Welcome and Introduction to Sean Carter

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 789

John Dehlin [00:00:29] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast Live. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is August 30, 2017, and I am so excited for today's interview. Today I'm going to be interviewing Shawn Carter. And Shawn's been a listener for many years now. He's been a dear friend. He's actually appeared on Mormon Stories podcast at least once or twice as a panelist, but he's a great guy. Just to give you a little bit of background about Sean, we're going to do some announcements, but before we do, I'll just tell you what this interview is going to be about.

John Dehlin [00:01:09] Sean was raised in Los Angeles in the Compton area. He attended Harvard Law School. And at some point in his crazy journey, he, he does identify as black, as a black man. And during his, you know, journey in life after law school, he joined the LDS Church. And oddly enough, we'll get into this, but I think he listened to Mormon Stories podcast before he joined the church and he's been a member since 2011.

John Dehlin [00:01:44] And, and so he's been able to sort of experience modern Mormonism as a black man. And so we're going to be talking about race, which is always an important and sometimes a volatile issue to discuss. But in addition, we're going to talk about, in his words, how white supremacy led him out of Mormonism. So he's going to be sharing with us his experiences as a black man in the LDS Church and, and what he's experienced culturally. And we will be talking about the recent, you know, alt right blogging from that white supremacist mommy blogger. But we're also just gonna be talking about race in the LDS Church generally, along with other progressive type issues.

John Dehlin [00:02:32] And we want to invite anyone who's interested in issues of race, political correctness, et cetera, to join us on this conversation because it's gonna be fascinating. Before we actually dive into our interview, I have a few announcements I'd like to quickly make. I'll make them really quick. Please. If you want to support Mormon Stories, please like the Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page. That would help. It would also help if you gave us a positive review on the Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page. Please go to itunes and log in and give Mormon Stories Podcast a favorable review. There. That is really useful. You can also follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

John Dehlin [00:03:12] So please follow us on social media. We have several events coming up. I'll be quick. September 14th and 15th will be in Seattle, Washington, October 20th through 22nd. We'll be in Sydney, Australia. November 9th through 10th will be in the San Francisco Bay area. And then we're accepting nominations for 2018 events. We already have a cruise scheduled for October 24 through 28, 2018, but we're accepting nominations for workshops and retreats around the world. So if you want to bring an event to your area, email us@mormonstoriesmail.com and we'd love to consider coming to your area.

John Dehlin [00:03:52] So that is all our introductions, and now we are ready to welcome Shawn Carter to his first solo Mormon Stories interview. Shawn Carter, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast. Welcome back.

Sean Carter [00:04:06] Thanks, John. This is a dream come true, buddy. And you can tell I don't dream big, but I'm excited.

John Dehlin [00:04:14] Yeah, you gotta aim higher. It's worth mentioning that you're a humorist. Tell us what that means to be a humorist and what you do for a living.

Sean Carter [00:04:25] So in a nutshell, I tell jokes to lawyers for a living.

John Dehlin [00:04:29] Okay.

Sean Carter [00:04:29] And lawyers have conferences just like you do with the Mormon, like Mormons. Right. The conferences all the time. And they have legal ethics requirements and other very, very boring topics. And if you can make those topics at all interesting, all right, then people will give you money. And so that's what I do. I run around the country and I tell, you know, stories and jokes to lawyers about legal topics. Right. I'm not just, you know, you doing stand up comedy and people pay me money. And that's actually we'll talk about in a minute, but how I found the church through my travels as a humorist.

John Dehlin [00:05:02] Okay, cool. Well, that's not, that's not your everyday Mormon story, is it?

Sean Carter [00:05:07] No, no. And, you know, I guess we started my, my Mormon story. I definitely didn't start with 20, you know, generations of pioneer stock. I guess I was inaugural pioneer stock. I never even really knew a Mormon. I knew one in high school, and all I knew about Mormons then was that you couldn't. This is why I knew I knew two things about Mormonism, both untrue. That you couldn't have caffeine and you couldn't have sex, and neither. So I had no interest in either one of those things. And so I didn't really know much about Mormonism at all.

John Dehlin [00:05:46] Let's back up just a tiny bit. Did you. So were you raised in a biracial home? Were both your parents black? Tell us just about. And tell us about, did you have siblings? And what was it like to grow up in Compton, by the way?

Sean Carter [00:06:02] So I am straight out of Compton and it literally is on my Birth certificate, if I could find says. But in fairness, that's always the good story. Right. It gives me the street cred.

John Dehlin [00:06:12] Right.

Sean Carter [00:06:13] But we moved out of Compton when I was 5 or 6 years old to the next suburb over. We were Compton adjacent. And so this is a fairly largely lower middle class, African American community. But in school, I was often bused out to the suburbs to go to school with white kids. And so, you know, most of my time I spent from junior high school up in, you know, in very. Being a minority in a, you know, in a majority community, I, I happened to test well and do fairly well in school. So I got to go to Brown University and then I got to go to Harvard Law School and I was there, coincidentally, with President Barack Obama.

Sean Carter [00:06:58] That has nothing to do with this story. I have to get it out there at some point because it's really all I got going for me. John, it really is my proudest accomplishment so far is that I was on the campus with this guy for two years and so, and after law school I went, practiced law. Have a Mormon connection there.

John Dehlin [00:07:16] Okay, wait, you're going so fast.

Sean Carter [00:07:19] Sorry about that.

Growing Up Black in Los Angeles

John Dehlin [00:07:20] Your parents, were they from the Los Angeles area? Where were they from?

Sean Carter [00:07:24] Okay, so my parents are from. Boy, it's funny, I felt we had to go. Negative story. So my parents are from. My father's originally from Winter Haven, Florida, which is very near like where they did the movie Rosewood. And it's Florida, but it's not cosmopolitan, progressive Florida, it's northern middle Florida, which is much more like Alabama. So my father's from there originally, but when he was five or six, his mother, my grandmother, very brave woman, took her two kids by herself, went across the country to California to start a new life. My mother was born in a place called Henderson, North Carolina, near Raleigh, Durham. And when she was a young woman, she also moved to Southern California. And so they met there, you know, when they were 19 or 20 and, and got married.

John Dehlin [00:08:15] So. So you're, you're both. Your parents went to high school in, in the LA area, is that right?

Sean Carter [00:08:20] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:08:21] And would they have. So just to be clear, were they, are they both, do they identify as black? Are they biracial?

Sean Carter [00:08:27] Yeah, they're, they're, they're both super black. I mean, the sense that, you know, there are white people in our family somewhere, we tend to deny it. If you ask us why some of us will have straight hair or lighter skin tones, we'll tell you it's because, you know, we're part Indian, just like white People do. We're lying. But there are white people in our family as well. But for the most part, we identified black up to three or four generations back. So we're pretty, we're pretty unanimously black.

John Dehlin [00:08:59] Okay, but if you're. Did your parents, did they go to college? Are you a first generation college student? Did they have, did they grow up middle class? Did they grow up non middle class? How would you describe their upbringing?

Sean Carter [00:09:14] Exactly? So they both grew up, you know, somewhat like my mother grew up rurally poor, where they didn't even have plumbing until she was like in high school.

John Dehlin [00:09:22] In la?

Sean Carter [00:09:23] No, in North Carolina.

John Dehlin [00:09:24] Okay.

Sean Carter [00:09:25] My father grew up in la, but in Compton. He's born, raised, not born, but he was raised in Compton, went to Compton High. And so he was. But Compton at the time wasn't what it is now. He said, for instance, his high school was partly white.

Sean Carter [00:09:41] And when he was there in the 60s, in the early 60s. So. But they were, you know, when they got married, they were high school grads. They were both in community college. My dad went to Vietnam after I was born and so that, you know, and then when he came back, he went to school on the GI Bill, got his. So it's kind of almost like a white Mormon story. And since that he got his. So both of my parents are college grads, but they got their college diplomas around the time where I got mine. Right. They worked their way through school. And so my father got his, you know, college, I think college degree sometime.

Sean Carter [00:10:16] I was in maybe junior high school or high school. My mom got hers, I guess, when I was like graduating from high school. So they, you know, worked their way through. They did, you know, well, they moved from, you know, poor to lower middle class to firmly middle class. You know, there they ended up, you know, in a suburb, very nice suburb of Southern California.

John Dehlin [00:10:38] What's it called? What's the suburb called?

Sean Carter [00:10:40] Chino Hills.

John Dehlin [00:10:41] Okay, and, and what, what were their professions? Did they both work? Did.

Sean Carter [00:10:45] Exactly. So they both worked. My father was a social worker. Worked his whole career in, you know, various aspects of social work for the state of California. My mother was one of AT&T's first computer programmers.

John Dehlin [00:11:02] Nice.

Sean Carter [00:11:03] You know, kind of one of these hidden figures things. Right. But no college degree because back then, you know, you just needed to be able to punch those cards. And, and so. But she, you know, very, very smart, smart lady. And, you know, is worked for several years now. I think she does insurance claims adjustment, but still works. And very. They did very well.

John Dehlin [00:11:27] How many siblings?

Sean Carter [00:11:28] So I have one younger sister, she's eight years younger, but because she's eight years younger, we basically had two only childhoods.

John Dehlin [00:11:37] So were you religious at all as a family growing up?

Sean Carter [00:11:41] It's funny, we were what we call CME Christians. CME Christians being Christmas, Mother's Day and Easter, which, by the way, is the largest denomination of Christianity by far. My mother was a believer and she would go to various churches, but she was, you know, you know, very, you know, generic. She wasn't brand loyal. You know, she might be a member of the choir of the Baptist church, but if the Lutherans came along and had a nicer choir, we went to Lutheran church. My father didn't go usually, and so that allowed us as kids to pick and choose. You have to stay home, take care of daddy. You don't want to leave daddy by himself. And so as a kid, I probably miss Sunday most of the time, but every once in a while my mother would drag us to church as well.

John Dehlin [00:12:29] Okay, so occasional church attending mostly to Christian churches.

Sean Carter [00:12:34] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:12:35] Did you talk about, were you well accepted in your middle and high school? Were you, did you experience discrimination or was it, were you popular? Like, what was that? Or both, you know, what was that like?

Sean Carter [00:12:50] No, no, no. You know, no funny people were ever class president or really accepted. You get funny because you have to find some other way to make people like you, right? So I was not an athlete or particularly good looking. I got good looking later high school. And so I was. But I had a. I was always lucky to have a good group of friends. And so I had a good group of friends. And it was helpful because, for instance, you know, my best friend in high school graduated from mit, right? And so I had a. I was kind of in a nerdy group. But on the other hand, he was also star of the basketball team, right?

Sean Carter [00:13:25] And so, you know, I was middle, I was in the middle. You know, people would have, you know, known me, but they wouldn't have necessarily, you know, like me, you know, couldn't date a cheerleader. But my high school was weird in the sense that it wasn't this way. But I remember it being 1/4 black, 1/4 white, 1/4 Latino, and like one quarter Asian. The numbers are probably off. But we had a, you know, a lot of diversity. And when you have that much diversity, it's really hard to, you know, you can't. The black people can't fight everybody, right? And no group was really, you know, so such a large majority that there was any group that was on the Outs.

Sean Carter [00:14:04] And so people really got along in ways. If you would have asked me back then, I would have said, what are you talking about? We're post racial. We're past that. As you know, in our high school, I really never noticed anything that. Now I probably missed it, but I didn't notice anything that struck of any type of discrimination. People seem to really get along well, surprisingly much better than 2017.

John Dehlin [00:14:25] Okay, so you didn't have this sense of always being picked on or mistreated or marginalized?

Sean Carter [00:14:31] No, no, no, no. And I mean, to give you an example, you know, I. When I went to Brown as an undergrad, I was a Republican. We tried to start a young Republican chapter. That's how backwards I was. I think it's also rebellion. My parents are longtime Democrats. You want to rebel? If your parents are liberal, you got to go conservative. Right.

John Dehlin [00:14:52] So I'm going to ask you my first of probably many offensive questions. Not intending to be offensive, but what if someone. What if someone were to say, well, you were, you know, you were assimilated into white culture. You weren't really black. You know, you were, you know, you were, you know, you got educated and maybe you looked and spoke or dressed a lot like your peers. Would you. Did you. How would you respond to sort of that. That idea of assimilation versus bringing some sort of, you know, culture with you?

Sean Carter [00:15:24] Right.

John Dehlin [00:15:24] And then tell me if that's just an inappropriate question.

Sean Carter [00:15:27] No, no. And it was doing wrong. I think, you know, part of it is, was. Was there was a goal to. To assimilate to, you know, and in the sense that, you know, I, you know, give you an example. You know, I definitely, when I went to high school, you know, I. Princess. I remember thinking about recently, my favorite artist in high school was Adamant.

John Dehlin [00:15:47] Yeah, I remember that.

Sean Carter [00:15:48] Right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:50] Goody two shoes.

Sean Carter [00:15:51] There you go. Right? Don't drink, don't smoke. What do you do? Right. Yeah. Mormons would have loved that. I forgot about that. But you can imagine, you know, and some of your younger listeners have to Google that. But there was a, you know, like, I listened to the music of my white peers and it wasn't, you know, like I said. But here's where I can tell you there was some difference. I'm glad you mentioned I kind of glossed over it, but I always knew that there was some difference. So. Perfect sample is the talk that most fathers have with their children. You know, when you get a license, dad sits down and says, look, if you get caught by the police, you need to make sure that you keep your hands visible, that you talk very slowly and deliberately to the officer, that it's, yes, sir, no, sir, you know, keep your.

Sean Carter [00:16:32] Don't keep. I didn't even keep my, by the way, registration in the glove compartment because that's a closed compartment, et cetera. You put it over on the. What is that? The, you know, the thing you pull down whatever. The sunshade, so that you have it handy, you know, possible keep your license in your front pocket.

Sean Carter [00:16:52] I began to notice that in the sense that when I did get pulled over and it would happen, you know, I had a, you know, a very deliberate routine and script. I got a job once in the summer, and I would drive from my home in, you know, this Compton adjacent area to Los Angeles. I get pulled over a couple times at night, and I made sure that I wore my aerospace badge with me when I got in the car.

John Dehlin [00:17:17] Yeah.

Sean Carter [00:17:17] There was a way to let people know, like you said, I'm not that kind of black guy, was the thought. All right. I gotta let you know immediately that, you know, that I'm someone that people might miss.

John Dehlin [00:17:30] All right?

Sean Carter [00:17:31] And so, you know, I knew that. So it wasn't the kind of thing where I grew up thinking, oh, no, no, we're all the same. I knew that there was something different about me.

John Dehlin [00:17:39] And what would. What would that have been like as a kid? To. To self. To, you know, to be black, to identify as black, and to sort of maybe even be taught that there's two types of black people and you don't want to be that type. You want to be this type. Am I. Is that fair? Am I characterizing that?

Sean Carter [00:17:59] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:17:59] Right.

Sean Carter [00:17:59] Or at least you want to give the impression, right. That, you know, when someone sees you. And that's, by the way, you know,

John Dehlin [00:18:05] are you ashamed of that now or are you.

Sean Carter [00:18:06] I am now, but it took me a long time, I mean, like the last five years or so, to really realize how messed up that was. Because basically what I was doing was all doing was trying to find a way to sort of exempt ourselves out of blackness to get, you know, our white card say, okay, you know what? Yeah, those black people will still be mistreated, et cetera. And we're not going to fix that problem. We'll just make sure that stuff is okay for us.

John Dehlin [00:18:27] Yeah. And that's why. That's how I'm. That's. That's where my questions were kind of trying to go. I watched this amazing. Forgive this just sidebar. I watched this amazing documentary called OJ Simpson made in America. And it talked about. Ironically, of course, he came up in the LA area in the 60s, and there are these scenes where all the civil rights stuff is happening, of course, with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and all this stuff all over the country. Race riots in Compton. And people are trying to drag O.J. into this dialogue. And from very early in his career, he would say, I'm not black or white, I'm OJ and it was his way of trying to just avoid that whole mess.

Sean Carter [00:19:17] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:19:18] But at the same time, Los Angeles was so controversial as an area where police. There was a lot of police brutality, a lot of people of color would be killed, a lot of race riots in the 60s and 70s. And so you were growing up in a very racially charged area, and you were trying to distance yourself from your blackness, just like O.J. simpson was doing. And that must be something very hard or difficult to look back on now as an adult.

Sean Carter [00:19:54] Yeah, well, it is, except for the fact, you know, I'm very pretty good about forgiving me. So I've gotten over me, you know, I told myself, and we kind of worked it out with me. But anyway, I try to do a lot of work in diversity now to really kind of said recently to earn back my black card, because I really wasn't as bad as OJ in the sense that if you'd asked me about it explicitly, I might not have said anything. But internally, you just tried to work your. And don't get me wrong, I still do that to the extent that I think it will keep me safe.

Sean Carter [00:20:26] So, for instance, the last three times I've been pulled over in my travels, I've been pulled over and, you know, one time I'm pulled over in Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. I'm speeding through some speed trap. The officer pulls me over, and I immediately played my white card. He said, why are you going so fast? So I'm going to speak to a group of lawyers and judges in the morning. It's late. I was just trying to get there. I'm giving the keynote first thing in the morning. I don't get a ticket. I don't get pulled out of the car. I almost. I could have got a police escort if I wanted one.

Sean Carter [00:20:56] Because this guy, I made him understand. I made him understand immediately. If I turn up missing, somebody is going to come looking for me, and your boss is going to answer their call when they come looking for me, and then they're going to come to you and want to know what happened. To this guy. But you're right. I mean, it is a kind of a, you know, don't. And I probably wouldn't even be woke to that now, except for the fact that I have sons, 23 year old, my oldest son, you know, teenage sons. And they don't have a white card, all right? They didn't go to school with the president.

Sean Carter [00:21:25] They don't have an ability to be able to distinguish themselves immediately from, from, from. From the stereotype. And so I realized, you know, we've got to fix this for everybody because everybody doesn't have a card.

Heroes, Identity, and Racial Consciousness

John Dehlin [00:21:36] Did you have heroes growing up? You talked about Adamanda as a musician. Like actors or civil rights heroes or historical figures. Were. Were they white characters? Were they black? You know, talk about who you looked up to as a kid.

