Sure sounds like it.

Educate them in our ways, groom them to buy and sell our products. Get them converted. Get them married. Life time indenture?

Yet the church is presenting it as philanthropy.

Nothing but a sneaky way to get converts.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/03/2023 11:56AM by unconventional.

It's certainly colonialism. Ask Gina Colvin how the Maori perceive the church. And Mormons are no more understanding or helpful than any other colonial powers. Some religions, such as the Seventh Day Adventists, do very admirable work. They may also be perceived as colonial, but they leave behind good stuff.

We used to hear about the miracles among the Maoris; all of the “great” things that Matthew Cowley did.

Developed nations pretend they're all luvvy-dubby about Third World countries and to prove it, they import a lot of people from them.

The only trouble is that this process is hindering development in some of these countries. Every time a doctor, nurse, architect, engineer etc leaves a poor country, there is one less there... it takes years to train these people and they are needed in poor countries.

It is also a bad thing if a lot of young people leave a country. Whether they are trained or not. Places like Lithuania and Iraq are suffering because of this.

The LDS Pathway program encourages such a braindrain. It massages the egos of westerners and causes economic chaos in the host countries.

And they call that philanthropy.

Disgusting.

Does somebody want to explain what the "Pathway" program is?

Low cost, presumably mostly online education supplied by the church. I know it’s big in Africa, and that they have the graduations at the stake centers (probably also some classes). I need to get more details, but essentially, it’s educating young people in the Global South in Western ways.

From the Pathway website: It includes religion classes right from the get-go. And students have cohort gatherings every week either online or (preferably) at the local ward or stake center.

Ok. Does it actually help people or is it just another hollow program?

I think it might be useful as an education, but it does involve a steady dose of the religion component. I'm not sure how affordable it is for students from third world countries.

I'm also not sure how well an American education translates to other countries. For instance, a friend of mine helped a young student from India to get a high school diploma from a U.S. school. But from what she tells me, an American high school diploma is not viewed well by the Indian university in his area, and he would have to take additional classes for a chance of admission.

That doesn’t surprise me about how it’s viewed.

The bigger point here though is colonialism and disruption of society.

The only colonialism or colonization that goes on now is seniors looking for a cheap warm safe place to live.

I'm not sure there is such a thing as an American education, unless we count things like saluting bits of cloth and telling trailer dwellers their skin color privileges them.

Saying that colored people are trailer trash is okay on RfM?

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Saying that colored people are trailer trash is
> okay on RfM?

Misquoting people is okay on RFM? You'd know all about that since you do it all the time.

If you have to distort and lie to win an argument you don't have one.

I'm referring to types who tell poor people that if they have a light skin color that they have "white privilege".

The same morons who say homeless people are "privileged" if they have light skin and/or a penis.

At no point did I say "colored people" or "trash". Those are YOUR words.

My sarcasm obviously hit too close to home for you. You sneer at people who didn't inherit their wealth yet pose as left wing.

Lot's Wife -- I saw your response to the post that disappeared. This is what I wanted to say:

The promotion of literacy, especially among the disadvantaged, is my life's work. As you know, literacy brings hope and opportunity. You can't have literacy without exposure to a wide variety of texts, especially texts that broaden one's world, challenge one's thinking and the status quo. Some people are very upset by that notion, aren't they?

Yeah, and the racist post to which I objected is still up. Voche del Pueblo says that people with "colored skin" are "trailer dwellers."

Ironic, that, given that my response was nowhere near as egregious as his comment. Upshot? It's impermissible to call a racist snob a name.

But yes, you are right. There are many reasons Voche is an ignorant rube.

Uh, you know you can't call people names. No big shocker there. Right there in the guidelines and always has been since your first day on the board. Maybe try reporting and letting the mods deal with it as they see fit.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yeah, and the racist post to which I objected is
> still up. Voche del Pueblo says that people with
> "colored skin" are "trailer dwellers."

No I don't.

The "trailer dweller" reference is to poor people who can't afford to live in a house/apartment. The skin color reference is to poor people who happen to have LIGHT skin color and who some well educationalists now claim have "white privilege".... because they don't want to admit real privilege comes out of things like going to a private school, inheriting money or being accepted to an elite college/Rhodes Scholarship etc.

