Welcome and Introducing the Black Menaces

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host for today, John De Lynn. It is February 10, 2023, and I am so excited to have in studio someone and a member of a team that I've been so eager and interested to interview for at least over a year.

John Dehlin [00:00:24] Today we have in studio Nate Bird, who is one of the members of the Black Menaces, or the. The group of black students at Brigham Young University who over the past year or so, kind of took not just kind of the Mormon TikTok by storm, but. But whose videos went viral as they performed a radical act on TikTok of as. As black BYU students interviewing other BYU students about black history, about civil rights, about social justice, and all sorts of really important, interesting things. And their stories and their work has reached national, even international kind of news levels. And most importantly, it's just been really inspiring for so many of us. So, Nate Bird, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Nathan Byrd [00:01:21] Thanks, John. Happy to be on here with you.

John Dehlin [00:01:23] Yeah. So excited to get in to your story. And I'm so excited and honored to have back with us as my co host for today, Chanel Achenbach. Hey, Chanel.

Chanel Achenbach [00:01:35] Hey, how you doing?

John Dehlin [00:01:36] People loved your story and the times you've been on Mormon stories and they've said more Chanel. So today we get to. We get to have more Chanel.

Chanel Achenbach [00:01:46] Sounds like fun.

John Dehlin [00:01:47] How are you feeling about interviewing Nate?

Chanel Achenbach [00:01:51] It's really cool because I followed them on Tick Tock and I just. When I was able to get to meet him, I just thought it was crazy. Just crazy. Just so cool.

John Dehlin [00:01:59] So, yeah. Well, thanks for making this happen, Chanel. This wouldn't happen without you. And I'll give a shout out to my friends friend Spencer Nugent, who was going to be on today's episode. He's been handing me really good candidates, so. Love you, Spencer. Thanks for your support. And thanks. Thanks again, Chanel.

Chanel Achenbach [00:02:15] Of course.

John Dehlin [00:02:15] Yeah. All right. So, Nate, how would you describe the Black Menaces before we actually dive into your story? Because I'm not sure I did it justice.

Nathan Byrd [00:02:27] You did a pretty good job, but really, the Black Menaces were a coalition of five students at BYU who basically we just started off with us just having fun and wanting to spread awareness about the experience of black students at a predominantly white university, at a private university religious institution. And so, you know, it started off with that, and then as more people started paying attention to what we were saying and what we were sharing, then it spread to being able to empower all marginalized communities and just kind of make a national push for the betterment of predominantly white institutions of learning. Because there really hasn't been much of a push.

Nathan Byrd [00:03:03] And what we're finding is that the experience of black students at colleges across the country is very difficult. And the only thing that makes it better is having a black community there and to be supported by. That's kind of what we found as we've talked to students at different universities. And so our goal is really just to empower and to spread awareness.

John Dehlin [00:03:24] Yeah, beautiful. And I guess I should mention that I've seen other universities having almost their own Black Menaces chapters. Is that right?

Nathan Byrd [00:03:33] Yeah, that's something that we've started doing. So we have what we call Black Menace chapters, or just menace chapters, where students at other universities can interview the students there and. And get responses from them, and then we share them to our Tik Tok. So we've got chapters at Tulane, Duke, University of Northern Carolina. Hopefully get one started at the University of Michigan soon and then where else? Like a few other places as well. So.

John Dehlin [00:03:53] Beautiful. And. And I want to say at the outset, you have a website and a podcast. You sell merch on your website. I think I've worn one of your shirts a couple times on Mormon Stories Podcast. And you have a. You have your own podcast. Tell me if I'm right. It's theblackmenaces.org Is that right?

Nathan Byrd [00:04:12] So, yeah, that's the name of the website. Theblackmenaces.org and yeah, we do have, like a little merch shop on there. We will be bringing back the OG T shirt. We have some new merch coming out. We've kind of done like a whole branding, and so we have some new things with that brand. But we also are going to be selling the OG because we know a lot of people love that shirt. So we've got that on the website, theblackmenesis.org and then we also have the Black Menaces podcast that Rachel and I run. And we just, you know, we interview different people about their experiences. We talk about some of the racism that they've experienced at byu, at other universities, in the workplace.