Sean Carter [00:21:52] That's an interesting question. It would have been mostly just like any other idiot 17 year old, you know, my hero, the person I probably most admired was Prince. Love me some Prince. I'm gonna admit this. Cause, you know, it can't be more than a few thousand of us watching it now. But I went to a high school dance with the entire Prince ensemble. I had the ruffle shir.

Sean Carter [00:22:19] I make a Jerry curl. I could not. My parents. My parents would see. My parents have kind of been to this. Like, they would never let me get a Jheri curl. I wanted Jerry curl. I wanted to mess up all of our pillowcases. And they just would not let me do it.

Sean Carter [00:22:32] You know, they want to make sure that, you know, I could survive that. Police. Stop. So I was like that. For instance, you know, I didn't go to school with a cardigan sweater every day. But I couldn't have gone to school, you know, wearing anything that looked particularly ethnic either.

Sean Carter [00:22:48] You know, I tried to walk out of. Remember, even back then. It wasn't as big back then, but I mean, one time I tried to walk out of the house without a belt, and I got a belt, you know, that kind of thing. So. But my heroes were, you know, like I said, you know, sports, athletic heroes. You know, I wasn't.

Sean Carter [00:23:08] I had the kind of obligatory respect for Dr. King, the respect that everybody has for Dr. King throughout society, which is simply that he's a great guy, got a holiday, we love him, but we don't really listen to anything he said other than that one speech, that one part of that one speech. And so I didn't really have an appreciation like I do now for Dr. King.

John Dehlin [00:23:28] So you didn't. You didn't grow up feeling Deeply connected to the civil rights movement.

Sean Carter [00:23:32] No, no, it was past it. We're done. You know, victories have been won. I got. I got to go to good schools. We're done. We're past this.

John Dehlin [00:23:39] Interesting. Did you like Magic Johnson?

Sean Carter [00:23:42] Oh, you kidding me? Love Magic Johnson more than Larry Bird.

John Dehlin [00:23:46] Because that was its own. That had its own racial undertones.

Sean Carter [00:23:50] Right. And that always. I took down that after a minute. I was thinking about in the context of last weekend's big boxing match and sort of bringing back that whole, you know, great white hope thing. That is when blackness probably most affected me is with sports. There was a big controversy I was growing up was with having a black quarterback. And at one point, the Rams had a black quarterback named James Harris, and they replaced him with Pat Hayton, who is the.

Sean Carter [00:24:17] If you could. If you. If you could. Basically, he was whiteness. He was Mr. White America, Rhodes scholar, blond hair. He could have been a Mormon, and as a result, he would have been general authority. I mean, he was, you know, he was. He was just Mr. White America. And there was a big controversy between the two of them, and it became such a big deal racially. So you go to the barbershop and you hear about, you know, how the black man's being held down, and even if you're seven, you don't really understand the dynamics, but, you know, that there's my team and their team, at least with regard to, you know, sports and other things.

Sean Carter [00:24:53] But. But, you know, the thought really was, is that I did not think in 2017 that I would ever be anywhere talking about race. We were past that.

John Dehlin [00:25:01] You felt you were. You were in a past race, you know, post racial society. That. That's what you thought as a high school kid?

Sean Carter [00:25:09] Yeah, Dr. King had fixed all that.

John Dehlin [00:25:11] Okay, so you. So you went to Brown University. That's a. That's an elite, you know, Ivy League school, right?

Sean Carter [00:25:18] It is.

John Dehlin [00:25:18] What'd you study?

Sean Carter [00:25:20] I studied computer science.

John Dehlin [00:25:24] Was there anything in your high school or early college years that you think is worth mentioning as it relates to your faith journey with Mormonism? Any stories or, you know, spiritual experiences or.

Sean Carter [00:25:37] No Mormons in college? No, no, no, no, no.

John Dehlin [00:25:40] What about spiritual.

Sean Carter [00:25:41] I wouldn't have known them.

John Dehlin [00:25:42] What about spiritual experiences or any of that stuff?

Sean Carter [00:25:45] No, no.

John Dehlin [00:25:46] Okay.

Sean Carter [00:25:47] College. What's wrong with you?

John Dehlin [00:25:48] So you were just living the dream? You graduate from high school, do well, go to Ivy League schools, study computer science. That's crazy.

Sean Carter [00:25:55] Well, my parents wanted me to make sure I can get a job.

John Dehlin [00:25:57] Yeah.

Sean Carter [00:25:59] Was to go to law School. But if you get derailed, I don't want you to come back here, you know, and live in my basement. Right. California, they have basements. I had to live on the first floor with them. And they were like, we don't want, you know, we spent. We spent every time we had mortgage our house twice to send you there. You should at least be able to, you know, get your. Pay your own mortgage when you get out. And I'm glad they actually gave me that background. But. But then I went to law school right out of. So right from college to law school.

Sean Carter [00:26:25] I guess something happened in the meantime. I met my wife as a senior in college. We dated all through law school. We got married two days after law school. So I was. So even though I didn't have a spiritual experience, I was kind of being Mormony. Right. You know, I got married to my college sweetheart and then started practicing law.

John Dehlin [00:26:49] Okay, and. And during this time, did you meet any Mormons at law school that were of note?

Sean Carter [00:26:56] No, I can't think of one.

John Dehlin [00:26:58] Okay.

Sean Carter [00:27:00] Yeah, I'm trying to. Had to be one. So maybe they were keeping it. Keeping on a down low. I'm imagining that. And when you think about, it's not like you have, you know, so, you know, it's not like I could tell.

Law School and First Encounters with Mormonism

John Dehlin [00:27:10] So you graduate, you graduated high school in what year?

Sean Carter [00:27:13] In 1985 you graduated high school.

John Dehlin [00:27:19] So you're 50, you're two years older than me.

Sean Carter [00:27:22] I will be 50 in three weeks.

John Dehlin [00:27:25] Okay. All right, so we came about about the same time. All right, so you graduate law school, start practicing law. How in the world did you, as a black man, successful, educated, end up joining Mormonism?

Sean Carter [00:27:38] It's crazy, right?

John Dehlin [00:27:40] It seems crazy.

Sean Carter [00:27:41] It is. And so what happens is my first real experience has come through traveling the country telling jokes to lawyers. I got hired by the Utah Bar, one of my first, you know, state bar clients. They brought me up to do an annual meeting in Sun Valley, Idaho, and brought my family with me. And, you know, it was something different about the Utah Bar in the sense that it was family, they brought family. So I paid to bring my whole family up. People were very kind. And I started doing. Worked for the Utah Bar association. And then BYU called and said, can you come and do an alumni weekend for us?

Sean Carter [00:28:17] I want you to give a presentation at the law school. We bring our alums back, they get their continuing education credits. And, you know, someone saw you and think you'd be fine. And I knew nothing at all about Mormons or byu, but I said, hey, you know, it paid money. I'm going. And the thing that struck me at BYU was now, by the way, I should go back. I had no spiritual experience in high school, college, et cetera. But as I got to be an adult and in my early 40s, I did find the Lord, so to speak. And so I became somewhat very passionate about evangelical, non denominational Joel Osteen.

Sean Carter [00:28:55] You know, name it, claim it, grab it, blab it, throw spin around three times and you get a new Lexus type of Christianity. And I thought my job is run around as a traveling speaker was to give seminars, right? And so I would always try to have these messages. My titles would be things like Thou shalt not lie, Cheat and Steal the Ten Commandments of Legal Ethics. Sue unto others as you'd have them sue unto you. Right? And I would go almost as far as an altar call at the end, right?

Sean Carter [00:29:26] At the end of a presentation, I would say, look, everything I told you to do was hard to do and you can't do it by yourself. You need a relationship and the relationship you need to have. And I don't want to offend anyone, but the thing you need to know, leaving here is just one thing. I'm available to do your other events.

Sean Carter [00:29:42] And they would all breathe a sigh of relief, like, oh my God, I thought he was going to say Jesus. And people would say to me, wow, you should be a preacher. I'm like, I have a church, I'm doing my thing. And so I'm trying to preach these Christian principles surreptitiously through jokes. And I come to BYU and, and so my, we're good. I'm on the same page. You guys are, you know, that different. I don't have these. I don't know anything about Mormonism, so I don't, I can't be prejudiced. Right.

John Dehlin [00:30:10] You didn't know about the black priesthood ban.

Sean Carter [00:30:12] And that's not only that I didn't know about Joseph Smith, about the Book of Mormon. I just thought you were different denomination, just like, you know, Lutherans.

John Dehlin [00:30:20] Okay.

Sean Carter [00:30:21] And so it never, you know, but the thing that got me was, is I'm looking for a church for my wife. She's not a believer. She doesn't go to church. And matter of fact, when I first told her I was going to church, she was like, I think I should handle the checkbook from now on.

Sean Carter [00:30:41] Because she is. If you think, you know, I had a good education. My wife went to a high school that is perennially, you know, the country's Number one school for girls that she went to when she was like sixth grade, you know, very, very educated woman, very smart woman. And so the idea that either one of us would start believing in this Jesus myth, right. It was nuts to her. And so she's not really on board with the Christianity. I keep trying to drag her to various churches. She's not interested. And something happens at the BYU Law School which ties into race. Interestingly enough, they have, whenever I go to one of these places, they have a chaperone.

Sean Carter [00:31:22] You can't trust me by myself. They don't know what I'll do. I'll eat the plastic fruit or they don't know what I'll do. So they have someone who sort of handles me and says, takes me around, make sure I get to where I'm supposed to get to. And so my handler is showing me around the BYU Law School. Now, BYU Law School is very young. I think it started like the 70s.

John Dehlin [00:31:40] Yeah, that's right.

Sean Carter [00:31:41] So they have pictures of every graduating class. And so we're walking and looking at the pictures now. You can imagine not a lot of brothers in the BYU pictures, all right? And I didn't expect to see any. So I was surprised that they had, you know, some Polynesians. At least they had a few of those. But what got me was there were no women.

Sean Carter [00:31:58] And I was like, wait a minute, how are there no women? Especially in the 70s, 80s, you know, four women, you know, now. And I'm like, how are there no women in most law schools? From the last 30 years, women have made about half of the classes. How are there no women here? Explained to me, he said, well, you go to law school, you're 23, 24, 25. Most of our women at that point are having young children.

Sean Carter [00:32:22] It's not a good time for law school. And I was wondering, why would that be the case? And he was like, well, we have these standards, you know, that we believe in upholding. And so we tend to get married earlier.

Sean Carter [00:32:33] And I was blown away. Here's why I was blown away is because as a non denominational Christian, we had those same standards, all right? But that never stopped anybody's activity and behavior, right? You wouldn't base your whole society on this. You know, the chastity standard isn't, isn't unique to Mormonism, but you guys were taking it seriously. I said, let me see how much of this rest of this book they take seriously. And so I go to my wife, I say, you know, will you try Mormonism? And she Says, I'll try it, but you go first.

Joining the Church as a Black Couple

Sean Carter [00:33:04] So the first Sunday of January 2011, I show up, go on the website, find out where the wards meet, and I go to this ward.

John Dehlin [00:33:14] What city, what city were you?

Sean Carter [00:33:15] Mesa, Arizona. Okay, where I live now. And so I go to Mesa, Arizona and Mesa is not the most diverse place. And this is my area is particularly non diverse. And so they're pretty sure that I'm a visitor, right.

Sean Carter [00:33:31] Nobody recognizes me. And also I didn't realize at the time that you wouldn't know even a 4 white person was a visitor if you don't know them. Right. Then, you know, I couldn't sneak in there. And so he basically kicks his wife in the forehead, sits me down next to him, you know, opens the hymnal books for me, you know, helps me find all the songs. Just really kind, you know, shows me where I'm supposed to go next. I go, I do the full three hour block uninvited. I do the whole thing. And I'm intrigued. I'm like, this is kind of interesting. Now my challenge is my wife. I don't know how I'm gonna get.

John Dehlin [00:34:02] Wait, wait. How much of this was spiritual longing versus longing for community versus just being impressed with the ethics or the culture, wanting something for your kids? Like what were, what was the drive? What were you longing for?

Sean Carter [00:34:17] The drive here was to pull a long con on my wife. And it sounds funny. Here's what I mean by this. I want her to experience this Jesus thing. I don't think that, that my church then Baptist church, had a monopoly on it. I think everybody, you know, a lot of people have Jesus. I thought, I think the Mormons have at least their version of it. And I figured that if I could get her in, tied into, you know, the spirit, I could pull her out of Mormonism. Because Mormonism had something that she didn't want, the word of wisdom, all right, at the time she smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol, you know, drink wine in the evenings.

Sean Carter [00:34:58] She's not gonna want to give up her B, all right, for this crazy Mormon. So I can get her involved enough in the church. Eventually I say, hey, you know what, baby, we can have all the Jesus and the liquor and alcohol. Let's just go over here. And so the thought wasn't necessarily, you know, it wasn't as thought out as that. But I really kind of thought I could kind of get, you know, see for her to see good, wonderful Christians and then say, hey, I can find good, wonderful Christians over here and keep my vices and so I, you know, so. So I go to the church, and I like it.

Sean Carter [00:35:30] And I remember at the time, I'm not thinking that there was anything different between Mormonism and, you know, and being a Lutheran Episcopalian, it's another, you know, branch of Protestantism. So I start doing my own investigating. And so I go into church. The first time, I say, okay, fine. They say, what do you do? I say, look, I'm easy, all right? I'll take another bath. I need one anyway. That's fine. But you got to get my wife, and here's what you got to do.

Sean Carter [00:35:58] You're going to have to work with her. And so we sic the Mormon missionaries on her. Now, that made a lot of sense, except for the problem. Problem is this, though, is that it's good. Mormon missionaries are rude, which is necessary because they don't call before they come by all the time. Which is great, because if you call my wife, you're not getting in, right? You got to trick her.

Sean Carter [00:36:20] You know, the house is not going to be neat enough. We got four young kids, right? The house is not going to be neat enough. Her mind, she's never gonna let you in unless you show up at the front door. So I'm on the road, traveling all over the place, and these young women are coming by. They're offering their help. We've got neighbors coming by. One time, for instance, you know, remember, everyone's trying to, you know, this in the church now, I'm on the road, and somebody comes by and changes our smoke detectors because they heard a beep. You know, that type of thing, right?

Sean Carter [00:36:42] You know, the practical love bombing. And so my wife is like, oh, this is great. I'm on the other hand, while all this is happening, I'm investigating Mormonism through the Internet, and I'm finding all the stuff that you talked about, you know, in Mormon stories. You know, a hundred through 250.

Sean Carter [00:37:01] And then I find the Mormon stories. I listen to stories, expressions, matters, Mormon memorabilia. You know, if the infants were there, I would have listened to them. I'm listening to all, you know, the whole apostasy lineup, right? And so I'm learning all of these things, which makes me think, okay, I don't want to necessarily join. I don't think the church is true, but my wife is really loving this stuff. And. And I'm a wonderful man. And then, so my con hasn't worked. And so I say, okay, I'm gonna go ahead and get in the water with you. It's a family religion. We'll do this together.

John Dehlin [00:37:38] And so she and I, maybe you've said this already. Is your wife, does she identify as black?

Sean Carter [00:37:45] Sorry. So, yeah, my wife is black. We have four children. Three of them are black. We'll worry about Devin later, but we'll get him tested. But I live in a primary black family. All right. It's all black all the way around.

John Dehlin [00:37:56] And so she had not heard about the church's racist past.

Sean Carter [00:37:59] You know, and that's the thing is, I think here's what most black people seem to know or not know is that we know that the Mormons had some problem with race. Not exactly sure what it was. If you ask many blacks, they'll say that even to this day, blacks aren't allowed to join. But we know there was something going on. But remember, you know, at the time that we probably had heard about this, this was almost most churches. I mean, the Mormons were just late. But it wasn't a new thing for black people not to be allowed to go to some church. So people didn't think that Mormons were, you know, particularly racist. But you certainly were on the. The racist side of the scale.

John Dehlin [00:38:40] It's kind of like who wasn't racist? If you're gonna, you know, if you're gonna look for a church, they will have all had a racist past.

Sean Carter [00:38:46] Absolutely. That's basically right. It's basically way to look at it. And remember, my wife has been, you know, has been in whiteness longer than I have and really ensconced in it. And so. And so she's not really that worried about that aspect. And all the other stuff you talk about, the community, the sisterhood that's really, you know, working now.

John Dehlin [00:39:04] There are historically black churches. What kept you from considering maybe one of those? I guess Mesa probably doesn't have a lot of them.

Sean Carter [00:39:11] Precisely. We have round. In round numbers. We have approximately 0ame churches. And remember, she's also not a big church person. Right. So, you know, the only way, you know, she was raised in black churches that she'd been dragged to more than I had. And so she's really, you know, I've got to find something totally different here. And this is totally different. And in fairness, you know, there was something even to this day, that I still think is wonderful about it is the sense of community.

Sean Carter [00:39:36] You know, that's just a unique thing where it does not happen elsewhere. I should say it happens in other places, but not as consistently in Mormonism, where, you know, she now had, you know, 50 new best friends. People who she could call. I'm on the road a lot, you know, she got flat tire, perfect example. She gets a flat, not flat. She has a problem with her car one day, doesn't start or whatever. She posted it on Facebook. Hahaha. I'm stuck out here. The sisters in the ward, right. You know, four of them offered to come by. One lady says, hey, why don't you, I'll bring you back to my house and you just take my Land Rover and whenever you get your car back, you can bring this car back.

John Dehlin [00:40:13] Wow, that's amazing. Right?

Sean Carter [00:40:16] Yeah. And so we have friends, by the way. We have not just friends, but rich friends, which is always the best kind of friends to get if you can choose. And so it is, you know, absolutely wonderful to have that sense of community. She's stuck here by herself with these four boys a lot of times and now she has, you know, 50 best friends. It's hard that, I mean, that's a really good sale. And so. But she's more agnostic about the true church stuff.

John Dehlin [00:40:42] Okay. Yeah, she just likes the, the community.

Sean Carter [00:40:45] Right. You know, and you know, and so she's not like, I'm coming home and bringing these things to her and she's kind of like, you know what, that's between, you know, my name is Paul. That's between y'. All. I'm not worried about that. You know, nice place to be, you know, stop, stop causing trouble.

