From Independence to Darfur

The central question: Why aren't Mormons more radical??

A diaspora refers to the spreading of a people from their initial homeland to foreign regions. The population seeks to retain its characteristics even as they fend off the dominant culture in which they live. Latter-day Saints gathered in Utah from numerous nations; now the base of Utah Mormons have expanded back to the urban centers of New York, Boston, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere. We haven't had the Zionist mojo for some time (I don't exactly chant "Next Year in Jackson County" when I go to bed at night). What has that meant for the creation of culture?

Generally, in my cloistered academic world, diasporic and collective oppression carries a great deal of literary capital. If you can demonstrate how your identity has been unjustly persecuted by a dominant culture, you have "street cred." in talking about oppression. Yet we are woefully "square" in such areas; we're establishment men of the "Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies" brand. I don't suggest that we attempt to become a political action group or that we begin shouting about getting Missouri reparations. However, I do suggest that we, as a people, can and should identify more closely with oppressed peoples with whom we share a history in singular ways.

Similarities
1. Expelled en masseorders from the highest level of government
2. Lived under military occupation
3. Described using racialized terms (the famous anti-polygamy decision directly compared Mormons to Asiatic and African peoples)
4. Experienced directed assaults on our way life at the point of gun

Friends, while this is not precisely the same as racial oppression, in general, this is the stuff of which the "big ideas" about the oppressed masses is made. After all, there was a time when Mormons considered the term, "American" to be an insult. Yet now, Mormons will jump behind the Sean Hannitys and Toby Keiths of the world in justifying almost any military action.

While I hardly believe we're losing our identity (we do a very good job of being a "peculiar people" sometimes--and I really do mean that in a positive sense), I do wonder why we are where we are in American society when by all accounts, we should be a flaming radical like Franz Fanon. Granted, we did not experience the African slave trade, but we did experience systematic, institutionalized oppression from the highest levels of government.

But most importantly, why don't we give a hoot about populations who suffer worldwide? Perhaps our wealth and our ease have jammed our sensory nerves for "the fellow persecuted." Maybe we are comfortable in our consolidated position as only a frowned-upon church.

Maybe Darfur is a little closer to Independence than maps tell us...