Nathan Byrd [00:04:40] Just recently, we interviewed someone who's a professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, and they talked about their experience being someone who is a black woman who identifies as queer and is also Jewish. And so, you know, she had a lot of really interesting things to say about her story. So, yeah, we just love interviewing people from different backgrounds.

John Dehlin [00:04:56] I love it.

Nathan Byrd [00:04:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:58] All right, so without any further ado, like we do on Mormon stories, we like to hear your full story. And again, Chanel, please jump in at any time with any question you have. So, Nate, where does your Mormon story begin at the outset? I'm dying to know if you're a born in the covenant, multi generational Mormon or if your Mormon story is different.

Multi-Generational Mormon Family Background

Nathan Byrd [00:05:20] Yeah, so I was born in the Covenant. My parents, they're from the south, both from Tennessee. They met at Tennessee State University, which is an hbcu, historically black college university down there. Yeah, so they met there. They were both, you know, Southern Baptist. My mom grew up Southern Baptist. And my dad, he went to church, but, like, wasn't as religious.

Nathan Byrd [00:05:40] But they met there. They ended up getting married. My dad joined the Navy, moved to Hawaii, and while he was in Hawaii, he met some missionaries and ended up joining the church, getting baptized. And then my mom came out a few months later when she was finished graduating, and she was very worried because she didn't know what to expect because she never heard much about Mormons except that Mormon church doesn't like black people. Right.

Nathan Byrd [00:06:03] And so when she moved out there, it took her a little bit longer, but after about six months, she also got baptized, joined the church, and then I was born about a year later. So I grew up as a member of the church, being taught everything from a very young age. And. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:21] And I don't want to make any assumptions. So are both your parents black? Are they. Is it a mixed. Mixed, you know, multiracial kind of biracial marriage?

Nathan Byrd [00:06:31] Yes, both my parents are black.

John Dehlin [00:06:32] Okay. And. And around what year would they have joined the church? If you even, I guess you would know your birth, your. Your year. So the year before that would be.

Nathan Byrd [00:06:40] Yeah, so they joined in 1995.

John Dehlin [00:06:42] 95. Okay, perfect.

Nathan Byrd [00:06:43] I was born in 96.

John Dehlin [00:06:44] 96. So I'm just trying to get my timeline in. So, okay, so around 95, they're. They're in Hawaii.

Nathan Byrd [00:06:53] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:06:53] Right. When they join. Okay.

Nathan Byrd [00:06:55] Actually, I want to make a clarification.

John Dehlin [00:06:56] Yeah.

Nathan Byrd [00:06:56] So I wasn't born in the Covenant. I think I was a few months old when they were sealed. So.

John Dehlin [00:07:01] Okay.

Nathan Byrd [00:07:01] I was like three months older than

John Dehlin [00:07:02] that because they would have had to wait a year. They would have had to wait a year after their marriage probably to be able to go into the temple to then.

Nathan Byrd [00:07:11] So a year from when my mom got baptized is when they were sealed, and that was a few months after I was born.

John Dehlin [00:07:15] Okay, so do you. Have you talked to them about. And you've kind of just alluded to this. But obviously for those who have never been Mormon, half our audience had never been Mormon. The Mormon Church excluded black people, people of African descent, or who they assumed were of African descent or had worries about them being of African descent. They were excluded from full fellowship, full participation in the church prior to 1978. So from the time of Brigham Young in the 19, in the 1840s or 50s, all the way till 1978.

John Dehlin [00:07:53] I don't want to use offensive language, but you could say that, that people of African descent in the Mormon church were kind of second class citizens. Men couldn't hold the priesthood and men and women couldn't attend, you know, couldn't enter the temples like the white members could. So with that background, have you talked to your parents about how much of that they knew before they got baptized? And if they knew that, how they overcame that to decide that they were okay baptizing, getting baptized into a church with that history?