John Dehlin [00:41:00] And you didn't necessarily believe in the truth claims either. It sounds like, oh no, no, no.

Sean Carter [00:41:06] I don't know if I told you this but, but I was what, 43 at the time? Yeah, yeah. You can't convince a 43 year old black man that though I don't know that let's say that the Native Americans are really Jews who God turned black because he got mad at him. It's hard to convince a 43 year old black man of that. Really, really is hard.

John Dehlin [00:41:25] But how does that, how does that not keep you out of the church? Why didn't you just like, oh my gosh, this Book of Mormons racist. Oh, they've got this racist past. No way I'm joining this thing. Is that just because you figured all churches were racist so you can't really.

Sean Carter [00:41:39] Yeah, well, exactly. And here's the thing about it is that all I know about is the past. Right. I know about the priesthood, band, et cetera. And I know Mormons are late to that process. Right, right. Book of Mormon in and of itself. For instance, when I started trying to Read that. And I never made it past one Nephi.

Sean Carter [00:41:54] When I got to the, you know, that the ancient Jews were white and had to be turned dark, I kind of was like, okay, you know, Joseph had fun with this. But. But for me, it wasn't so much about the matter of truth. And here's why. Is because I lie for a living.

Sean Carter [00:42:11] And what I mean that is I tell stories that are always exaggerated. They didn't happen in the order that they happened, et cetera. And I tell people the lie I tell you is better than the truth because I can make a message that's more truthful and impactful by rearranging the facts than I could ever do by telling you the boring truth. People won't pay me to come hear about the truth. The truth is boring. We live that. And so the idea that something has to be factually true to be useful is not in my vocabulary. I don't get that concept. So the fact that, you know, this didn't happen and, you know, we didn't first vision, it has four different versions, et cetera, I'm not that worried about that. Now.

John Dehlin [00:42:50] What about. What about lying to get gain or to hurt other people?

Sean Carter [00:42:54] Yeah, exactly. And I think that that would be wrong. You know, I do think, though, that there is that part of, you know, you being lied to. How to say this? Part of the responsibility is on the hearer to be an adult about it. And so I'll give you an example. I never stand up for a group and say, hey, I'm going to talk to you today and tell you a bunch of stories. None of them happened in the order that I'm telling you them more than the facts were changed. I've conflated people and put them together for the purpose of making the story interesting and shorter.

Sean Carter [00:43:23] And I want you to know that right up front so that you don't think this is literally true. That would ruin the entire thing. It'd be like going to a magician and having them say, now none of this is really true. These are all smoke and mirrors.

Sean Carter [00:43:35] My job is not to do that. My job is to tell you that as an adult. Your job is to know that I didn't run into three rabbis and a penguin in a bar. That's your job. I kind of think of it when the church. It's like, I never.

Sean Carter [00:43:46] So if I'm here, the milk stripping story, I'm never offended that that story didn't actually happen that way. Because I would tell stories like that all the time. It's his job to tell me a story that I can remember that will have an impact and a lesson for me. And whether it happened in that way, order or not.

John Dehlin [00:44:01] Interesting.

Sean Carter [00:44:02] I'm responsible for knowing because the magician member doesn't tell you. How do you know that David Copperfield isn't real? Because you're a grown, grown man and

John Dehlin [00:44:09] you figured that out. Said grown ass man.

Sean Carter [00:44:12] I'm about to say grown ass man. That is, by the way, my favorite expression. And so I think, you know, as a grown ass man, that is your job to know that. And so those things never offended me as much. You know, the fact that some of the narratives of the church, and also, by the way, every church does that with their narrative. Nobody has a founding narrative that says, oh, yeah, and then by the way, our leader slept with a few people and got drunk a lot. That's not the part of the story you tell. So the fact that you don't tell those parts about Joseph never bothered me at all.

John Dehlin [00:44:46] Okay, so you and your wife both joined the church as highly educated, non literal, very pragmatic participants.

Sean Carter [00:44:56] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:44:57] Okay.

Sean Carter [00:44:58] And I, you know, I think my wife liked this since community, which is great. I had a lot of respect for, and still do for the Mormons I met and that they were something that at the time I wanted to be. And that is nice.

Sean Carter [00:45:17] And here's what I mean by this, is that there was a time where I had Mormon dar, where I could almost pick out another saint, you know, just from my dentist. I went to the dentist and just the time in the chair. And remember now, this is a guy who's usually nice to you because they're trying to sell you several thousand dollars worth of dental treatments. They're not going to be a jerk about it. But the guy was so nice, I went back and immediately Googled him. And I'm like, yep, byu. I could tell, you know, just that kind of. And I remember my first testimony meeting, standing up and saying, you know, I don't know if everything that we believe is right, but here's what I know.

Sean Carter [00:45:54] I'd rather be wrong and be like you than be right and stay as I am. And so I was looking from a standpoint of I like to get this kindness, this generosity that on the surface at least I saw often that I don't have.

John Dehlin [00:46:12] You wanted to be kinder. You wanted to be a kinder person.

Sean Carter [00:46:15] Exactly. You know, all the kindness and half the racism. And so that was my thought. And, you know, we, so we did the, you know, the traditional Path, you know, we ended up getting with our probationary period. And remember, we started out as, like, level four Mormons. All right, we remember. We, you know, it's just two of us. We've been married since we were, you know, young people. We have four kids. We're, you know, it's not like I had to scrape off the tattoos, right, and go to rehab. I mean, we were, you know, we were pretty much there already. It was pretty easy to become Mormon.

Sean Carter [00:46:52] We get endowed so we can go to the temple. And so I get a whole new set of underwear. And I don't understand why you guys don't talk about that more. That, to me, was the biggest drawback. It took us about a year and a half to really get temple ready. And that's because they kept bugging us because I wasn't excited about.

Sean Carter [00:47:10] Took me years to really find. I don't know if you found it out since you left the church. It took me years to find a boxer brief. The boxer brief is a really nice thing. And now I've got to trade it for long johns and T shirts all year round, even in the end of summer. And I don't want to do this. And here's the thing that is kind of different. As an African American, one of, by the way, the biggest things about it to me was one of the hardships of being temple endowed was the fact that someone would be picking out my underwear.

Sean Carter [00:47:46] As an African American man, that is huge. And let me tell you why. Because when I was growing up, whenever I would get impressed with someone in Compton, maybe there was a young guy we suspected was dealing drugs. He'd have a car and lots of girlfriends. My father would always remind me, hey, I know you think Ray Ray's pretty cool, but in two years, somebody would be picking out his underwear for him.

Sean Carter [00:48:08] That's what he do in prison, right? They stamp their name Property of on your underwear. The biggest degradation that I could see growing up was having someone pick out your underwear for you. And now I go to a church, and the first thing they say is your penalty, your reward for righteousness is we will pick out your underwear for you. Property of the LDS Church, right?

John Dehlin [00:48:29] And you gotta buy it from us. It's like a company store. It's like the company store, which I

Sean Carter [00:48:33] admit, though, they're pretty cheap, though, now that you're shopping at Kohl's like the rest of us, it was a pretty good deal. And so I would, like, put these things on, and everyone thinks I put them on and I say my, you know, my covenants, and I would be like, I have paid. Like I said, I'm paying 10% of my income to be told what to where. Right at that fundamental level. And so that was already, you know, chafing me, so to speak.

Sean Carter [00:48:59] It was the idea that, you know, and I think I had a different perspective. I think, you know, I asked, they let me teach elders form, which was a mistake, I think, all the way around. And one of the times I asked, I was like, how in the world do you guys deal with this? And that perspective was like, what do you mean? It never even occurred to them. And it makes sense, you know, that they wouldn't think that, okay, the fact that you have garments is somehow, you know, a degradation that, you know, it's picked out for you. That's. You grew up with it. It makes sense. But. But for me, that was, you know, definitely something that was hard to get to get through.

John Dehlin [00:49:29] Got it.

Sean Carter [00:49:29] I have to live with that long.

John Dehlin [00:49:31] How'd you get over that? How'd you get over the garment thing?

Sean Carter [00:49:34] That was. That was simple. I got. I got. I lost my temple recommend. And that's when sort of, I guess the activism started. Now let me tell you, in the meantime, one of the things that I'm having trouble with immediately with the church.

The Good and the Difficult in Mormon Life

John Dehlin [00:49:47] Okay, wait, wait, wait. Before you talk about that, what were there good things that you and your wife experienced that tell us about the good. Tell us about the good that you experienced as an active Mormon.

Sean Carter [00:49:58] A thousand things. Like I said, you know, that sense of, you know, community. And by the way, let me tell you, we're the only African American family, at least that I'm aware of in our entire stake. And, you know, communism has its privileges. So we get to speak at State Conference. State conference, right. The first year we joined, like two months later, we're speaking at State Conference.

John Dehlin [00:50:23] Did you say tokenism has its privileges?

Sean Carter [00:50:25] Privileges. And we're famous. We're very famous because, in matter of fact, it's troublesomely famous because everybody in the state knows us. I can't tell you why. People apart, I really have no idea. And so everywhere I go, I know that there are people who might know me that I don't know them. I can't go, you know, sneak. I can't go sneak and grab, you know, you know, a crack pipe if I like to. And I don't normally do that. I mean, it leaves a bad aftertaste, but I don't normally do the crack. But I can't you know, I couldn't even go, you know, have a beer because you know, there's something warming somewhere.

Sean Carter [00:51:02] But I, you know, I got tons of. Let me give you example. One of the perks I had. So I get to go back to byu and now I'm a member and they say, hey, have you come speak again? And I said, okay, I'll speak now. I can't charge the church money. That's kind of bad. But I said, fine. But I want tickets to the Utah football game. That's the weekend we're going to do it. And so I don't just get tickets. I sit in the president's box.

Sean Carter [00:51:25] And so with, I found out with my best friend, D Money Dieter Uchtdorf, I get to meet President Uchtdorf now. You know the kind of bragging rights you have at Elders Quorum when you come back, right? These guys at 40 and 50 generations, right? First off, you know, first Mormons ever, they don't get to meet apostles like me, right?

Sean Carter [00:51:46] And so you get like all those kind of cool things like, let me teach Elders Quorum, right? And being a newbie. And here's the thing is, you know, there's a little benevolent, let's just say, tribute to race. Let's just say it's a benevolent non Mormonism where people think, hey, you know, you don't really understand how Mormonism works, so we'll give you a little grace to do things that would be unorthodox, right? So I'm teaching, you know, lesson Elders Quorum on celestial marriage. And so I start out with the question is, have you really thought this out? This is one woman forever.

Sean Carter [00:52:25] Forever. All right. Do you realize how, you know that you met someone and you dated for three weeks after your two year mission and that is forever. Ever. Like, you know, why don't you just say, hey, we'll make it to life? And then, you know, Nefertiti's out there. I don't know if she's married, right? Halle Berry will be on her 25th husband body. You might want to upgrade. Why would you want to do forever?

Sean Carter [00:52:50] And normally that's, you know, sacrilegious. You might, you know, get your, get your calling taken away. But they're like, oh, Shawn doesn't know any better. He's silly, right? We'll let him get away with stuff. And so, and they let me talk, you know, at what I call open mic Sunday.

Sean Carter [00:53:07] I said, how could I not like that part of the church? Now the thing about it is is that the Kindness that I was looking for, I found out, doesn't necessarily come through the church's teachings or I think it just comes from the general milieu of being raised in this community. So I can't become any more Mormon than I could be a Hasidic Jew at 43.

Sean Carter [00:53:30] I'll give you an example. I'm coming out of the church parking lot. I'm going into the church parking lot to take my. One of my sons, the middle one of the short ones, to Boy Scouts. We're late because we're black and Mormon. So we're late. We're coming in. They're running in there. There's a sister who has taken a bunch of stuff out of her car.

Sean Carter [00:53:48] I don't see her. I'm going into the church. But then as I come out of the church, I run into one of the other brothers. He's driving by in his truck. He sees me, says, hey, good brother Ricardo, how you doing? Dah, dah, dah, dah. We shake hands. Then all of a sudden, he pulls his car truck in, sees all this, sees woman, says, I gotta immediately go help her, and starts helping her with all her stuff in.

Sean Carter [00:54:08] And it bothered me because it never even occurred to me, all right, not because I saw her and I didn't like her or it's not like she had a Trump bumper stick, anything. I just, you know, that kind of general, you know, kind of, you know, putting up the chairs and the kind of things you do normally as an act of kindness. It just, you know, it's not, you know, the culture I was raised in. So. And it wasn't sticking. So I'm like, man, I've been in this church for two years, and I'm still missing stuff like that simple service. Because I'm just, you know, not, you know, trained that way.

Sean Carter [00:54:43] But, you know, my wife, you know, is loving. Like I said, she's got all these best friends. People are doing nice things. She's getting an opportunity to serve. Everything is going well. Now we're getting a little, you know, pushback from friends and family. So whenever you tell if you're a black Mormon, you tell another black person you're a Mormon. The first question I'll ask you is,

John Dehlin [00:55:09] wow, are you crazy?

Sean Carter [00:55:11] Well, they said, did they let black people join? Like, my aunt asked me that. That was her only question. She didn't know anything about Joseph Smith. All she wanted to know is. She didn't ask me, like, you know, do you get multiple Y's? It was just like, you Know, do give. That's the second question usually. But it's like, you know, do let black people join or why did you join that racist church? And then you have to explain your blackness, right? You say, no, look, look, I've been black for 43 years, right? I gave, I haven't listened to heavy metal since 1983. You have to give your whole black resume, right?

Sean Carter [00:55:35] You know, I went to Ludacris concert. You have to really give your whole black resume. And you know, I voted for Democrat every time. You know, since cl, you have to really give your bona fides to keep blackness.

Sean Carter [00:55:47] It's like being a black Republican, except your family will eventually forgive you for being a black Mormon. They're not gonna forgive. We're not forgiving Republicans. But. And my mother was kind of like, look, alright, it's not my tradition, but if you get Jesus somewhere, as long as you get your Jesus on, I'm good.

Sean Carter [00:56:02] My father is agnostic, but he is shockingly, shockingly supportive of Mormonism. So he's my sounding board. I come to him with the stuff I learned from you and my father. I would, I'd come to him, like, what kind of stuff? The crazy stuff they believe. And my father is hilarious because he's agnostic. And so he tells me one day, he says, shawn, you realize what you're coming to me to say is you're convinced that Superman can beat up Spider man and you're mad at them because they think Spider man can beat up Superman. But you realize, I think both of you are crazy.

Sean Carter [00:56:34] But he liked the idea of the church and the community. I think he also liked all these rich white people. So he's like, just go with rich white people and just, you know, you might need to borrow some money someday. Just, you know, be with the good community of people. And so he's supportive, but we're getting, you know, these, you know, this pushback, you know, and then you start having, you know, little cracks in your racial shelf, right? That start to build, that happen. And then I get radicalized.

John Dehlin [00:57:02] Okay, let's have that be part two of our interview. But just to summarize, how many years were you and your wife sort of active, committed Mormons?

Sean Carter [00:57:11] Ooh, I wouldn't, I mean, I would never say we were active, committed, but let's say, let's say, for instance, we were, you know, going regularly, regularly attending. Regularly, regularly attending, right. And lying on a TR or triple recommended interview.

John Dehlin [00:57:27] What were you lying about?

Sean Carter [00:57:28] Oh, what didn't we lie about? I think all the things that the rest of you do.

John Dehlin [00:57:38] So. Alcohol?

Sean Carter [00:57:40] Yeah, exactly. Like alcohol.

John Dehlin [00:57:42] You would drink an occasional beer or whatever.

Sean Carter [00:57:43] Exactly, you know, exactly. And not that often, but occasionally. I gave it up for like six months at one point. And then it became the kind of thing where I was sitting at a professional thing and I was like, Sean, you a grown ass man, you got. You let another white man tell you your family went through all this and slavery and hardship. So a white man can tell you you can't have. Right. A rum and Coke, you know, that kind of thing. Right. And so, you know, there was always, you know. Exactly. Think about it, you know, are you honest in all your business dealings? Well, consider I make a living telling lies. I guess I'm honest for the most part. I probably stated the truth at time and time. So, you know, but we were, you know, we were compliant enough, right?

John Dehlin [00:58:27] Yeah. Okay.

Sean Carter [00:58:28] So we weren't doing crazy stuff. And so we're like, okay, this is good enough. And probably about three years, I had a typical American for maybe two years or so. We, we went though pretty regularly until about the beginning of 2016, middle 2016, I think when Trump won the primary, we stopped.

John Dehlin [00:58:46] So was there. So as you and your wife were having this experience in Mormonism, years two and years three, were you like, man, I'm really loving this. Were you both like, this is great, or were you just like, ah, it's not working. Like, how are you experiencing it? Before things started to crumble, you know,

Sean Carter [00:59:06] here's how we were experiencing it, is that, you know, I think she was getting a little less enamored with the friendship in the church because as you know, you know, you get those, you know, that wonderful camaraderie. But, you know, you need to still every once in a while, you know, affirm it with your testimony. Right. You need to every once in a while, just in this casual conversation, say, you know, the Lord is good. You need to be part of the tribe to not make any waves. You need to not be married to me because I'm always going to be, you know, somewhat on the outside, pushing, saying something provocative.

Sean Carter [00:59:42] And so, you know, it's starting to spoil a little bit. It's getting progressively, you know, less fun. I'm probably going more often than she is. And also, but fairness. So the challenge we always had is this, is that. By the way, I didn't mention we have four sons, but two of our sons are autistic.

Sean Carter [00:59:59] Fairly, you know, and I mean, you know, good autistic, I mean, but I Mean, but not, you know, Rain man good autistic, but I mean, but, you know, non verbal, you know, lower functioning. So we never, I'm not sure we ever went to church together. You know, she might go one Sunday. I might go. I might do one part of the Sunday. And she did one part. We'd stay home with one of the kids. Every once in a while we'd bring them, but then she'd have to spend the whole time in the, you know, the nursing room or when someone would spend time in the hallway running around with one, you know, chasing one of the kids. So we, we never were like, you know, all six of us in the seats every Sunday anyway.

John Dehlin [01:00:30] Got it.

