Today Abe came up in the middle of the day wanting to talk. The night before I had been very negative about the racism in the Book of Mormon, and he felt really attacked and unsafe in his faith.
While Abe was talking, I realized that I need to be less toxic about things when I talk. But when the issue of racism came up, I basically just started bawling. I really struggle with the idea that we immerse our kids regularly in white supremacist scripture, even though when I listen to Abe explain it to the kids he turns it into the most beautiful, principled teaching. It’s like alchemy or something. Nevertheless, on principle, it is just really, really hard for me to know that the racism and God-sanctioned genocide in the Book of Mormon is surmountable because of all the other good things one can extract from the text. Personally, I wish we could find a way to transmit all of the other good things to our kids without dousing them in racism too. So anyway, at the point when Abe was saying “I know the racism in the Book of Mormon is a problem, but…” I basically broke into hysterical, ugly crying and couldn’t stop.
And at that point, Abe had some sort of light bulb moment when he could hear himself saying, “I know racism is a problem but,” and in that moment he resolved to do he hard work of rewiring his conscience to be authentically anti-racist. I was so grateful, so relieved, and so in admiration of his introspective capacity and desire to grow. Thank you, Abe.