Nathan Byrd [00:08:27] Yeah, so I actually, that's never a conversation that I had with my parents. I don't know. The dynamic was kind of interesting growing up. It seemed like a lot of things that were, that might have been difficult for us, they tried to kind of protect us from. And so I don't ever actually remember having a conversation about the priesthood band.

Nathan Byrd [00:08:47] If we did, it wasn't one that was memorable. That like stuck with me. And so the first time that I really understood what it was because I had heard about it. I remember my seminary teacher, you know, when we did the Doctrine and Covenants, he very briefly, like in, you know, 10 minutes of a lesson, went over official declaration too, and showed like one of the seminary videos where it's like the African guy who like is writing letters to church headquarters to get the church put over there. And, you know, so it was like, it was that video.

Nathan Byrd [00:09:17] And, you know, he went over that very briefly, but it didn't really click in my head what that meant. I just remember it was kind of uncomfortable and people felt uncomfortable around me, but I didn't really get that.

Nathan Byrd [00:09:26] That was probably when I was 15 or 16. But the first time that I truly understood what that meant for me as a black member of the church was when I was on my mission and I really kind of started to dive into it and be like, this doesn't make sense, this doesn't add up, it doesn't mesh.

Nathan Byrd [00:09:41] And then, yeah, it was never really a conversation that I had with my parents. And I've kind of wondered about that. I'm like, you know, why isn't this something that we talked about. And they have an interesting view within the church, for sure. But, yeah, growing up, it was always.

Nathan Byrd [00:09:56] It was always all or nothing. A lot of people, I found, like, when I moved to Utah, I found that a lot of people here have a very nonchalant or laissez faire way of being a member of the church. But for me, it was always, you know, you do every single thing that the prophets say. You follow every commandment, you know, and I wasn't perfect, obviously, but, you know, when I did mess up or break commandments or what have you, I was always so guilty and so ashamed of that because I felt like I had to be doing everything just right. And finding out that everybody wasn't like that was a bit of a shock to me.

John Dehlin [00:10:27] Yeah, well, definitely want to come back to that theme. But I just like, you know, Chanel, with your story, you know, you would have grown up a few decades, maybe before Nate, right, in San Antonio as a convert. But like, with parents who, you know, have been members as long as you've been alive, I would just think that you growing up, you know, even as a kid, but certainly as a teen, you would have. That would have been one of the most obvious things you would have learned and talked about as a family.

John Dehlin [00:11:03] So we talk a lot here on Mormon stories about the bubble, how the bubble's real, how people can get to adulthood and just never learn as Mormons, some of the most basic things. And I'm just stunned just right off the bat to hear that there was a bubble around what. What, for many of us would be the elephant in the room for you and your family as. As black Mormons, which would be to talk about that one thing.

John Dehlin [00:11:30] I'm. I guess I'm. Are you stunned, Chanel, to hear that that was never even a topic of conversation? Not like, how. How does that strike you?

Chanel Achenbach [00:11:39] It strikes me as something that seems normal in the fact that when, in my experience, when you're black and in the church, it's just not something you talk about. And it's not because you don't want to know. You are told from inception. Do not talk about it. Because once I found out stuff, I had questions, and it automatically shut down. So I would assume that with his parents, I joined in 90, they joined in 95, I would assume. So Internet is just starting to pop off. Internet's just starting to be available with these glitches and such. So they. I don't. For me, I had no reason to dive in or to check because it was something that was said to me, and the way people are making it sound is that it wasn't the church.

Chanel Achenbach [00:12:24] It was member members. So when you hear that it's only members that feel this way, and you don't realize it's doctrine or it's any. In anything, you just kind of, like, take it and you try to find the best parts of it. Try to find the best parts of the buffet. The stuff that you like.

John Dehlin [00:12:39] Yeah.

Chanel Achenbach [00:12:40] And you just kind of. So it makes sense that they wouldn't discuss something like that.

John Dehlin [00:12:44] Yeah.