Sean Carter [01:00:31] And so before I probably start going more and then my, when my, you know, Brendan, my. It was, you know, a neurotypical child, he was it. Oh, he got down priesthood, right? You're 12 years old, you get your pack of deodorant and priesthood. And so now he has a priesthood. So he's now doing, you know, the, the I'm getting in there early, etc. And so, but, you know, it then started becoming like more of a burden. It's like, oh, my God, Sunday, who's gonna flip a coin? Who's got to take him early to, you know, sit through sacrament, right? And have a place for him to sit when he comes back from sacrament. So one of us got to be there.

John Dehlin [01:01:12] And.

Sean Carter [01:01:13] And so we was worse. You know, we were, we were losing that love and feeling.

John Dehlin [01:01:17] Okay, were your kids loving church or not? Or the ones who.

Sean Carter [01:01:21] And so, for instance, you know, the two kids who would be able to decide. The oldest son is 23. We were 16. He was 16. We were, yeah, he's 23 now. He was 16 when we joined. I think I'm doing the math wrong. Maybe. He was almost an adult when we joined and so we didn't bother him. He said, you know what, you figure this out, you know, do what you want to do. We're not going to make you join.

Sean Carter [01:01:41] So we never made him join and he wasn't really that interested because he's years old and he's got good sense. All right? You're not going to ever convince an 18 year old if this is the thing you need to join. All right? It happens. But I don't know how, you know, he's gonna go to college. That's not the pat. The, you know, the team he's got to join for college.

Sean Carter [01:02:00] And then my, you know, but my 8 year old, my 7 year old son at the time, he doesn't get a choice. So he gets baptized when he's eight. Right. And then he gets. So. So we have one kid who's in the church and he's. He said he liked it because he's. Because, you know, he knows how to play me. But if I said, oh, we're gonna miss it this Sunday, he'd be like, yeah, I think we should miss it this Sunday. Go next Sunday. And if I asked him today, he would say, oh, yeah, next Sunday. He hadn't been in 28 Sundays, but next Sunday is Sunday. He's gonna go every Sunday.

John Dehlin [01:02:27] He's a smart kid. Okay, last question before we end this episode and start the next one. How did you, you know, before your shelf started cracking and breaking, did you experience what you perceive to be racism or mistreatment in the church or this white supremacy that you're going to talk about?

Recognizing White Supremacy Within the Church

Sean Carter [01:02:48] Exactly. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about that context. You know, I first, I never had a negative. No one called me a bad word. You know, no one came to me and said, you know, I really don't like your people.

Sean Carter [01:03:03] I'll give an example. Before I joined the church, I remember being in Utah once and I gave a presentation, and as you imagine, it was wonderful. And afterwards, an elderly white lady came to me and says, you know what? You are a credit to your race.

Sean Carter [01:03:18] Exactly. And by the way, I know she mentioned as a compliment, so I took it as one. But I really wanted to ask her, you know, what do you think of my race? Because I basically just came up and told you a bunch of jokes and stories where I was the villain and half of them. What do you think of black people? Like, we produce, like, you know, Dr. King, you think that I'm a credit to the tradition.

Sean Carter [01:03:40] I told you an hour of jokes and didn't use profanity, but, you know, but maybe twice. And so, you know, I could see that kind of subtle thing. But that's not. By the way, I could hear that in Alabama. Right. Southern Baptist. And so I didn't figure anything that was particularly, you know, Mormon racy.

John Dehlin [01:03:56] Sure, sure. Just. Just microaggressions, as they call them.

Sean Carter [01:03:59] There you go. Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:04:01] All right. So for those of you listening, don't worry, we're just going to end and immediately re. Begin. But what I like to do is just have a clean end and a clean beginning to the multiple parts. So I just want to thank those who are checking us out through audio after we've done this live recording. Thanks for joining us. And join us in just a second for part two of my interview with humorist Shawn Carter as he discusses how white supremacy led him and his wife, Adam Ormanism.

Book of Mormon Problems and Shelf Items

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 790

John Dehlin [00:00:29] All right, we're back with Shawn Carter. It's August 30, 2017, and we're talking to Shawn Carter, lawyer, Harvard Law School. Joined the church as a black man with his wife and several children in Mesa, Arizona in 2011 after listening to Mormon stories, Mormon expression, all the podcasts, and learning all the crazy stuff about Mormonism. And if you joined us in part one, you will have heard that we talked about his upbringing in Los Angeles. Born in Compton, raised in LA and eventually in the suburbs, had a great education, went to Brown, went to Harvard. And because he was trying to bring Jesus into his life as an adult, as he said, as a grown ass man, he was trying to bring Jesus into his life.

John Dehlin [00:01:21] He convinced his wife to investigate the Mormon Church and they joined in 2011 in Mesa, Arizona, and for several years attended regularly as non literal participants, non literally believing participants. Unorthoprax and unorthodox. And now what we're going to talk about is how Sean's shelf started to crack. So, Sean, let's talk about how your shelf started to crack. What happened?

Sean Carter [00:01:50] You know, there were always these, you know, underlying problems, like you said, you put on the shelf. So, you know, the Book of Mormon inaccuracies. And what bothered me most about the Book of Mormon was not the thought that Joseph might have taken some liberties with the truth or just made it up. Like I said, I do that all the time. I can live with that. But that, you know, the presumption of whiteness. Not just using whiteness and delight. Delightsomeness. But I remember one time having this conversation with a, you know, 40 generation, you know, Mormon. And, you know, we were talking about this and I said, look, you know, you know, is there a presumption that when I get to heaven, I will, you know, get an upgrade to whiteness, that I'll get to be white in heaven?

Sean Carter [00:02:40] Because I really don't really want to be. Because it'd been easy to be one of the few blacks in Mormon heaven because, like, I could find my wife easier, right? Like, you know, have you seen the other black woman? No, she's not Gladys. It's that one, right? It's easy to find her.

Sean Carter [00:02:52] It took me a long time to really get used to black. I'm getting good at it now. I don't want to give that up. And he was like, well, you have to give that up, right? You know, we'll all be the real good color.

Sean Carter [00:03:04] And then, you know, I made the mistake of spending some time not just in Mormon, you know, podcast land, but some of the Mormon blogs and the online communities. 1 I think you're familiar with, John. Mormon Dialogue.

John Dehlin [00:03:20] Yeah. Yeah. It's a forum where both apologists and critical skeptics try to have conversations about Mormon topics, Right?

Sean Carter [00:03:32] Absolutely. And so we'd have conversations about things like that, about the priesthood ban. And then, of course, the church comes out. Was it. What year was that when he came out, the apology?

John Dehlin [00:03:40] Well, not the apology with the essays. Let's just say four or five years ago.

Sean Carter [00:03:43] Exactly. Four or five years ago he came out with the essays. And I'm amazed by. Because there is, of course, as we've learned from Elder. Whatever, the guy who used to be the judge, Elder. We learned. Oakes. There we go. Elder Oaks said that the Lord doesn't like apologies.

Sean Carter [00:04:00] And so there's no apology. There's no like. Oh. Because even. There's a couple of interpretations of how the essay. What the essay says. But at the end, the essay basically says this. You know, there was this myth about blacks being, you know, not valiant or being cursed. And we just want to simply say that that isn't true.

Sean Carter [00:04:21] Which is fine. But if you've told a lie about us for a hundred years, you owe an apology. If I told everyone on my street that my, you know, Asian neighbors, all right, ate babies for a hundred years, and then I said one day, you know what? I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. I went to them. I said, you know what? Good news. I'm not gonna tell people you eat babies anymore.

Sean Carter [00:04:43] Are we good? No, we're not good. Right? I owe them an apology. I need to make amends somehow. And the church is really kind of like, hey, we're all good now. Yeah, I know. We were raised for 100 years. We said horrible things about you that, by the way, most of our people still believe to some degree. But you know what? We're not giving you anything but four BYU football scholarships. Now, none of those kids are gonna graduate, but we'll give you those scholarships. But that is it. We're not doing, you know, scholarships in the inner city. We're not. We're not doing anything to make amends for this.

Sean Carter [00:05:15] You just need to be okay with the fact that, you know, we might have lied on you for 100 years. And I was like, not okay with that. And then we go to Mormon Dialogue, and, you know, and of course, you have the apologists, you know, saying, well, of course the church couldn't be wrong. So, you know, you black people need to suck it Up.

John Dehlin [00:05:31] Yeah, right, right. And so eventually you were being white splained.

Sean Carter [00:05:36] There we go, right? And kind of, you know, I'm having that problem. I had then, you know, a big problem with the hundredth white apostle. I looked it up, I guess in October 2015, we got three new apostles, right? And lo and behold, the 98th, 99th and 100th apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints were white. I couldn't believe that.

Race, the All-White Apostleship, and Fatherhood

Sean Carter [00:06:02] Think about the odds of that. What are the odds of that? And here's what offended me about it. Remember, at the same time we brought out, or the church brought out the Meet the Mormons, or as I call it, meet the Mormons that you'll never actually meet, right?

Sean Carter [00:06:15] But think about it. They would not think about, for mass consumption, bringing out six white families and saying, hey, meet the Mormons. They understand that looks bad for the outside world, but they had no problem with saying, hey, meet the hundredth guy in a row that the Lord thinks is valuable. And this is what bothered me about it. It was. I knew their audiences, they played to their audiences. They know that the rest of society was. Wouldn't stand for this. But they knew their members would be perfectly happy with 100 white guys in a row. You could sell 100 white guys in a row to their members, not a problem at all.

Sean Carter [00:06:46] You realize that you can't sell nine white guys to anybody else in America. So I looked it up at the time. If you look at any of the large ski companies, the companies that are public, you know, K2 or whatever people make K2, they don't have all weight board members. They have a black board member for a ski company now, I don't know.

Sean Carter [00:07:08] But brothers don't take, don't don't have a big part of the ski market, all right? But they know, even for their all white customers, that they could not have an all white board and get away with it. That someone would be like, oh, no, no, no, I'm gonna buy my, my skiing equipment elsewhere, right? But somehow within the church, they knew that a hundred white guys in a row would be perfectly acceptable. And the members will go, yeah, that sounds about right.

Sean Carter [00:07:34] And that sort of bothered me because like I said, it's not. See, I don't get mad, by the way, at the 15 old guys, you'll find it hard to believe, but growing up as a kid, my parents never once taught me, sean, if you have a problem in life and you need some help, you need to find 15 old white guys. That's going to be your best bet. They will have your best interest at heart. 15 old white guys is really the key for you always,

John Dehlin [00:07:57] right?

Sean Carter [00:07:57] So I never had this belief that the profits had all the answers, etc. I'm not a literal believer like that, but I do know that the prophets know the membership, and what they knew is they could sell 100 white guys, by the way, they didn't even put a disclaimer out. They didn't even ever address the issue and say, hey, by the way, have you noticed that everybody has been white for the last hundred times?

Sean Carter [00:08:15] They knew that you guys would. That the membership would accept it. Like it was nothing. Like, of course, how else would the Lord choose? This isn't, you know, ward basketball. This is the profit. This is important. We need white guys in there.

Sean Carter [00:08:30] We don't need. We can't have white women in there. We need white guys. We need to get this right. This is the Lord's instruction. You got it? And that, by the way, is what I mean by white supremacy. It's not a hatred. It's simply an underlying thought that if you need something done right, that there is a better, you know, that the best group of people to do any particular important thing are white men.

Sean Carter [00:08:52] And, you know, and like I said, I was disappointed. The membership, you know, no one in Princeton, in my ward, by the way, said that they had problems with it. You know, everyone got up and they gave their obligatory, you know, we support and sustain the new apostles, and nobody had a problem with it.

Sean Carter [00:09:09] You know, so then I started noticing things with my. My son Brendan. He's now 13, but he's the kid who's growing up in Mormonism. So one night before bed, I'm talking to him and, you know, I'm not reading him a story, but we're probably sitting on respective beds playing with an iPhone or something. But he says to me, he says, daddy, when do I get to be white?

Sean Carter [00:09:34] And Maybe he's like 8 years old at the time. I'm like, what do you mean, when you get to be white? He's like, well, you know, I'm light brown now. He doesn't really understand race, right? Well, I'm light brown now. When do I get to be white? And I was like, oh, I don't know how to break this until you, son, you're never gonna get to be white. And he was a little bummed out.

John Dehlin [00:09:50] Oh, man, what was that like for you?

Sean Carter [00:09:52] It was weird to me because I knew that his primary teacher never said to him Now, Brendan, if you work hard, you get to be white one day, all right? But somehow he had figured out, because Moore is caught and taught that there is a value in whiteness, and if I can achieve this whiteness, right, then I can really, really be somebody one day. I'm trying to get him up for church. And remember, he's smart. He doesn't want to go. And for some reason, I can't convince him that church is not like an airplane. I think in his mind at the time, he thought, if we just miss church, we're late to church.

Sean Carter [00:10:23] Church would just take off and we'll miss it, right? We can go back home. So he's fooling around, goofing off, you know, trying to make us late. And I, you know, I have to get my daddy voice out. I'm like, boy, you know, go get your clothes on. And he looks at me and he was like, want a new daddy?

Sean Carter [00:10:38] I can respect that. I really. I respect that. And then he says to me the most amazing thing. He says, I want mommy to get a divorce. I wanted to marry a new man, and this time, I want a white daddy.

John Dehlin [00:10:50] Whoa.

Sean Carter [00:10:52] And I'm like, whoa. Now, on one hand, you have to understand, I'm a hurt. But on the other hand, I'm kind of proud as a father. My job is for him to hate my guts about half the time.

Sean Carter [00:11:02] That's a good father. And I'm like, I'm not. You think I'm being facetious. My dad, for instance, is a wonderful dad if you listen to, hi, dad. Love my dad to death. I hated my dad a lot growing up, all right? Because he was doing his job, all right? His job sometime was doing steer, feel or fear or respected me to not sometimes for me not to want him to get home, you know, early from work.

Sean Carter [00:11:23] I knew that I had, you know, talking coming to me or worse. And that's his job. And so I'm kind of proud that my son, you know, doesn't like me, like me that much. But I'm like. But I figured out why he wanted a white daddy. Because in the environment he was growing up in, the best man he knew were white men who were kind to him and generous to him. Because, by the way, you know, that's the job of the young adults leader, is not to, you know, put. Not to give him punishments or restrictions or take away his iPhone, but to be kind to him.

Sean Carter [00:11:52] And so he's starting to get these ideas in his mind, by the way. So I got him back by the Way. Just as a side note, that night he text me from his room, because why would he walk 25ft down the hall? So he texts me and, you know, some entitled thing like, you know, go get. You know, can I get some. Can you give me some apple juice? I write back, get your own damn juice. And I signed it Black Daddy, because Black Daddy don't play that.

Sean Carter [00:12:19] But I'm starting to see these things that come in where they're not things that everyone has ever sat down and taught him, but he's starting to, you know, to get them in his mind. This idea that whiteness is really what he's trying to aspire to do.

John Dehlin [00:12:33] Do you associate that with the church mostly? Or Mesa, Arizona, or America, or popular culture, you know, is there. You know, and I'm hearing it implied that some of that. Some of that is coming from the Mormon Church. In your view, is that what you're saying?

Sean Carter [00:12:51] Well, here's what we could definitely say. That would be the case in most areas where, you know, you're the only black family. And we're not the only black family in this area, but we're pretty close. I'll give you an example. When I show up at the dry cleaners, I never have to tell them my name, all right? As soon as I show up in the door, they're like, here's your stuff. Get out of here before the other white customers see you. They know me. When my wife pulls into CVS to get the prescriptions, they just throw the bag out the window. They know who we are even outside of the church.

Sean Carter [00:13:23] Right? Just in general area, because it's not that many African American families in our community. So they would have that experience anywhere where, you know, you would get the idea that whiteness was, you know, most people were white. And so that's something to aspire to. But what's different in Mormonism, like I said, is that there is no compunction about that.

Sean Carter [00:13:40] Most. Most. Most churches would try to create an impression. So, for instance, if you go to most white churches around here, they'll have someone of color somewhere, somewhere in the leadership on purpose, because, you know, they just understand it doesn't look right to have all white guys everywhere. And I think in the L, There isn't that sense of, you know, of cultural literacy, of understanding that, you know, I don't think that 20. That 100 white Mormons get gathered somewhere and think, wow, it's mighty white in here. It's like, no, no, no. This is how things are in life. And I think other people would be like, oh, this doesn't look right at all.

Sean Carter [00:14:21] We need to figure this out. And so I think it's more concentrated in Mormonism, but certainly not unique. Right, right. You have some of that everywhere. And as he starts to get older, we have to try to explain to him what it's like to be black.

Sean Carter [00:14:36] I remember literally sitting down and talking to him once and like, look, he was telling me how he doing a project in school about Dr. King. And he says to me, you know, Dr. King was a great man. He really helped blacks get, you know, equality. And the way he said it was kind of third person ish. I was like, son, you do realize you're black too.

Sean Carter [00:14:56] And he's like, no, daddy, I'm not black. I'm light brown. And because he's thinking about race, literally from a standstep of color. So there are Latino kids that are darker than him and maybe even, you know, if you're Asian or Filipino, you might be. He's kind of a lighter black. And so I'm trying to explain to him this concept of blackness. And I said, you know, you know, your grandmother is black. Now, remember I told you, both my parents are black, but my mother is like, Steph Curry black. All right? So she, you know, you might not be able to tell, but you know, I got black, Dar.

Sean Carter [00:15:25] I know. And I said, grandma's black. And he's like, no, grandma's not black. I'm like, yes, grandma black too. And I'm trying to explain to him this concept of race, which is hard. They always be told it's a made up construct. So it's hard to explain. But I've got to explain to him as he gets older how important this is. So my wife calls me one day, panicked from the road.

Sean Carter [00:15:47] She says, I take Brennan to a friend's house, and when I got there, they were playing with Airsoft guns in the streets. And, you know, and I. You know, and I was freaked out. I said, fortunately, Brendan wasn't playing. He was upstairs, you know, with the friend playing. But the other kids were out there playing with the Airsoft guns. And we got to have a talk with them. And so I remember being back on a fly. I remember writing this down on Facebook too, because I'm on a flight from Philadelphia. So I got five hours to try to explain to my son. We've been kind of lying to you.

