Michael Hickenbotham
Do members of the LDS church recognize 2nd Nephi 5:21-23 as doctrine, or have the leaders changed policy about that because of unpopularity?

Skin of blackness is a Hebrew idiom meaning spiritual darkness, spiritual blindness, wickedness, or gloomy and not a physical blackness of skin. The footnote for Joel 2:6, Jeremiah 8:21, and Nahum 2:10 in the King James Bible recognizes blackness is an idiom which it equates to “gloomy”. Jeremiah 14:2 equates black with “dejected”. But it’s more than that when “skin of blackness” is used.

2 Nephi 5:21 reads as follows: "And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them."

The setting for this verse is that this episode takes place immediately after the death of Lehi, and the divisions and strife between Lehi's sons have become too volatile for the two sides of the family to remain living together, so Nephi takes those who will follow him and flees into the wilderness and they eventually come to be called the Nephites. Those who remain behind decide to follow Laman and are referred to thereafter in the Book of Mormon as the Lamanites. The additional context that is important to understanding this verse is that in both Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, Nephi has been using the words "cursing," "cursed," or "curse" in opposition to "blessing," "blessed," or "bless" and he always ties these differences to an individual's agency.

The reason this is important is that 2 Nephi 5:21 is at least one verse that has been used by critics of the Church to try to portray the Book of Mormon as a racist text, because, so the critics say, the Book of Mormon says that the Lamanites were "cursed" with "a skin of blackness." The Book of Mormon teaches us about the way God thinks and operates toward his children, and that when the Book of Mormon refers to "white" or "black" (or even in this case using the words "skin of blackness"), it likely has nothing to do with pigmentation and everything to do with the metaphorical distinction between light and dark, good and evil, or what we would say today about someone having a "bright" countenance vs. having a "dark" countenance.

For example, shortly after the events of 2 Nephi 5, the Nephites meet and Jacob (Nephi's younger brother) teaches about the atonement of Christ for several chapters (through 2 Nephi chapter 10), and then Nephi teaches the people from the words of Isaiah (in chapters 12-24). When he finishes teaching them out of the words of Isaiah, he adds his own teachings, and in 2 Nephi 26:33, he closes with this verse: "For none of these iniquities come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the children of men; and he doeth nothing save it be plain unto the children of men; and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile." Thus, if Nephi truly were expressing a racist sentiment earlier in Chapter 5, it would be very inconsistent of him to later contradict that statement by saying that God denies none that come unto him and specifically refer to both black and white (presumably referring to skin color, if we posit that Nephi made his earlier distinction along racial lines) but then saying that "all are alike unto God."

The other important point is that the PROPER context for the language of 2 Nephi 5:21 is actually found in verse 20 and the verses from the previous chapter that that talk about "blessings" and "cursings." It is in verse 20 that Nephi describes EXACTLY what the cursing is that comes upon the Lamanites: "Wherefore, the word of the Lord was fulfilled which he spake unto me, saying that: Inasmuch as they will not hearken unto thy words they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And behold, they were cut off from his presence." Now, keeping in mind that the Book of Mormon was originally written without verses and chapters (or at least there were far fewer divisions in the text compared to today), if we keep reading, we get the first part of verse 21: "And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity." Thus the cursing that Nephi refers to here is that of being cut off from the Lord, not of having their skin pigmentation changed. And this is consistent with what is taught all through the Book of Mormon: we are ALL free to choose to follow the Savior, in which case He promises to bless us, OR ELSE to reject the Savior and follow or heed the temptations of the Adversary, in which case we voluntarily cut ourselves off from the blessings of the Lord, or as the scriptures refer to it, bring upon ourselves a cursing rather than a blessing.

A black Latter-day Saint named Marvin Perkins gave an excellent FAIR Conference talk entitled “Blacks in the Scriptures” on August 7, 2014 in which he explains this issue. It's at:

Blacks in the Scriptures - FAIR

Perkins gives some compelling examples of how consistently "black" and "white" are used metaphorically throughout the Bible as well as the Book of Mormon as a proxy for good and evil rather than skin pigmentation, and then overlaid that with a discussion of sociological and biological explanations of racial diversity and distribution of pigmentation by geographic latitude. Think about the American Indians. Are they black? No they aren’t. If you look at the Old Testament, the language they use is very similar. Perkins pointed out that in Job 30:30, Joel 2:6, and Lamentations 5:10, “black skin” is a figurative term, meaning wickedness or being out of synch with the righteousness of God. 2 Nephi 30:6 emphasizes this as figurative:

    …their scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes; and many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a pure and a delightsome people.

Perkins notes that if you follow footnote “b” to the bottom of the page for 2 Nephi 30:6, it indicates:

b scales – TG [Topical Guide] Darkness, Spiritual, TG Spiritual Blindness

“And then shall they rejoice; for they shall know that it is a blessing unto them from the hand of God; and their scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes; and many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a pure and a delightsome people.” Follow your new footnote on the word “scales” and it tells you clearly that they are talking about “Darkness, Spiritual,” “Spiritual Blindness.”

So the Lamanites never had a darker skin than the Nephites. They were always talking about a spiritual darkness. Perkins goes on to provide more scriptural support for this in his presentation. I highly recommend those who are concerned read the whole presentation. Again, it's at:
Blacks in the Scriptures - FAIR
[Download pdf of slides.] Good morning everybody. How are you? (audience: yeah.) Try that again! Good morning, everybody. How are you? (audience: Great!) Thank you very much. I would like to thank Kerry for that incredible presentation. I really appreciated that and I really appreciated you staying within the time and everything. And since we’re […]
http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fair-conferences/2014-fairmormon-conference/blacks-scriptures
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