Chanel Achenbach [00:12:45] I mean, I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:12:46] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it sounds. Nate. Like what you're saying is you. You lived in a very orthodox Mormon family, and in a highly orthodox Mormon family, you talk about the positive things about the church. You talk about obedience, and you don't talk about the difficult stuff necessarily, if you even know it at all. Right.

Nathan Byrd [00:13:07] Yeah. The focus was always on the gospel, and I was always very proactive when it came to the church. You know, I read the Book of Mormon all the way through before I was baptized, you know.

John Dehlin [00:13:18] Really?

Nathan Byrd [00:13:18] Yeah. So eight years old is when I. I finished the Book of Mormon for the first time. And I read it, you know, constantly, you know, almost pretty much every day, and finished it several times before I ever went on a mission and all of that. But, yeah, that was always the focus, and then I was always very dedicated to it, and there was never really, like, a question in my mind, even at a young age that it was. That it was right, that it was true.

John Dehlin [00:13:40] How many siblings?

Nathan Byrd [00:13:42] I have five siblings.

John Dehlin [00:13:43] So there's six total kids in your family?

Nathan Byrd [00:13:45] I'm the oldest of six.

John Dehlin [00:13:46] Oh, wow.

Chanel Achenbach [00:13:47] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:13:48] And up through eight years old, were you in Hawaii or had you moved by that point?

Nathan Byrd [00:13:52] No. So after I was born in Hawaii, when I was five years old, we moved to Colorado. We were there for a few years, and then to Michigan.

John Dehlin [00:13:59] Okay, so you moved to Michigan at what age?

Nathan Byrd [00:14:01] 12.

John Dehlin [00:14:02] At 12. Okay.

Nathan Byrd [00:14:03] All right.

John Dehlin [00:14:04] So going back to kind of your baptism years, that's kind of when memories really start kicking in, I think. What was your family culture like as it related to Mormonism?

Nathan Byrd [00:14:18] Pretty much everything we did was structured around Mormonism. You know, I went to Cub Scouts. I loved it. And, you know, it's interesting, I think, that I kind of dissociated from a lot of things when I was little, because I definitely got picked on quite a bit. I was someone who got bullied a lot, whether it was at school or at church. You know, kids would Always kind of bully me. And I remember a lot of times being very sad or distressed because I didn't feel like I fit in. And I didn't really have the emotional intelligence or the words to say that at the time.

Nathan Byrd [00:14:49] But I remember going to Cub Scouts and the kids would make fun of me, call me names. I remember there was one time I couldn't have been older than like maybe eight or nine. I left. You know, we lived. It was maybe like a 15 minute walk away from the church, if that. And I left Cub Scouts early and started walking home because I just felt so.

Nathan Byrd [00:15:11] I felt so outside of everything. You know, the kids had been making fun of me that day, and I was having a tough day, so I just started walking home by myself and I had my little basketball and I was bouncing it on the way home. And my dad had gone to pick me up and couldn't find me. So he, like, you know, drove on the way back and saw me and, you know, was worried. Yeah, I just didn't feel. I didn't feel like I fit in at a very early age. And I just kind of had to like, push through that for pretty much all my childhood.

John Dehlin [00:15:34] And if this was Cub Scouts, this would have been a Mormon C. Scout. Cub Scout trip. Okay.

Nathan Byrd [00:15:39] Yep. So I did Cub Scouts. I did all, you know, I got all the, the belt loops and the merit badges and weebalos and all of that. So.

John Dehlin [00:15:47] So I guess, I guess I'm. I'm curious. So when you say your family culture is very orthodox. Family prayer, scripture study evening every Monday,

Growing Up Black in a Predominantly White Ward

Nathan Byrd [00:15:57] you know, with a lesson plan and a treat and, and everything.

John Dehlin [00:16:00] Okay. So very, A very traditional orthodox Mormon upbringing.

Nathan Byrd [00:16:05] Went to church every Sunday. I remember if we didn't go to church, it felt really weird, you know, so.