Sean Carter [00:16:17] Up until this point. We've been telling you that, you know, you're as good as anybody else and that, you have every right to expect the best from life as anybody else. But I've got to explain to you that, you know, there's certain things you can't do. And now that you're 13 years old, you're gonna have to realize that at all times the most important thing you have to do is to make sure that you never make a white person afraid. You can't hold a toy gun because someone will be afraid. They will assume it's a real gun and you. And you know, and it will get really bad.

Sean Carter [00:16:46] You have to understand all the time that all the time you have to understand that you cannot make white people afraid. You've gotten to a point where you're not cute, you know, you're not as cute as you used to be. And I've gotta have this talk with them.

Sean Carter [00:16:58] And it is hard to even fathom how I'm gonna say this to him, right? And I remember sitting down before the talking, you know, kids are always much better off.

John Dehlin [00:17:05] And of course, you're thinking about the murders of young black men all across America. Is that right? Are there specific, are there specific ones that inspired you or that moved you?

Sean Carter [00:17:17] So, for instance, the one that inspired me there is, you know, the story of Tamir Rice. Tamir rice was a 12 year old black kid in Cleveland. He's in a park, a park, by the way, playing with an airsoft gun. And the police come and in less than 2 seconds he is dead. From the time they get out, they arrive on the scene, the car didn't stop to roll, Pop jumps out and shoots him right in the chest. The gun, by the way, is in his waistband. All right? And remember, this is a toy gun in a park for a child in a state, by the way, where it's legal to carry a gun, but not if you are an African American and certainly not some of you know about the story of John Crawford, I think another Cleveland story of a father who's buying his son a BB gun in Walmart.

Sean Carter [00:18:01] Police come, they see him holding his BB gun in Walmart and they shoot him dead, no questions asked, et cetera. And so I've got to get him to understand that he always has to be very conscious of what he looks like to other people.

John Dehlin [00:18:14] Are there other stories you want to tell? Because I don't think we could get enough of these for, for those of us who aren't as connected, because I don't think those of us who are white have any understanding of what it's like to live in fear of making Someone afraid, right?

Sean Carter [00:18:32] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:18:33] We probably don't even believe that there's a thing like driving while black that that even exists. Right. Let alone being shot dead for carrying a toy gun. But it's happening.

Sean Carter [00:18:43] Absolutely. It's happening all the time. Right? And you know, the stories, they hurt me to talk about. But I'm gonna give you, the last one I'll tell you about is one I think that maybe most of the listeners have heard about. Philando Castile.

Sean Carter [00:18:58] This is a black man who's driving with his family, girlfriend and daughter in the car and he gets pulled over by the police. It's a normal traffic stop, broken tail light. He explains the officer that he is a licensed gun holder. He has a gun in the car.

Sean Carter [00:19:13] And the officer says, you know, give me your license, registration. He goes to reach for that. The office shoots him dead. The thing that was most upsetting about that was, is that it was an amazing display of something I call, not playfully, Negrophobia, which is this fear that every black man is just one second away from an apocalypse, just one second away from losing his mind and killing a white person.

Sean Carter [00:19:45] Because you realize this officer shows up and sees a man with his wife and child and thinks he's going to start a shootout with me, with his child in the backseat, with his wife in the crossfire. Because this is the kind of crazy, deranged person he is, is that he is going to, by the way, before he does so, he's going to tell me he has a gun.

Sean Carter [00:20:06] Because that is what a rational person would do, is that he would tell me they have a gun and then shoot me. And the thought is that the officer was absolutely convinced that this black man he had come across was completely irrational and out of his mind.

Sean Carter [00:20:18] That, that no way. By the way, that's what rational people, you know, that's what. That's. I think that's what, you know, cop killers do, is they take their family out for a Saturday night drive and look to get into a gunfight with the cops. It's a bizarre concept. And what bothered me was he with the officer was acquitted. The standard, legal standard is, is an officer can use lethal force if they have a reasonable belief that you. That their life is in danger. And so a jury, oh, by the way, two African Americans and 10 white people looked at it and said, yes, if you come across a black man and he's with his family on a Saturday, it's a reasonable supposition that he is going to tell you he has a gun and draw down on you and that is just the general societal, you know, milieu.

Sean Carter [00:21:01] There's a video I posted the other day on Facebook just two days ago. We can't hear the sound, but a man is in what looks like a subway shop. There's a man, a white man and his wife and child and a black man. Behind them in line, there's a conversation. We can't hear what's going on in the conversation. It doesn't look heated. All of a sudden, the white man pulls out his gun and points at the black guy. He frisks them, makes sure the guy didn't have any weapons. The guy doesn't have any weapons. And then he motions for the guy to go and order his sandwich.

Sean Carter [00:21:32] And the thing that was bizarre to me about that was. Was that one. He thought, hey, this guy in a subway is dangerous to me. I need to, you know, find out. And that the black guy went and ordered his sandwich. He still had an appetite. It must. It did not shock him and offend him and make him so resentful that he could not eat. I couldn't imagine that. And I thought, this is a young black man. I thought, how many times must he have a gun pointed at him before you still keep your appetite? How often must that happen before you still can go, you know, yeah, yeah, I like to have the turkey.

Sean Carter [00:22:04] Make sure you give me extra, extra provolone. Like, think about it, right? He ordered a sandwich like it was nothing wrong. And that is that young man has been taught that, yes, every white man will be suspicious of you and. Or every white person. And by the way, law enforcement or not, you must give the same deference to every white person. You must follow their commands and do exactly what they say. Because that is how you stay alive in America is by allowing. By making sure the white people understand, you know, that you're not, you know, you pose them no harm.

John Dehlin [00:22:36] Yeah. I mean, you're an incredibly funny guy. And I've laughed more in this episode than I've laughed in most of my episodes. But I'm feeling really sad right now because that's awful. That's truly horrendous.

Sean Carter [00:22:50] It is horrendous. But here's the thing about it is it's subtle. Until a few years ago, I wouldn't have noticed it. Give you an example. You know, one of the things that you learned early as an African American is that you certainly don't want to make any white people fearful, but you certainly can never, ever, ever make a white woman afraid. All right? And by the Way all minorities know that. I call it the golden brown rule, which is simply that you do not piss off white women.

Sean Carter [00:23:17] And so I'll give you an example of how this is, is caught and not taught. My family, I took my 23 year old son and my 13 year old son to see professional wrestling because we're a classy black family like that, by the way, third generation WWE fans too. Really Sorry, dad, I had to tell. So we go to the wrestling and we're there and young white woman walks up to the ring and she wants to take pictures or whatever and she's blocking the view of people in my aisle.

Sean Carter [00:23:47] This is a wrestling event. I mentioned that. This is not the classiest people and by the way, they serve alcohol at this wrestling event. So the comments that are coming to her are not necessarily polite. People are, you know, yelling for her to move and she, she's a young white woman, she's not. And so she takes her time, does whatever she wants to do and then she leaves. I said, okay, fine. A few minutes later, she comes back, she gets back in the ring. I guess she didn't get all the footage she want. And people are really yelling things to her now that are not just politically incorrect, they're even anatomically incorrect.

Sean Carter [00:24:21] People are just yelling the craziest stuff to this woman. And my 23 year old son kind of nudges me and is like, dad, do you see what she's doing? This is horrible. After the wrestling, he's still upset about it. And we're in the car on the way home, he's like, I cannot believe that woman stood in front of us. I can't believe she did that. And so got to try to explain to my son that yes, you're going to come across in life a lot of entitled white women. That is all of them. And you have to get it through your mind right now that you're not going to let that bother you because you won't live to be 30 if you get high blood pressure every time, you know, you find you run across some entitled white woman.

Sean Carter [00:24:57] And I know not all hashtag, not all of you hashtag, but most of you, I get it, but. And he says to me, I don't think I can do that. I don't think I can let these people, you know, just get away with this. And I said, son, you already did it tonight. What do you mean? I said, when those guys were all yelling that stuff at the woman, did you yell anything at her? And I don't mean you didn't have to say anything rude or, you know, you call her names. But did you say, ma', am, could you please sit down?

Sean Carter [00:25:23] Like, he's like, no, you didn't say anything. Let me tell you why you didn't say anything, son. Because had you said anything that those white men would have thought was even remarkably, even remotely threatening to that white woman, there would have been a different match in that. In that arena that night. It would have been me, you, and your brother against every white man in there. That's why you didn't say anything. And you know it before. And I never had to tell him that. He understands, just living in America 23 years, that you do not.

Sean Carter [00:25:50] All right. You know, you have to, you know, and so it's just something that's in the milieu. We understand it. You know, it's obviously not right. But the thing that's frustrating about it in the Mormon context is, like I said, I'm explaining this to you.

Sean Carter [00:26:05] And, you know, half of your listeners, even this is, by the way, the, you know, the apostate, you know, liberal crowd still doesn't believe me, thinks I'm exaggerating. That's really not that bad. They wouldn't do that. And, you know, there is a fair amount indifference throughout all of America. But I think it's just maybe because Mormons are more Republican, it's even more. In Mormonism, you know, if you tell one of these stories or try to explain this in Elders Quorum, there's a lot of blank stares and a general disbelief. I had this conversation on the Mormon dialogue board before they kicked me out.

John Dehlin [00:26:49] You were on the board of dialogue?

Sean Carter [00:26:51] I was. I was Mormon dialogue. No, not meaning. No, no, not the board. The blog board. And I remember, you know, someone saying to me, I was like, you know, why can't the prophets speak about this issue? Supposed to be prophets to the whole world. And, you know, all you have to say is, you know, you don't want gay people to get married in California. You don't have anything to say about this issue. And someone said to me the most amazing thing. He said, yo, Sean, I don't think you want him to speak on this issue, because I don't think they would say what you want them to say. Yeah, I was like, oh, you're right.

John Dehlin [00:27:22] Really quick. A listener noted that that subway incident happened in Brazil, not in the United States. Fair enough. But I know I would just have to say there's a fantastic movie on Netflix called 13th. Have you seen 13th, Sean?

Sean Carter [00:27:40] I have not I lose two black points. Take two black points off people. I've not seen 13th yet.

John Dehlin [00:27:47] No, it's about the criminalization of being black basically in the United States. And it's really powerful. And it basically just backs up the things you're saying whether or not the subway incident happened in the United States.

Sean Carter [00:28:03] And by the way, Brazil has its same issues with regard to race and color probably remarkably so. A couple years ago they tried to have their Miss Brazil be a darker skinned woman and that was, didn't go over well at all. You know, they have their, their caste system with regard to color as well.

Sean Carter [00:28:20] So I could imagine the same dynamic appears there. But anyway, the bottom line is that, you know, and I'm starting to become more conscious of this myself, by the way, from the most selfish reasons is because while I have my own, you know, white card, my, my children don't and they're not able to, you know, they don't have the degree. They can't necessarily articulate it as well. And I'm starting to see the danger that, you know, that they're in. And so I started getting more conscious of these issues. And of course the church is, you know, not the place for this.

Sean Carter [00:28:58] I remember, you know, the last time I ever gave a lesson in Aerosquorm. Oh, well, I should explain also that at the same time I'm noticing these things, I'm becoming more radicalized. And that's probably your fault, John,

John Dehlin [00:29:19] because

Sean Carter [00:29:19] you had an interview several years ago for ordained women before the first priesthood action. And I gotta tell you, I was so still am impressed with, with that organization and those women. The first action is inspiring. I don't know if anyone's ever thought of it this way, but you realize that when they first came to the church, here's what they said.

Sean Carter [00:29:46] We thought about this and we prayed on it and we think that the Lord wants to ordain women. We want you to go back and ask about it. You go ask and get the confirmation that we already got. While you're doing that, we're going to go ahead and sit in this first priesthood session to be ready for when you come around to, to the result that we know the Lord wants you to have. Anyway, that's darn near gangster. All right. It basically said, you know, we know exactly where, where, where this should go. And so we're going to go ahead and get in front of you. We're getting, we're going to get ready now for when you finally come around to the right answer. That's bold. All right.

John Dehlin [00:30:21] Yeah, yeah. It wasn't received well, right?

Sean Carter [00:30:23] No, it was not received well at all. I understand why people get asked, that is a bold, bold statement. Not justified. But I understand why the church felt threatened by that. So. But. But here's the thing, is I was so inspired by that, I submit my OW profile. And so they put it up on Facebook and it says, I believe in the ordination of women.

Sean Carter [00:30:43] Because, well, my answer is, basically, it's the 21st century. All right, Damn it. How did it explain that to you? It's the simplest thing in the world. Maybe half of your talent in church should be in leadership positions. You know, you might do better. Okay, I get called into my bishop's office and says, hey, you know, you made a public statement about the church and about how you thought the church was wrong. And he kind of does the thing like, you don't know any better. You've only been here a few years. But that's not the way we roll, all right? We don't say public things about the church.

Sean Carter [00:31:11] You can feel that way all you want. All right? Just don't say it out loud. He said, you know, are we clear? And I said, well, yeah, I'm clear about the fact that I now have to speak about this all the time.

Sean Carter [00:31:22] And he was like, why? I'm like, because I don't know if you notice this, but I'm black. And that's how this works. If you tell me I can't do something, I have to do it if it's right in conscious. Because that's sort of the tradition I was born in.

Sean Carter [00:31:33] So if I either have to be black or Mormon, I'm gonna choose black all the time. And so I'm now speaking more vocally about it. So vocally, by the way, that I get on that I get invited to be a member of the OOW board.

Sean Carter [00:31:48] And so now I'm getting, among all these, you know, players, you know, he's very smart. And by the way, I'm. By the way, here's the thing. I have a Harvard law degree. I am the least educated person on this board.

Sean Carter [00:32:01] Think about, we got Dr. Judah Colvin, all right, Dr. Jensen. I mean, we've got, you know, serious big time thinkers and people who. I know a lot more about feminism, obviously, than I do. And so, you know, I'm getting more and further and further sort of into, you know, dangerous ground, right?

John Dehlin [00:32:19] From the church's perspective.

Sean Carter [00:32:20] From the church's perspective. And. But before, actually, I skipped one thing. So before that happened, you know, ow does its first action, then it comes out with its second action, and then it says, hey, we're going to do our lessons.

Sean Carter [00:32:36] The church really then loses their mind, says, you're not going to be teaching this in Relief Society. They move to excavate. And so I say very arrogantly, because I felt I had a little black privilege, I said, let me go ahead and, you know, and use my race cards here. Let me go ahead and stop this excommunication. This is how silly I am. I write my bishop a letter, and I basically say, okay, you know, what if she's not, you know, because she supports ordained women, she's not eligible member of the church. I'm certainly not eligible to be in the temple. So here's my temple recommend card back.

Sean Carter [00:33:10] Here you go. Here's my Mormon Express card. You take it back. And part of me thinks very naively, yeah, the church will be like, well, we can't have one black guy in our state, you know, not be temple recommended. We'll lose, you know, his 10%.

Sean Carter [00:33:23] We need to stop this whole excommunication, because that's how powerful I am as a force in this church, I learned something very important about activism. If it's only you, it's paranoid schizophrenia. If Dr. King had been out there in the street, and I don't care how eloquently, was just, you know, babbling about whatever he was babbling by himself, there wouldn't have been a civil Rights Act.

Sean Carter [00:33:45] There's a. There's a schizophrenic person on a corner somewhere in Salt Lake City that is preaching some wonderful truth. Nobody listens unless you're organized. Okay, I'm gonna get on the board. I'm gonna try to work for this issue.

Sean Carter [00:33:57] I become more and more active, and then Reno happens. Sorry, it wasn't Reno for you. It was the church's policy change. What was that? November of 2015.

John Dehlin [00:34:08] 2015. Yeah, right.

Sean Carter [00:34:10] I remember. But then we're friends with yam on your list. I get the email from you. I don't believe you. I said, john, this is why they actually just making up stuff about the church. They're not that crazy. Nobody would be that depraved. You're just making up stuff. I sure enough, I get the. I get the. I'm in Reno at the time and I'm actually on a poker table when I get this message, I have to go cash in my chips. I go upstairs and I write my resignation letter immediately. Okay, wow. You know, and I have it here because it's still here. And I, you know, I read it. Yeah, it's actually pretty. It's actually to show you where my. Where my mind was. It was actually quite scared and I should be ashamed of myself. Hold on a second.

The November 2015 Policy and the Decision to Leave

John Dehlin [00:34:59] So this is the letter that you wrote in response to the November 2015 policy where the church basically declared any same sex married Mormon and immediate apostate and implemented the policy that children of same sex married Mormons were not allowed to get baptized, blessed or participate in the basic church ordinances and rituals.

Sean Carter [00:35:26] Exactly. So I read a letter. I get the right address to the member Records division. All right, 50 North Temple. So this letter is to inform you that we, the undersigned, my wife and I, of the Blank Ward Blank Stake in Mesa, Arizona, hereby resigned from the LDS Church effective immediately. We ask our names, that the names of our minor children be removed from the records of the Church. We have taken this action as a direct result of recent changes in the LDS Church's handbook of instructions, particularly those pertaining to the children of parents living in same sex household. We simply refuse to be part of any organization that conditions its membership on the basis of who that person's parents love.

Sean Carter [00:36:02] We see nothing in this policy that is Christlike or even decent. Therefore, we cannot possibly associate ourselves with an organization that we believe is motivated by animists or those who Christ would call the least of these. In effecting this disassociation, we fervently request no further contact other than acknowledgement received this letter with the LDS Church or its local representatives in any capacity. Specifically, we request to not be assigned home teachers or to be visited by the missionaries anytime in the future. Our dissociation from the church is not the result of ignorance or misunderstanding of the doctrine of facts, but it results from a crystal clear knowledge of the bigotry and prejudice that lies at the root of this new policy. That being said, we thank you in advance for removal of our names, blah, blah, blah.

John Dehlin [00:36:42] And your wife is on board. Your wife is on board with that.

Sean Carter [00:36:45] So I bring back the letter. I said, hey, we sign a letter, send it off. She's look, I'm on board. I'm ready to be done with these people too. But we got the last Christmas program and I love the Christmas program with the kids. And Brendan has a part in the Christmas play and he's, you know, at, you know, 11. So I think he's like, you know, has a big part because, you know, he's one of the older kids. Okay. So why don't we do it after the Christmas play? We do it after Christmas play and we're fine. So I'm like, okay, fine. I'm never going to church until then, though. I'm done. I'm done. And a few weeks later, they have a. What does that call when they meet during the week? But, you know, whatever it's called when the kids meet during the week, on Wednesday or Thursday, whatever that is.

