impact your best non-LDS players? How will BYU handle infractions of engaging in consensual and legal sexual contact, when their revenue depends on it?