John Dehlin [00:16:10] Yeah, and, and so, but, but if you're, if you're growing up as a Mormon in Hawaii and Colorado and, and I don't know about Michigan, but I assume your family was attending predominantly white wards, because that's most wards in the world.

Nathan Byrd [00:16:26] Yeah, in every, in every ward. We were the only black family. If there were any other black people in the ward, there were.

Chanel Achenbach [00:16:32] They.

Nathan Byrd [00:16:32] I don't remember them being active as much as we were. And there's, there's more to that, but I can tell that, you know, as we, as we go on.

John Dehlin [00:16:40] But. Well, actually, if to the extent that you want to, like a lot of us who grew. I grew up in Texas, so a little bit different for me, but a lot of Mormons, most Mormons grow up in either Utah, Idaho, or really white parts of California, at least in the states. Right. And so they. Not only I'll meet many Mormons who have never met a black person or didn't know a black person before graduating from high school in any meaningful way. Maybe they saw someone once at a grocery store kind of thing. But like, so not only did they not really ever know black people, but they probably had never been in a situation where they were a real minority, like a visible, obvious minority, because Mormons tend to really stick together socially.

John Dehlin [00:17:28] What, what are you able to share about what it's like to be a young kid in the only black family in several Mormon wards where everybody else is white? Is it just. Do you just blend in or is it complicated?

Nathan Byrd [00:17:43] You definitely don't blend in. Yeah. Our family always stood out. And honestly, I think it was kind of a source of pride in some ways growing up, but I think that was probably a response to other things growing up. I remember our family always sat on the front row, and every ward that we went to, my dad would always take us to the front row, even if we were late. So we always sat on the front row of church and everybody would talk about how well behaved we were, and we would sit there, we would color, we would listen to the talks, read books, what have you, and we definitely stood out in more ways than one. I definitely think that we were tokenized a little bit being that active.

John Dehlin [00:18:22] Tell us what, what do you mean by that?

Nathan Byrd [00:18:24] Just people kind of expecting, expecting certain things from us, you know, as the black members of the ward and, and you know, just kind of being excited to have us around, like, oh, we're so grateful you're here. We need more people like you in the ward, those kinds of things, those kind of comments.

Nathan Byrd [00:18:41] I remember when I was nine years old, I mean, I was like, I was in like Valiant nine, Valiant ten, something like that. And I was sitting in, in Sunday school and one of the girls in the class, she's a super sweet person, but she asked the question, and I think this is a pretty normal question for a nine year old to ask, but she said, when we all go to heaven, will Nathaniel be white?

Nathan Byrd [00:19:05] And I remember, you know, being nine years old, I didn't really understand the implications of that question, but I just remember thinking, like, that's interesting, like, why would I be white in heaven? You know, and it was kind of one of the first indications that there was something wrong with me being a member of the church or that I was viewed as different for that what kind of sticks out to me more is not so much the question. I don't hold that against her at all. I'm not, you know, I don't care about the question. But what the response was that the Sunday school teacher, he kind of chuckled and he, you know, basically gave the answer like, oh, well, we don't know what heaven will be like.

Nathan Byrd [00:19:43] So, you know, we're not sure. It wasn't a firm yes or a firm no. It was kind of like this, oh, well, probably. But I don't really want to say. So I'm just gonna, you know, leave it up in the air. Right. So that response is kind of what stuck with me because I was like, well, you know, am I going to be white in heaven? You know, and it was kind of one of those things that I just, like, filed away subconsciously and just kept trying to assimilate and trying to belong. But I never really got that within the church.

John Dehlin [00:20:09] I actually. I don't know that I've. This is gonna sound awful. I don't know that I've thought about that. Like in Mormonism, in the resurrection, if you're missing a limb, you'll get your limb back, you know, if you. If you have some sort of disability, that'll be restored. That's the whole point of the resurrection. Is there. Is there a theology or a doctrine about skin color and resurrection?