John Dehlin [00:37:26] Like mutual.

Sean Carter [00:37:27] Mutual. Thank you. Mutual. So we have a mutual bed. And here's what it is. It's a party, a birthday party for one of the members of our ward. He's a man in his early 30s, disabled physically and mentally, and the kids are going to get together and throw him a birthday party. They do every year. And so I got to go see this party. And so I take Brendan because I want him to sort of learn how to be kind and generous like this too. So I take him to the party and I'm seeing these kids and this is like every year. And this guy has his favorite songs and these kids, you know, it's not, you know, I'm thinking the kids would be kind of, you know, just.

Sean Carter [00:38:00] It's an excuse to have cake, but we're not going to be entertaining this guy. And no, no, it's a birthday party for him and brother. So, and so, and everybody's, you know, bringing presents and they're, you know, singing songs to him, etc. At one point I see one of the guys who's going to help, you know, the birthday boy open his gift. This is a doctor, retired doctor, in his 70s. And he gets on his knees to, you know, position himself so he can help the kid. I'm thinking this is a 70 year old man, a doctor who got on his knees. That, that's price.

Sean Carter [00:38:34] Like there's some price likeness here. I say, you know what? I'm not sure I give up on these people completely. Maybe, you know, maybe I got, I got to stick in a little bit longer. So I took my letter, I kind of, you know, put it on the shelf. I gave a testimony, by the way, so I explained the whole thing to him, you know, But I'm gonna stick with you a little bit longer. I'm gonna trust that you, you get a little better.

Sean Carter [00:38:55] And I'm gonna have to, you know, and I might lie when people ask me, but I'm not proud of this. I might tell them I'm a recovering Mormon, but I'm gonna stick with you a little longer, okay? And then 2016 happened, and I'm a little embarrassed because I probably should have cut my association there. But like I said, I want to stick it out a little longer. And then 2016 happened, and it got really bad. Your members, your listeners probably don't know this, but they seem pretty smart. They know about the Brazil thing. So somebody looked this up. But we had a guy run for president named Donald Trump.

Sean Carter [00:39:25] Some of. Some of you heard about this guy, and that was a really, you know, I'm 50. I've been through elections before. But he wasn't a different candidate. He wasn't, you know, a just an alternative. He seemed to me a very different alternative.

Sean Carter [00:39:44] And the fact that, you know, so many of my ward members were on board was really bothersome to me. And I remember what got really bothersome is Deseret News had an editorial that basically said, anybody but Trump. Now, to my knowledge, Deseret News had never, ever, ever made a recommendation about any presidential candidate, even Romney. They didn't support. They didn't. They didn't. They didn't officially come out and support, and they didn't support. Hillary simply said, just vote for anybody other than this fool.

Sean Carter [00:40:19] And Mormon still said, you know what? No, you know, even if. If our church tells us that now, they would say, hey, it wasn't the church. It was the LDS opinion page. The LDS opinion page will never come out for gay marriage until the prophets say it's okay. They will never have an opinion that is against the beliefs of fundamental beliefs of the church. All right? So for them to come out, they ran that up the flagpole, so to speak, and the members said, yes, we don't care.

Sean Carter [00:40:48] We like our Republicanism, maybe even a little bit of our racism, enough that we are going to disregard the council of our leaders. We'll let them choose our underwear, but they're not going to choose our president, and we will pick who we want to. And I remember, you know, sort of up until that point, trying to sort of, you know, have these conversations and simply saying, look, you know, this is the kind of thing that got us in trouble.

Sean Carter [00:41:14] Up till now, one of the things that would be nice for this church to get over this racism label is if you did not vote for them for the most racist candidate in recent history in the 2017 election, it's very hard to say, you got, we cleaned up our act of 78 when you vote for Trump in 2017.

John Dehlin [00:41:32] Right.

Sean Carter [00:41:33] And so, you know, let's not, as a church, go down this road again. Let's be able to Say, hey, we didn't vote for this fool. We learned our lesson. And I saw that obviously it wasn't going anywhere. I remember. I think, you know, sort of. To me, a very strange last straw was I taught elders quorum and they made a mistake. They let me teach not only elders quorum, but the combined, you know, real Mormons, the priesthood session, too. So I'm doing the combined all men in the third hour.

Sean Carter [00:42:01] And the lesson was on Jesus's let the children come unto me. And so I started out with a question and I said, guys, someone help me out. Pull out your scriptures. There's a line from. And I found out in the four Gospels where Jesus says, you know, allow the children to come unto me. And I pulled out the four verses. I said, now, someone read from John, and someone read from John. I said, someone, no, that's not right. It just says, jesus come. I'm looking for someone more. The Gospels are different. Someone read from Matthew. Jesus said, the children come unto me. I said, no, no, I need more.

Sean Carter [00:42:37] Give me Mark. We go through Luke. And I said, you know, somebody help me out here. Where's the part where it says, let the children come unto me? Unless one of their parents is gay? That's got to be some of the. Some. Maybe the Book of Mormon. Tell me where that is. I gotta find that.

Sean Carter [00:42:52] And I kind of challenged them on that and said, look, you know what? This isn't, you know, right. Doesn't sort of fit. But I'm not here to argue with the church. I'm just simply saying that, you know, it doesn't. You know, we might find. We might find a different basis for this because one of you might want to run for office outside of Utah. And part of I was speaking to was Jason Chabetz. He is my family. Tangentially, you know, one of his family members is in our ward. And so he's there and we talk about it after words. He says, yeah, you know, I heard you, etc.

Sean Carter [00:43:27] And I explained to him a conversation. I explained to the elders quorum how this would be my last talk and that I was going to be leaving to, you know, to attend a black church, to work on behalf of, to be more politically active, to, you know, do some work with Black Lives Matter and certainly not going to happen here. And I wasn't upset with any of you, but I had explained to them the story I told you about Brendan and how, you know, this is something that has to be done and I need to be step up and do this. I Remember talking to Jason Chavis afterwards, and he was very understanding and he listened and listened.

Sean Carter [00:44:05] And the very next day, he went back to Fox and declared his public support for Trump. And this was after the whole grabbing thing, right. He said, I'm back on board.

John Dehlin [00:44:19] After Trump had talked about grabbing, sexually harassing.

Sean Carter [00:44:21] Exactly, exactly. Talked about sexual ass remedy. He came back, said, I got. Anyway. It didn't have anything to do with my talk, but it made me understand that I could have a conversation with people and it could seem like I'm getting through and still, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. And so I was like, okay, this is my cue to leave, and I probably need to leave now because I keep calling these people stupid on Facebook, so it's probably not going to work very well anyway. And so, you know, I haven't been back since, you know, Trump won the primary, basically.

John Dehlin [00:44:51] Did you ever send. Did you ever send the letter?

Sean Carter [00:44:53] I did not send the letter and there's no reason not to. I just. I would have to rewrite the letter. Didn't they kind of, by the way, step back on the policy somewhat and, you know, so that they will still kick out, I guess, the gay members, but not necessarily the kids?

John Dehlin [00:45:14] Yeah, it's. They've kept it conveniently ambiguous and nebulous so that they could allow local leaders to sort of do whatever they felt was right for the local ward. It's kind of like. Yeah. Allowing it to stay at the local level.

Sean Carter [00:45:31] Got it. Exactly. And that's. And that's where, you know, and that's the thing that got me, though, was that, you know, it seems to me that most of this I wouldn't have been upset if, you know, if this had been a policy of the church. But I find that my being is that I don't think that members follow the prophet. I think the prophets follow the members.

Sean Carter [00:45:51] The members decide on their own which of the prophetic advice they'll accept. And when they come to a consensus on that, they solidify, say, okay, everybody's going to do this. And then the prophets draw a bullseye around it. So, great example. That's the word wisdom. We do some of the word of wisdom, but not other parts, because the parts that people accepted were the parts that they willing to do. And they weren't willing to give up all that meat, because meat is delicious. Right. No one's willing to give a bacon all year long. All right? And so they're like, forget that. I'm gonna do the parts I like.

Sean Carter [00:46:20] I Learned this either one. Probably more of an expression. Maybe your podcast about the. What was it about? The. The birth control ban for about six months during the 70s.

John Dehlin [00:46:30] Sure.

Sean Carter [00:46:31] And the members said, no, we're not doing that. We're not having 35 kids. And church, like, I guess. And I guess not.

John Dehlin [00:46:39] Also, the church forbade oral sex for a short time and in the early 80s. And then they took that back.

Sean Carter [00:46:48] Yeah, because they realized that, you know, they can't have, you know, what, you know, standards that the members won't follow. And the members decide, we're gonna follow this and that. Now, I don't mean that each member gets to decide. Right. If you, you know, decide you want to drink coffee or tea, you can't do that. But. But once. Once the membership as a whole decides, then the profits just sort of draw the bullseye around the target and go, okay, we're all gonna do this.

Sean Carter [00:47:09] And they decided that, you know, what, a certain amount of racism is fine, because Trump doesn't just have policies that are, you know, that, you know, would be considered conservative, but he won by being the most outwardly hostile to Mexican immigrants, to Muslims.

Sean Carter [00:47:28] You know, no one else would say that the Mexican people are rapists and drug dealers, and. And somehow the party. And then 60% of Mormons said, yeah, that's about right for us. And it's not necessarily that they like that, but that it was acceptable. It's like, you know what? I'd like to have my tax break with a little less racism, but if you have to pile a little racism on my tax break, I'm gonna take my tax break, all right? Because the bottom line is, you know, I want to pay 33%.

Sean Carter [00:47:58] And the idea that, except to have a little bit of racism and a little bit of homophobia with what you want economically was hugely problematic for me. And like I said, it's on the local level.

John Dehlin [00:48:12] And, you know, it is mind blowing that the church has spent millions and millions of dollars. And every conference talk, it's, you know, homosexuality and, you know, all that stuff, all the Prop 8 stuff, and all the backlash for the November 2015 policy. And yet with the racist problems going on, the racism, the death of young black men, and the police brutality and all that stuff that's happening, that, of course, is a complex issue the church is pretty silent on.

Sean Carter [00:48:50] They have to be, because they understand the membership is not with them on this. They would lose half the membership or the members would just, you know, not. Not listen. And that brings us to, you know, why I contacted you about doing it now with the mommy blogger?

White Supremacists, Mormon Spaces, and Silence

John Dehlin [00:49:04] Yeah. Talk about her and what that was like for you to witness. So we got this mommy blogger who's. Who's celebrated as a white supremacist, invited to the rallies. What'd you think about her?

Sean Carter [00:49:16] You know, I've tried to. I've heard about her for the last six months or so. I've never read the blog post. I'm not fascinated by ideas of white nationalism in the sense that I need to learn more about it. I think it's a pretty simple thing. I'm white. I'm better than you. I got it. But the thing that was amazing to me, and I know some people say, no, no, that's not our position. Our position is that we should preserve white culture, which means we're better than you. We want to preserve the good stuff and not be listening to your Beyonce and all your gutter stuff and.

Sean Carter [00:49:50] But the point is, though, is that I wasn't mad, you know, at her. Who cares? But the members start saying, hey, you know, so the church comes out with a statement and says, okay, we want to make sure that we, you know, we did our Donald Trump on Monday statement. We're not for white supremacy. We don't support it. We all are like unto God. And then she kind of writes back and says, yes, the church has affirmed me. They said that white people have equal rights to have their own culture as well. And so then the church comes out with a second statement and says, no, mommy blogger, we're talking to you.

John Dehlin [00:50:23] Yeah, but I mean, some felt like the first statement was a little bit too weak. Right?

Sean Carter [00:50:27] It was, right. It was. It was. It was a Trump, you know, kind of read it from this platform. We don't support white supremacism. Da, da, da, da. And then it kind of came back saying, no, no, we're serious, mommy blogger. We're not. We're telling you, we don't like this alt right stuff. Okay? And the thing that got me, though, was people start saying, well, the church. And then she said, you know what? The church can't tell me what to do. All right. If you send a general authority. I'm not listening to the LDS press room. Do you want to tell me, you know, I can't be a white nationalist, you know, send a general authority?

Sean Carter [00:50:53] Well, my thought was, why would that be necessary? Because in the world that I thought we would live in, she would have been driven out of the church locally. Her views would have been so abhorrent to her friends and neighbors. That she would have been Mormon, non grata. All right? That no one would have. Would have invited her to mommy lunch on Tuesday, that her kids. No one was gonna send their kids to the white supremacy house to go play, you know, games.

Sean Carter [00:51:21] But somehow she still feels welcome in the church, which means that she walks into that church on Sunday, there are people who still love and hug and kiss her, and she is a part of the fold. Now. It's interesting because some of us have experienced this. If she had come out for, oh, I don't know, the ordination of women, she wouldn't have that love. You don't necessarily have to have the Salt Lake City to come get you. You lose a calling, right? You lose friends.

Sean Carter [00:51:50] If you came out, right, and said the church needs to apologize for the priesthood ban, you'd lose some friends. But somehow you can come out for white nationalism, speak at the rally and be perfectly at home in your award because that's just a minor difference of opinion. We'll let that go. That's like whether you like, you know, red Pokemon or blue Pokemon team, whether you support white supremacy or not.

John Dehlin [00:52:15] But, yeah, yeah.

Sean Carter [00:52:16] Else, you know, it's a big deal. Are you getting questions or something?

John Dehlin [00:52:20] No, no, no. I just. I'm gonna. I'm gonna break a tiny bit of news here. And, Sean, I hope you'll forgive me for kind of a bit of a sidebar conversation, but I had a very concerned church member write me the following. And it's going to add, I think, a little bit of additional weight to what you're saying, as if it's needed. But he's basically said, there's an active LDS church member in good standing in the La Crescenta, California Stake La Canada. First word. He is a vocal, proud white supremacist.

John Dehlin [00:52:56] He was recently selected as a delegate by Donald Trump. While this brother has been making overt public racist statements for decades, he has never experienced church discipline, remains in good standing in spite of numerous complaints by fellow stake members.

John Dehlin [00:53:14] And some of the statements that he's made include, the white race is dying out in America and Europe because we are afraid to be called racist. And Donald Trump is not racist. But Donald Trump is not afraid. Don't vote for a Cuban. Vote for Donald Trump. Referring to Ted Cruz. I think another public statement, no person shall be a citizen of the United States unless he is a non Hispanic white of the European race. So these are statements made by this active member of the church in full standing.

John Dehlin [00:53:51] These statements have been brought to the attention of warden stake leaders and Nothing's been done. He's quoted as saying, the skinheads thought I was too extreme to run in their organization. He said, our goal is to save the white race. Whatever approach works. We'll jump on that.

John Dehlin [00:54:09] One commercial he talked about one commercial. There's a Harry Potter commercial for the Harry potty movie, Harry Potter movie, that had Harry Potter kissing a Chinese girl. And he says, and of all of the little snippets that they could take out of the movies, why would the network focus on Harry Potter kissing a Chinese girl? And if you look at all of the reality shows, there was misogynation in every frame. This is what we're dealing with. This is what we're grappling with. And I'm just.

John Dehlin [00:54:37] His name is William Daniel Johnson. And I had a very concerned listener ask me, you know, because he didn't feel empowered to do so. He's spoken to his church leaders, warden, stake level. No response. And I just wanted to say that this example of the white, white supremacist mommy blogger is not an exception. That's all I wanted to say.

Sean Carter [00:55:02] No, I'm glad to know. That's perfectly, you know, that's great context for this. But remember, once again, it's not just, you know, certainly, so it's not happening at the nationwide level, but it's not happening at the state level. But I would imagine that that wouldn't happen. That doesn't need to happen. I mean, that should be on a membership. How does this guy have people. I bet you guys are calling, you know, how does someone allow their young men, Right? Let him be a young men's leader. All right? Take the kids on a scouting trip, you know, teach them all the white supremacist ways. You know, it seems to me that.

Sean Carter [00:55:31] That so many of the members of the church are like, well, with issues of race, that's all a matter of opinion. And whether you think we are all God's children or some of us are, you know, less human than others. Well, that's, you know, that's like whether, you know, you. Like I said, you know, which Pokemon team you choose, that's not really, you know, a big deal. That's not a deal breaker for me. Right? Racism is not a deal breaker in the church, and it has to be

John Dehlin [00:55:54] a part, because the Book of Mormon is fundamentally racist, right? Our apostles and prophets have been historically racist. And so it's got to be hard to take a firm stand because you're basically condemning your own scripture and you're condemning your own prophets. Seers, and revelators.

Sean Carter [00:56:13] Here's the thing that's amazing about that, though, is that, you know, that is something that other churches do all the time. So, for instance, the Catholic Church, now, the Catholic Church is horrible for, you know, it's had other problems. Horrible, horrible problems. But, for instance, they will apologize to the Muslims for trying to wipe them all out during the Crusades.

John Dehlin [00:56:32] All right?

Sean Carter [00:56:32] Now, it might take 700 years for the apology to come through, but at some point, they will say, hey, you know what? We were wrong at one point at a time. We probably shouldn't have burned all those people at the stake. Not everybody was a witch. You know, the idea that they can do that. And I've often asked a Catholic person, once I said, you know, how are you guys able to live with this so much better than, you know, us Mormons, where you can acknowledge that, you know what, that Pope was horrible. They have some popes that were corrupted their name, you know, bad, corrupt Pope viii, right, where they understand that.

Sean Carter [00:57:00] And part of it is they said, well, we understand we don't have an option because we ruined most of Europe for a thousand years. It's not like we can hide it, all right? Everybody knows that we killed all the Muslims. So we eventually have to either own it all right, or support it, but we can't sort of just sweep it under the rugs. And Mormons seem to have, for a long time, could hide it, because unless you went to the Tanner's bookstore and put on the overcoat in the shades and snuck in, nobody could find out. But now that we have the Internet, you kind of really have to address those issues.