Anyone who can think a homeless man of Euro heritage is somehow living a more privileged life than Oprah Winfrey has an upside down view of society.

I didn't use the phrase "colored people" or "trash" as you claim. That is dishonest.

>Anyone who can think a homeless man of Euro heritage is somehow living a more privileged life than Oprah Winfrey has an upside down view of society.

Extremes don't make the point you want to make. Get back to us when a majority of black women are making the laws about men's reproductive health.

Let me add that Lot’s Wife did in fact misinterpret Voche del Pueblo’s post.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/04/2023 08:34PM by unconventional.

The “correct” interpretation isn’t exactly a prize winner either.

The Mormon side of my family was poor Southern redneck farmers when I was a child. Several of them farmed with mules and had outhouses and a pump on the back porch as a water supply. I, as a child, thought all of that was the coolest thing ever.

Their attitude, usually stated as a big joke, was basically “we may be poor, but at least we aren’t Black”. I changed the wording a bit. What was accepted practice in 1952 does’t fly now.

I suppose that is a racist statement, but it is also true. It is easier to be poor and white than poor and black.

Yeah, Oprah did well. In fact, approximately 60% of Blacks live in the suburbs. They’re doing ok. The redneck relatives I referred to were one or two generations before me, a few of them born in 1890, which was only 35 years after the Civil War. So maybe we should cut them a little slack. They were creatures of their times, and they grew up right in the heart of the Jim Crow era.

But what they said was extremely true in the 1950s. It was better to be poor and white than poor and Black. The difference is not as stark now, but it is still somewhat true. And that is white privilege in a nutshell. You are more likely to get the benefit of the doubt.

The two generations of my Mormon relatives younger than me don’t seem to be at all racist. They don’t seem to be at all Southern, for that matter. No accent. They sound like they grew up in Cleveland. All the ones I know are college grads. The fact that I met them because they were out here attending BYU probably has a lot to do with that. The kids whose gg-grandparents farmed with a mule are decidedly middle class, in some cases upper middle.

I suspect being white in the Jim Crow south helped.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/04/2023 10:45PM by Brother Of Jerry.

I believe this thinking was also part of the politics known as the "Southern Strategy." Giving a poor white man something to look down upon - i.e. poor blacks - was a way to recruit poor whites, who had traditionally voted as Democrats to the Republican Party.

Yes, I did indeed misunderstand the post and I apologize to the board for doing so.

I also agree with BOJ/fishfrei on the fact that for most people being white DOES bring privileges relative to other ethnic groups in the US and I think the term "trailer dwellers" is basically the same thing as "trailer trash" or, in this context, "white trash." I find that symbolism offensive.

Voche's argument is that American education erroneously teaches poor whites that they should feel guilty for being white. That is neither the point nor the effect of American education and it is absurd to say it is. Voche is making his usual case that the world is out to harm white people. I find that consistent with the right-wing school of victimization that he so proudly and repeatedly represents.

>> Voche's argument is that American education erroneously teaches poor whites that they should feel guilty for being white.

Speaking as a teacher, one of the main goals of education is to get a diverse group of students to respect each other as human beings and to be able to work and play together. This concept is the foundation of a diverse society, the foundation of America as a country. Teaching any one group to feel bad about themselves would defeat that primary objective. It's not what our K-12 schools do. I'm at a loss as to where this idea came from.

It came from the Snowflake Cult of the white nationalist right, of course, the victims of everything that forces them to treat other people as equals.

That is what Voche always preaches and it is why I misread his socioeconomic disdain as racial disdain.

One thing I love about exmos is that they often have the capacity to apologize when they make mistakes.

That is not at all a Mormon thing, and is a sign that someone has progressed.

I’m in that process myself.

I don't apologize enough.

There are only so many hours in a day!!

Just do what you can . . .

As in all things, Jesus, I am your humble disciple.

That’s a good way to describe it. The church needs a successful pet project somewhere to inspire the rich members in the US who pay most the tithing.

Most these Africans will take advantage of what is offered temporally and then dump the church later. Hell. How many BYU students play the game to get a discount on education and dump the church after they get the diploma?