Sean Carter [00:57:31] And I don't know what would be unchristlike about a religion, that redemption is at the key of it, right? Ask for forgiveness. And you should be to say, hey, we were wrong. We made mistakes in the past, and, you know, we're gonna try to do better going forward. Although we're probably screwing up three things now.

Sean Carter [00:57:50] We all live with that in life. And I, you know, and why, you know, and I understand, I guess it is against it. Theology would be tough that you'd lose some people who would think, oh, my God, if you weren't perfect all the time, I guess maybe I could wear my own underwear and drink caffeine that's more than 140 degrees Fahrenheit. And I get how, you know, people would. Might lose their minds and, I don't know, start, you know, doing things that, you know.

Sean Carter [00:58:15] But the idea, though, you know, that you'll just Throw these people under the bus. So African Americans, you just simply say, okay, you know what? You're gonna have all white apostles until the membership can get, can get past that. And we think that that's going to be sometime around, oh, never.

Sean Carter [00:58:30] I think the priesthood ban, you know, was one of those things where. And they kind of mentioned this in the essay where they know the membership. And I think the membership wouldn't have gone for it had the church in 63 said, hey, you know what? We're really kind of thinking this, we need to do this civil rights thing. They lost a lot of members. They had to wait until they had gotten, you know, enough buy in from the membership. But I think part of that, though, is that you push on it, right? You, you know, you condition the members where, you know, constantly. And you, you know, you do that by things like, you know, I don't know, having African Americans in authority and by, by making efforts and particularly with regard to, you know, the church says, well, the church says, no, we have plenty of diversity. Like, no, you, you have Africans, not African Americans. And there is a difference.

John Dehlin [00:59:23] Yeah, so what if a member says to you, oh, we love black people. We've got a ton of missionaries in Africa. We're baptizing black people like crazy, and we show them every time we can. In the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, we've got Alex Boye, we've got Alex Boyer. Whenever we can, we let him emcee events. We're not racist, we're promoting, we're showing black people disproportionately. We love them so much.

Sean Carter [00:59:47] Exactly. And we're mascots within the church. And by the way, here's the thing about this. Black people have been mascots for a long time. We've always allowed black people to come and sing, dance, entertain you. All right? Be the first vignette in your Mormon Meet the Mormon movie.

Sean Carter [01:00:03] But, you know, positions of authority and leadership are different. And also here's the challenge, though. The challenge is, is that if you end up getting someone in this church, you end up getting someone who ends up, you know, thinking as you might as well not even have a black member if they end up being like, you know, I'm not going to name the particular current black elder because I can't mispronounce his name.

Sean Carter [01:00:29] He doesn't have any authority to me. Sataki, I think, is his name where, you know, he would be like, hey, what's wrong with the mommy blogger? You know, you end up getting, you know, the Clarence Thomas or, you Know Ben Carson of Mormonism. Right. Because that's the only person who could really stand Mormonism long enough to rise to the ranks.

Sean Carter [01:00:51] And so it's very difficult. But part of it is, like I said, is having an atmosphere where it's possible to make these and for the church to really take a concerted effort and to say for the same. Because it wasn't an accident. The people they chose. The people they chose. For me, the Mormon movie were absolutely amazing. Right? You have the African American comes first, by the way. What a concept, right? Then you have what the people from South America, the woman kickboxer. Because certainly my ward is filled with nothing but dentist and woman kickboxers. That's all we have is orthodontists and women kickboxers in my ward.

Sean Carter [01:01:23] Right. How many women kickboxers have you met in the LDS Church? Zero. Right. They went and found all these people, but they understood that we have to present this image and that the members don't care or are not concerned. But, you know, maybe.

John Dehlin [01:01:40] So why the missionary work? That's not for pr.

Sean Carter [01:01:43] Well, that's numbers and that, you know, you could possibly sell an African on this message. It's very difficult. I mean, you've talked about this in another 100 contexts. A lot of times you do missionary work, you get the best results in places where people aren't doing as well as we are financially, which is why if you try it in Europe, you don't get any Europeans, white, black, orange, or green to join the church. Very difficult. But if you go to someone who. And you say, hey, my God gave me water, and you don't, you got a pretty good God argument. All right, my God gave me a bike.

Sean Carter [01:02:15] All right, you don't have a bike. I win. If you sell that someone who has their own car, though, then it's kind of harder. So a lot of times, you know, they're. They're. They're fishing where. Where the fish bites. And so they would have purple people if they would join the church.

John Dehlin [01:02:33] So what if somebody were to say to you, come on, Sean, yes, we have racist teachings. Yes, we have a hard time apologizing for our past racism because we don't want to undermine our own authority as church leaders. But listen, the brethren, the Q15, they love all people. They. When they send missionaries to Africa, it's not because they just want numbers. They want souls, and they're bringing souls into Christ. And they're happy to invest in Africa because they love all people. They would love inner city Harlem or inner city, wherever, to have a lot of people of color converts. These people aren't racist. The 21st century Mormon Church is not racist. Maybe they believe in freedom of speech, and so they don't go after a white supremacist member who is vocal about white culture. But come on, Sean. The LDS Church in 2017 condemns racism. They accept all people, and they're not racist.

Sean Carter [01:03:41] In the movie Forrest Gump, one of my favorite lines, I never really understood it at first, was when the mother said to Forrest, stupid is as stupid does. And what she was trying to say to him, son, is, I don't care what label people give you. I'm going to judge what you do by your actions. And what will determine whether you're stupid is if you do stupid things, racism is as racist does. I don't care what the church says about what they do. But if you do things that make it harder for African Americans to be members of your church, for instance, perfect example is the.

Sean Carter [01:04:12] You know, the African. They would love to have African Americans be members in the inner city, provided they don't have to do anything that will make it more comfortable for those members to join. If you're a black person, you've got to now go back to every black person you know and say, oh, yeah, by the way, this church, which you know, was 13 years late on civil rights, which still to this day has not had a black apostle, still thinks of me as a. As an equal person.

Sean Carter [01:04:44] And nobody is going to believe you. You have to fight your friends and neighbors. All right? The church is not making any active outreach in that regard. Yes, they will. And as you said, the church did do one thing. They did the genealogy thing recently. They tried to make it out. We say, hey, we said you were liars and cowards and cursed for a hundred years. But you know what? Look, look, we look up your records. So we're good now, right? Not really. You need to do a little more than that. It's not that. The fact that the church, by the way, is racist, and let's just find the terms, all right?

Sean Carter [01:05:14] Because actually it is. But people think of racism as an animus. I'm gonna tell you right now, I know that President Monson isn't thinking right now, ooh, I hate some black people. I'm not sure what president, but none of the 15 is right now rubbing their hands, you know, petting a bald cat, right? Laughing maniacally and going, ha, ha ha ha ha. I hate black people. I imagine right now that one of Them is thinking about a black person either.

Sean Carter [01:05:39] Part of why I call it white supremacy is not the idea that I hate black people, but simply that white people are superior, they should be trusted. So we trust them with a hundred apostle positions in a row, because how else, who else would you trust with the Lord's Church? That, to me, is white supremacy. White supremacy is, and I think of it in an analogy, most people in the world are human supremacists. Here's what I mean by this. We think that human beings are the most valuable, worthy creatures on the planet.

Sean Carter [01:06:16] Now, here's the thing about it is it doesn't mean that we hate the other creatures. I have two dogs I love. My puppies. My puppies are not equal to me. I don't think that they are equal beings to me. If that choose me, one of my two of my puppies and one of my children, I can have a hundred puppies and I still choose one of my children. My children have more value than me. My dogs don't even get to determine what they eat. I pick that out. I've been. I asked them once, right, what they want to eat, where they want to live, whether they want to live with me at all.

Sean Carter [01:06:44] Because I am the superior being. I don't hate them, though. I love them, right? I kiss them and hug them. But there's difference between, between. Between loving someone and thinking they're your equal. In this church, for instance, we have the same problem with sexism.

Sean Carter [01:06:56] Mormons love their wives, no doubt about it, but they don't think of them as being equal beings, as being people who are equally capable of respect and responsibility. They're simply people we love. And matter of fact, we take care of them and make sure we chaperone them and watch over them, because that's what you do for lesser beings. So it's not a matter of hatred. Members do not. The brethren do not hate.

Sean Carter [01:07:22] But I'm sure that there is some thought, unless it's just an accident that they got a hundred white guys in a row that remember, it's not just black people. Black men have been a member of church. We've had Polynesians in the church since 1840. Something, right? One of them couldn't have made it right. And for them, it's like I said, and I don't think it's conscious. I think it's unconscious. But remember you said this. It's like, well, we believe in freedom of speech. No, we don't.

Sean Carter [01:07:49] Go, go, go to your. Go to your. Stand up and Testimony meeting. And I think Joseph made all this up. See how much freedom of speech they believe in. We don't believe in freedom of speech. We believe in freedom to. To repeat back the doctrine as it's been taught to us, okay? And right now, the doctrine seems to say, well, with regard to race, the church says, my name is Bennett. I ain't in it. Whatever you want to believe. With regard to race, you know, I'm not gonna tell you what to believe now. I'll tell you what underwear to wear. I'll tell you what, how to have you caffeine.

Sean Carter [01:08:17] I'll tell you, you know, how much of your money to give me. I will tell you what age your kids can start dating. All right? What music they should listen to, how many ear.

John Dehlin [01:08:27] How many earrings to have.

Sean Carter [01:08:28] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:08:29] Right.

Sean Carter [01:08:29] But I'm not gonna talk to you about whether you should treat all human beings as being fundamentally equal to you. That's. That's getting your business.

John Dehlin [01:08:36] Well, wait, wait. The church has made statements saying we condemn racism, and racism isn't part of Mormonism. So what. Why haven't those. Why haven't those made you feel much better?

Sean Carter [01:08:50] Because if you. If you violate those. Those deeply held beliefs, what happens to you? Remember, if you violate, you go in and say, hey, I violated the coffee, the half caffeine, over 140 degrees, you lose. Temple recommendations.

John Dehlin [01:09:08] Yeah. You can't see your own child, you know, get married in the temple.

Sean Carter [01:09:11] Right. But if you violate that all onto like unto God, well, we're not gonna get all in your business about that. And so, you know, there's another expression that says, you know, that basically we know what is important to you by what you measure. And the church measures 14 things in the temple recommended interview that they think are very important, and not one of them is your views on whether other people are actually fully human. Now, we don't want you to, you know, we want to get our money and make sure. We want to make sure we have something there by alimony. Pay your alimony, which I think is important.

Sean Carter [01:09:50] But if you don't pay alimony, the consequences. You want to start a white supremacist group, leader march through Charlottesville with torches, you know that's on you, right? And you know, you see that. And I don't think I can say the brethren. I think the brother. If they thought they could get away with it, if they thought that the members would listen to them, they would speak on it. I think that they know that most of the members would either ignore them or be hostile. And we've seen that before. I was amazed at the commentary or the comments on the Deseret News site from people who had their names on there.

Sean Carter [01:10:23] When the church said, don't vote for Trump, you should send the people who are like, how dare you get in my business. How dare you tell me how to live? And I'm like, wait a minute. They tell you how to live every day about everything. Your Monday's taken up, your Wednesday, your Thursday, every day. And somehow the idea to tell you who to vote for was like, you don't get in the way of my racism and my tax cut.

Sean Carter [01:10:47] I will listen to a lot of your stuff, but, you know, there's going to be a limit. And like I said, I think the Mormons are. You know, we use it. People get so offended by the term of racism or white supremacy. Let me explain. I am African American. I'm 49 years old. I've been black 43 of those years. At least.

Sean Carter [01:11:07] At least 43. I don't count the years I lived in Cambridge, all right? But I have that in me. I took the Harvard Implicit association test, and I scored. Remember, I've been black most of my life.

John Dehlin [01:11:23] Yeah.

Sean Carter [01:11:23] It turns out I hate black people, too.

John Dehlin [01:11:25] Yeah.

Sean Carter [01:11:26] I had trouble associating blacks with goodness, you know, moderately. I didn't hate black a lot, but just a little bit. I'm gonna tell you my Barack Obama story, because I haven't talked about Obama in the second half. People need to know. I went to school with Obama.

Sean Carter [01:11:41] I'm one year behind Obama. I get to the law school, and there's a black law student event. And so they have a chaperone to make sure, you know, we don't do anything crazy. And she starts introducing me, say, hey, that's Professor Dershowitz. That's Professor Tribe. And she says, have you met Barack Obama? I said, who the heck is Shakalama? Didn't know Barack Obama. I said, was he in the Commodores? She says, no, Barack Obama has just made Law Review. He's brilliant. He's gonna be somebody someday. You need to go meet him now. Here's the problem is one. I just got into Harvard law school. I'm 21 years old.

Sean Carter [01:12:16] I thought I was going to be somebody someday. You think? I saw a Mormon Stories podcast in my future. All right? This is not Plan A. And also, I'm like, you know what? I remember saying her true story 30 years ago. I said to her, you know what? You go tell the Dalai Lama, whatever his name Is that Sean Carter just got to the law school. The young man would like some time and attention. I'm more than happy to take him under my wing. Otherwise, why don't you go find me a girl? Interesting to Michelle, that conversation 20 something years ago. Here's two things. One, only one of the two of us is still telling that story.

Sean Carter [01:12:51] All right? Obama speaking somewhere today, making a lot more than I am to give that talk. And he's not talking about the day he missed meeting Shawn Carter. But think about it. I'm black. I don't hate black people. I told you, my family members, all of them are black. My college roommate was black. You know, my best friend from high school. You know, stuff you guys use. I like black people a lot, but even I fell victim to it. The reason that I blew this guy off is he didn't look like the 44th President of the United States to me. All right? He looked like the 444th president of the United States. He didn't have the right name to be president. How you gonna be president? Your name is Barack Hussein Obama.

John Dehlin [01:13:27] Right?

Sean Carter [01:13:27] Right. The first black president supposed to be named a good black president, named Thurgood. Booker T. Du Bois Jackson the six. That's a black president name.

John Dehlin [01:13:35] Right.

Sean Carter [01:13:35] I missed it because I felt fell for the idea that he didn't look like the first black president. Now, if I know if I can do it, I imagine that white people can do it a lot. And so the idea that, you know, I think the more salting thing you could say to a lot of white people is, you know, that you have a white supremacist mindset. But the truth of the matter is, if you don't, you haven't been paying attention. You're not very bright.

Sean Carter [01:14:00] Because every lesson we've learned for the last 50 years has been telling us that white people are more responsible, are smarter, are more able, unless it's on a basketball court and everywhere else in life, they are. And you, you know, and so the fact that if you built, if you've accepted that doesn't make you evil or wrong, it makes you actually an intelligent human being. We gotta work on it. But, you know, the pushing back. So if you're telling me 15 white men who lived in Utah and spent most of their time around other white people, particularly in authority, that they have ideas of white supremacy, I'm gonna guess the answer is yes, right?

Sean Carter [01:14:39] I'm gonna think it's impossible for it to be no. If they're at all intelligent, how could they Sit in all these meetings with all white guys deciding the fate of God's kingdom and not have drawn the assumption that there must be something special about being white.

John Dehlin [01:14:52] Yeah, of course. Of course. One of the most heartbreaking things I ever Learned as a PhD student, I saw this documentary where they. Where they give these little black girls white and black dolls and brown dolls, and the black girls, by a large majority, choose the white dolls. And when asked why, they said, because the black doll is bad, the black doll's dirty. And it just shows that we all absorb these messages culturally. Right?

Sean Carter [01:15:22] Absolutely. And so, you know, I think part of it. But here's. I think the challenge we have with Mormons is because. Because most of us, most members don't say bad words. You know, they wouldn't call some. I mean, Idaho, I'm not.

Sean Carter [01:15:38] But those people in the most of the civilized world, you know, I've never heard in my travels in Mormonism the N word. I can't imagine that word being used in people's houses, you know, particularly among educated, sophisticated people. You just don't do that. But I think a lot of times they conflate, okay, because I don't say bad things. It means that I am. I'm not racist.

Sean Carter [01:15:57] I just accept very, very willingly the advantages of being white, and I'm not concerned about the plight of people who aren't. But that doesn't make me racist. It probably kind of does. Doesn't make you bad, evil, but it does, you know, mean that, you know, that you've accepted.

John Dehlin [01:16:18] So this is. This is going to be obvious, but I want you just to address it anyway. To the Mormon that says, hey, it's not the black lives matter, it's that all lives matter. What's your response to that response?

Sean Carter [01:16:32] The best response I saw this week was someone that did allcitiesmatter, and what he said is, why are you guys spending all this time just worried about Houston? All kinds of cities out there now, all cities matter. Stop taking. Doing your Facebook and changing your profile to say, we stand with Houston, you stand with all cities. Well, not all cities aren't underwater right now. Right. Mesa's fine. Very, very too dry. All right. And so the idea with black lives matter is simply that, yes, all lives matter, but all lives aren't under attack right now. Certain lives are more under attack than others. Now, in truth, I think the police state is to a state where I think white people should be concerned, too.

Sean Carter [01:17:14] But you're not for now. So we have to worry about black lives mattering. But, you know, the truth of the matter is that, you know, when people think of it from. From a standpoint of, you know, being offended by, you know, Black Lives Matter, you know, I also am amazed by this. I think people are looking to be offended. Here's why I call myself black. But you understand, that's not a literal term. I'm not actually black. I'm actually kind of a very sexy mocha brown. Right?

Sean Carter [01:17:43] A little too sexy, really. But, but, but, but the point is, is that, you know, my mother, on the other hand, is very light sk too. It's not a literal description. Right? We're talking about a larger class of people, et cetera. And so when you have a question like black lives matter, understand that we're not saying that, like I said, only Wesley Snipes matters and Steph Curry doesn't.

Sean Carter [01:18:07] We're basically trying to bring up. It's a hashtag to bring up a problem, right, of police brutality and devaluation of black lives. All people of color, really. And so the idea that, you know, people are butthurt about that. When someone gives me that impression, matter of fact, like I saw it on your thing, I would just block the person to move on because I know that most often it's not a concern over the nomenclature, all right? It's more concern of, you know, feeling left out. I saw one other comment, by the way, says, you know, Black Lives Matter is a brother, you know, is a horrible group.

Sean Carter [01:18:41] It's some terrorist group group. I'm amazed at the conflation between, say, Black Lives Matter and the Klan. For 90 years, from the end of slavery until very recently, let's say 1955, the Klan was responsible for the lynching of a black man, woman or child every three days for 90 years. Thousands and thousands of African American lives.

Sean Carter [01:19:05] You know, that white people would get dressed in their Sunday best to go to the lynching, right? We have sent pictures and postcards from friends. Billie Holiday had a song where she talked about the strange fruit that Southern trees bear. All right? Means the hanging black bodies.

Sean Carter [01:19:24] How many of those lynchings have happened from Black Lives Matter? How many white people have found been found hanging from trees? Just the last two years. Imagine in round numbers, approximately. There's no conflation between those two entities at all. One has been a terrorist group that's responsible for thousands of deaths. The other has led some marches. And a couple times there was some litter, right?

John Dehlin [01:19:52] What can a white Mormon or post Mormon do with the violence against black youth and adults? With the Systemic poverty, the systemic inequities of education, of safety, of health care, etc. Sometimes you can just feel guilty and ashamed at your white heritage, but that doesn't help anybody, right?

Sean Carter [01:20:21] And a friend of mine said this. Great. He said, you know, there's a white guy, and he's my sort of white whisperer. Whenever I'm confused about what the heck is wrong with you white people, I will send him a text, literally, or a message that says, what's wrong with you white people? I'll ask him, and they'll give me an explanation of what he thinks is going on. And he explained to me that basically he understood why most even progressive liberal white folks don't want to deal so much with the issue of race. He said, it's like your attic.

Sean Carter [01:20:49] You say, I'm gonna clean out the attic on Saturday. And you get up early and you go in and you open the door and you see all that mess, and you realize the hassle it's gonna be to move all that stuff out of the way to get the cleaning and then, by the way, to call the.

Sean Carter [01:21:03] The dumpster people to come and pick that stuff up. You need to go to the Salvation army and drop these things off and take it to, you know, Deseret Industry, and you say, you know what, next Saturday? And you close it. And as long as it's not. If it's, you know, you wouldn't leave that mess in your living room. But that's an attic. No one sees the attic. And so if you can just sort of push these things away. So if you don't live in a community that has African American children that are in danger of being shot, then you're not really thinking about it so much.

Sean Carter [01:21:30] I get that. Here's. I think the thing you can do, I guess, in two respects, is to, you know, use your privilege to stand up for others. One of the things I try to do is whenever I see a traffic stop, if I'm, you know, if I'm on foot, for instance, I will go and record the stop.

Sean Carter [01:21:50] And it's harder as an African American, but I will, you know, I will definitely, you know, use my lawyer card in a minute and try to say, hey, you know, let's just make sure that you understand I'm watching here.

Sean Carter [01:22:01] I am going to speak up about these things. The only thing is, more importantly maybe, is to check each other on this matter. There's a video that went viral last week, hilarious video in my mind, because I'm wrong. Pray for me. But it involves two white women and they're in a, I think a whole apartment complex somewhere and we're in the middle of it. But one white woman apparently had said something racist to someone about blacks and the other white woman had confronted her about it. And so the first racist woman starts to pick a fight with the non racist woman and really, really wasn't that bright because the non racist woman knew how to fight.

Sean Carter [01:22:41] And so they had a big fight and the forces of good won. And I'm not suggesting that white women go out and beat up other white women, at least not all the time. But what I am suggesting is that, you know, when you hear things, you know, that you subtly and very nicely, you know, put your sisters in check and brothers, you hear something inappropriate and you say, hey, you know what, maybe let's think of it this way and to not just sort of shy away from it, to not just let it go, say, well, I don't want to cause any contention here. And of course at Mormons we don't want to cause any contention.

Sean Carter [01:23:15] But you have to call contention. It doesn't mean by the way you yell, hey, you racist, you know, hashtag racist. But just explain, you know, what you see wrong with it. Let's talk about this. Is there another way to look at it? And that conversation works, only that's only the work you can do because it's not going to come well for me, right? I can't go talk to, you know, the upset, ranting woman. But once a week you'll see an email from some white woman in Target, a Trader Joe's who's yelling at some immigrant, I can't. Do you intercede in that situation? It's not gonna go well if I do.

Sean Carter [01:23:49] So someone, you know, a white person who wants to help does that. And I would be willing to bet that that happens more often than you imagine. Like at Thanksgiving, the Black Lives Matter. When one of your family members starts explaining how Black Lives Matter is a terrorist group, you might want to correct them and explain the difference between them and the Klan, you know, or you know, why we called Black Lives Matter, whatever it is.

Allyship, Privilege, and Racial Dialogue

John Dehlin [01:24:14] Let me ask you this. There have been times where, let's just say the people of color or their allies have, within the Mormon conversation, have been really critical or frustrated or, you know, angry at things that are said or things that have been done. And I've always noticed that you're a little bit on a different frequency than maybe a good chunk of some of those commentators. You kind of have a Slightly different perspective on discourse and on how we talk about these issues. Do you have any way to summarize how maybe you view this discussions around race within Mormonism, maybe a little bit different?

Sean Carter [01:25:09] Well, absolutely. And here's what I think. I think sometimes as people of color, we can be a little less graceful than we should with white allies. Now, part of that is just a reaction to being hurt. And I find myself being this way sometimes, too, is that sometimes I'm not as graceful as I should be because it's hard for me to have to argue about, say, the safety of my child. If I have to try to convince you that a young Black boy at 12 shouldn't have a gun pulled on him by the police, I'm gonna get angry about that because we're talking about a life or death issue to me.

Sean Carter [01:25:45] But sometimes it's not life or death. And I see sometimes where there's a tendency for people to really be a little less graceful than they should. I try to look at it this way, which is that I expect white people to mess up in trying to interact, you know, in a multicultural community, just like I often messed up when I was trying to enter into white society. So to give you a great example, I was a young lawyer.

Sean Carter [01:26:13] I remember going to Boston, and I remember I've been raised with white people, you know, been with white people a long time. Went to law school, right? I was in a law firm. And a partner calls me in and he says to me, hey, have you gotten XYZs that done? I said, no, no, I hadn't done. I'm working on a lot of things. And he says, okay, I need it sooner rather than later.

Sean Carter [01:26:33] Now. Sooner rather than later. That means everybody. Other than cancer, what don't you want? Sooner rather than later? That doesn't mean anything to me. I go back to my office. I'm doing whatever I'm doing. Another young man comes in and says to me, hey, did you get the thing done for Mr. So and so? And I said, no. He said he wanted sooner rather than later. And he kind of said to me, no, Sean, sooner rather than later is his polite way of saying, right goddamn now.

John Dehlin [01:26:57] Okay, all right.

Sean Carter [01:26:59] He's a Boston, you know, very sophisticated guy. He's not going to order you like that. But when he says sooner rather than later, he is, but he wants it right now. I misunderstood. I didn't understand the coding, the language. What that guy did not do was put a big Facebook post on, okay? Look at the kind of idiot Sean is in this firm, hashtag idiot, hashtag dummy, hashtag. You know, they didn't call me out, right? They simply nicely pointed out to me in private I was misunderstanding. And by the way, now here's what helped though. I also didn't get defensive. And he just said, right goddamn now, if he said the right thing, I would do it.

Sean Carter [01:27:36] But if he didn't say the right thing, I listened and I acted accordingly. So it's part, you know, there's blame on both ends, which is that one, you know, we need to do less calling out, call in. You know, if you friend post something and you. It's a friend of yours, rather than, you know, sharing it and shaming the person, you may want to send them an email, a message saying, you know, this is inappropriate for this reason, et cetera, et cetera. Nine times out of 10, the person will be decent, hopefully, and say, listen and say, okay, you're right, my bad, and take it down and be done with it.

Sean Carter [01:28:08] And so, you know, but like I said, I think what really hurts is that, you know, so you'll get an initial reaction, probably a little harsh, and then you'll get the other person, the ally, doubling down on stupid, stupid.

Sean Carter [01:28:22] Because sometimes they'll say, I didn't mean to offend you. Now here's the thing is, I agree, but your intentions do not, do not obviate the original offense. If I accidentally step on your foot in the mall and then, and then I say, hey, you hurt me. My. The actual reaction shouldn't be, hey, I didn't mean to. I was, you know, I was actually trying to help you. You, you should be appreciative that I stepped on your foot, right?

John Dehlin [01:28:48] Say you're sorry.

Sean Carter [01:28:49] Sorry, I'm sorry. I own it. My bad. I look where I was going. I won't happen again. Right? And if we, I think both of us, one of us be, you know, that's people of color and agree people, you know, be a little more graceful and, and do less calling out and then, you know, others. And I found, you know, I remember there was a podcast guy, I'm not gonna name who he is, but who posted something once and, and then he went away for the day and the conversation got a little crazy on his thread.

John Dehlin [01:29:14] Some.

Sean Carter [01:29:15] A little private message, the conversation gonna go crazy on your thread. And then that guy just took the thread down. That was it. It didn't require calling out. It didn't require, you know, and the other thing I want to explain and I wanna, I got an opportunity because it's mostly allies and white folks. I want to say on behalf of all black people, I've been deputized to speak on behalf of all of us. 50, remember, you're saying 50 is elder as black. I'm seven years past the actuarial take for a black man. We don't live that long. I'm old as a black man, so I have this privilege.

Sean Carter [01:29:46] And the privilege is this is I'm gonna speak on behalf of all of us and tell you right now there is no prize for most woke whitey. I promise you, at the end of this, there will be no prizes for the white person who was the best ally and who beat the other allies. Because what I often see a lot is on ally violence, where one ally challenges another ally for not being woken up and being this, that, and the other. And I'm gonna tell you, you know, none of you are getting a prize for this. All right? Don't compete amongst yourselves to be most woke.

Sean Carter [01:30:18] It doesn't matter. We're all in this together. And so if you see something that another ally is doing, for heaven's sake, understand, you didn't understand this. That was appropriate, inappropriate two years ago either. So contact them privately. Work it out. Why would you shame someone who did something that you would have done two years ago had you not done. Known better, you know better, you do better, so, you know, be a little more kind with each other. I promise you. No prizes, whitey. None.

John Dehlin [01:30:44] Got it. All right, Sean, so this has been an amazing, fun, humorous, hysterical, enlightening, and occasionally deeply disturbing, but touching interview, if you. So what's up for you now? Are you following Mormonism? Are you interested in it still? Are you kind of done with it? What's the future for you as it relates to the church or your life? And then what would you want to leave with people as sort of some final closing thoughts?

Life After Mormonism and Closing Reflections

Sean Carter [01:31:16] Fair enough. You know, my journey with Mormonism is largely over. And I, you know, always I kind of thought that this was a stop on the way, that I never really thought of myself as, you know, I remember, for instance, as soon as I joined the church, you know, thinking, okay, next, I'm probably going Amish. And so I'm still waiting for them return a text. But, but. But I, you know, never really thought. And so I'm not thinking, like, Mormon stories and Matt and all the, you know, the podcast. I have to confess that I'm not as active in listening as I used to be.

Sean Carter [01:31:50] I listened to this one a hundred times, but I don't Tend to be, as I'm certainly not as active, outraged. There was a time in which every week I'm waiting for the latest church outrage, right? And I want to hear about it. General Conference, you know, roundup. I think this is the first year I didn't watch General Conference or, you know, even I can't tell you what happened at General Conference. First time, the last General Conference. So I'm kind of moving past that. I'm not mad, by the way, at the members, at the leadership.

Sean Carter [01:32:17] That's the other thing about the leadership, by the way. We do understand that these are old men, right? The expectation, I think, that we have is amazing. My grandfather lived to be almost 80, which, remember, for black, is really, really old.

Sean Carter [01:32:34] At the end of his life, we didn't really take everything he said so seriously. We began to understand that Pawpaw was not exactly the voice of reason he had been at an earlier age. And certainly, for instance, when my grandfather got very near the end, he began to think he was a professional boxer. And if you walked up to him, he would sort of shuffle to you and say, here I am, Shelby boy, 150 pounds of floating joy. I guess he used to box in the military. He hadn't been £150 for a long time. We did not take that seriously. We did not challenge him to a fight.

Sean Carter [01:33:08] We did not book other fights for him. We just simply said, oh, that's Pawpaw. And we moved on. So part of what will not allow me to be frustrated by the church and their edicts is simply that I'm a grown ass man and these are old men who might say crazy things from time to time. I expect that I move on.

Sean Carter [01:33:25] As far as you know, what's next for me is I still will tell jokes to lawyers, but more of what I'm doing is trying to be a voice in this space with regard to diversity and inclusion. I'm starting a new blog next week, teaching people how to be exceptional racist. And my goal is to teach people, all of us, myself included, to be the exceptional racist.

John Dehlin [01:33:54] And what I mean by that, exactly

Sean Carter [01:33:56] what I mean by exceptional racist is not the superb racist, but the racist who makes exceptions. So many exceptions, in fact, that they blow out the rule. In school, we all learned I before E except after C, right? So we have a spelling rule, and that's to help us how to spell words. Looked it up recently. There are 46 words in the English language that conform to that rule of I before E except after C. The 923 words that are exceptions to that. Words like way and science and deity and conceit. I'm sorry, not conceit. And about 100 words, 23 words that don't conform to that rule.

John Dehlin [01:34:35] Wow.

Sean Carter [01:34:35] If you spell according to that rule, you are going to look very stupid. None of us spell a quartet rule. We memorize the words, every word is a different word, and therefore we apply specific case to it. Same thing with our prejudices and with regard to both race, gender, orientation.

Sean Carter [01:34:54] Find exceptions to your rules. All right, there are 923 exceptions for every one of these rules that you have that you built. But the challenge is to exclude, admit the rule, right? To be able to admit to yourself that you have those biases. And I'm saying necessarily admit them publicly. All right? But admit them to yourself. Perfect example. I had to work for a few years ago. I realized how sexist I was.

Sean Carter [01:35:19] And it's not something I'm proud of. I'm certainly not running around, you know, putting it on my Facebook page. But I've had to literally train myself. And here's one. By exceptions to the rule, one of the, one of these, the untruths I learned one of the prejudices I had was that women tell stories particularly badly.

Sean Carter [01:35:42] And that rule, by the way, found a lot of confirmation at sacrament meeting. All right, because twice a week, sorry, once a week you have some husband, wife, pair get up and the wife tells some disjointed, horrible story because, by the way, she's not a professional speaker. And so that's what happens. And I remember having that perception. And then I decided to find some exceptions to it. So I went on YouTube and found Ted Talks and found, you know what, there are a lot of women out there who can really, really speak. Well, they're not giving free speeches at LDS sacrament meetings, but there are some incredible speakers out there also.

Sean Carter [01:36:25] I started counting the men and found out, guess what? Most Mormon men tell stories just as badly. It's, you know, you've done a whole thing on confirmation bias. If you don't challenge your biases, then that you always find confirming information. But the hard part is coming to grips and saying what your bias is and being able to admit it to yourself. I, you know, I think of women in this way. I think of, you know, Latinos in this way. And then to work on, you know, finding examples. Because once you find examples, it solves that in a minute, right? And one of the greatest things me was being on the Ordain women board, being in a room with eight women smarter than you, that will do a lot for your ideas of male supremacy.

Sean Carter [01:37:11] Right. But it doesn't happen unless you kind of seek it out. And so. And so I'm gonna get this started. But if you follow me, you know, follow or friend me on Facebook is where I post all this stuff. Just like John at Sean Carter, I think Sexy Black man will probably get you there too. Just Google that, and that'll get you to me and then. But I'm gonna speak a lot more about that issue, and that's gonna be sort of my new. My new thing going forward.

John Dehlin [01:37:37] All right, and if you wanted to leave us with what you believe in 2017, what's your. What's your testimony of life, of some closing thoughts to inspire, motivate, or make us laugh?

Sean Carter [01:37:53] Oh, that. That's. You know what? Let me. Let me leave something that I think is maybe. Maybe inspirational. You know, I had this weird experience with Mormonism. Never was a true, true believer in the truth claims, but I was a true believer in the community.

Sean Carter [01:38:11] And I would encourage some of you to say, don't give up on the community yet. Your community is horribly flawed. But I don't know if you've been to America recently. The rest of us are flawed too. And I imagine that they're flawed in Australia and Japan and everywhere else, too. And I think sometimes we're so quick to run away from our community because we see something that we don't like. But you're gonna find out that, you know, the problem with the next group you join is they took you.

Sean Carter [01:38:40] And so the black church I'm in now is not a perfect church because they let me show up now. That's the place I need to be because we're more socially active, and it's my people I'm returning home. But I'm gonna encourage you to the extent you can, to return home. And it doesn't mean that you go to sacrament meeting every week, but that you can go to, you know, the baptism reception and just be with the people.

Sean Carter [01:39:04] And you don't have to agree with everything that they agree with, but to really, you know, to be able to have more grace for them. Plus, it allows you to have these opportunities to correct them. And if you need to. To punch a white woman, I'm recommending it. But if you have to, like in that video I was telling you about, you might have to punch one if you're a woman.

John Dehlin [01:39:24] I cannot condone that.

Sean Carter [01:39:26] No. All right, what about open hand slap?

John Dehlin [01:39:29] Nope.

Sean Carter [01:39:30] All right, fair enough. Fair enough. And I'm not going to need. I'm a lawyer. I'm also the court. I'm telling you, don't assault anyone. If you do, make sure you send me the video so I can share it.

John Dehlin [01:39:40] All right? Shawn Carter. Shawn Carter, it's been so great to have you on Mormon stories. I've wanted to do this for a long time, and this is a great time to do it. It's been wonderful.

Sean Carter [01:39:51] No, thank you so much. This has been, you know, I've spent hours and hours listening. I now have my own Mormon story. I really feel like I've come full circle. I could die today. Really?

John Dehlin [01:40:06] You started your Mormon experience listening to Mormon stories, and now you're. You're moving on from Mormonism. It's perfect being interviewed for Mormon stories.

Sean Carter [01:40:14] Hey, thanks so much, John. I appreciate it.

John Dehlin [01:40:15] All right, Shawn, you're awesome. Please reach out anytime.

Sean Carter [01:40:19] Talk to you.

John Dehlin [01:40:19] Thanks for helping us do better.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.