Nathan Byrd [00:20:32] Yeah, they used to teach that you would become white in the resurrection because, you know, they taught that black skin was a curse. And so why would you keep your cursed skin once you, you know, once you repent, you know, so, yeah, that was taught. And so somewhere along the line, she had heard something that made her think of that question.

John Dehlin [00:20:52] Chanel.

Chanel Achenbach [00:20:55] Well, you know, I have children. My two oldest, they are really, really mad at me for bringing them in the church because I didn't know. They didn't tell me, but they said you were just so in the church, like, recently. They're giving me a lot of.

John Dehlin [00:21:16] Yeah.

Chanel Achenbach [00:21:18] Difficulties because they're mad about the things that were said to them. Things like that, you know, you're going to be white later on. And they're like, what? Because the way I understood it is that you. You're going to look like you look now, you know, but white. And, you know, and I. I didn't know. I did. I let my kids be taught those things, and they're mad about it right now. So.

John Dehlin [00:21:46] Nate, when you. Thanks for that, Chanel. Nate, when you. When you were walking home from Cub Scouts and you said, the kids were kind of making fun of you or making you feel left out. Were they ever calling you names and like race based names? Was it ever that way?

Nathan Byrd [00:22:01] I honestly don't remember. Okay, so I don't, you know, I don't want to say one way or the other because I don't remember what they called me. I just remember feeling very ostracized, you know, to the point where I felt like me as a nine year old kid. I had to leave Cub Scout meeting and leave and go by myself just because I, you know, I didn't feel like I was welcome in that space.

Nathan Byrd [00:22:18] So things like that happened a few times and it wasn't just in church, it was also in school to a lesser extent. But I do think that being black and then also being Mormon definitely played against me in both. And then to add to that, I was homeschooled at different times. And so I think that that stunted my social growth in a lot of ways as well.

Nathan Byrd [00:22:41] And you know, I had to play a lot of catch up when it came both to academics and then also just interacting with other kids socially just because, you know, the structure of our homeschooling curriculum, it started off pretty good and then over time it kind of degraded until it was just kind of like, oh, go read that book. Or you know, go do some problems out of this workbook. And so, yeah, it definitely was an

John Dehlin [00:23:07] interesting journey talk for a second about. You talked about being tokenized, but you also talked about having a sense of pride and sitting in the front row. What is, when you're the only black family in an all white Mormon ward or sets of wards, what is it psychologically that leads to a sense of pride and a desire to sit in the front row? Can you tell us like psychologically maybe what's behind that?

Nathan Byrd [00:23:34] Yeah. So I think even though I couldn't fully understand it at the time, I think that at an early age I kind of understood that we were different. I just couldn't quite put that together in my head. But I realized that because we were different, we had to act differently as well. And then, you know, on top of the pressure of being in the church, there's also a pressure of just being a black person within the black community. There's a saying you have to work twice as hard to get half as much. And there's also the idea of respectability politics, which is where, because black people are under such a microscope in America, if you, you know, if you do something that people don't like, then it reflects on the entire black community.

Nathan Byrd [00:24:17] So within the church as well, there's kind of that, that double layer. So it's like, well, if, if I do something bad as a black person or if I'm less faithful as a black person, that's going to reflect on the entire black community as a whole. And so the pride thing was like, oh, we're black, we're members of the church, and we're also representing all black people.

Nathan Byrd [00:24:36] So, you know, it was just, it wasn't necessarily like that. I was proud of sitting in the front row. It was more so that that's just what I was used to and that was just like a tradition. And there was also just that pressure to, to be a good black Mormon. And so I think that's probably what led me to being so dedicated to the gospel and so gung ho about it was that, that pressure, that subconscious pressure just to, to represent everyone.

Family Structure, Orthodoxy, and Early Doubts

John Dehlin [00:25:03] Thank you for sharing that. Speaking about pre high school years and then we'll get into high school, this, this high level of Mormon orthodoxy and structure and obedience and faithfulness for your family, do you get a sense that it was healthy for your family to be working so hard and trying so hard, like a positive thing?

Nathan Byrd [00:25:27] I think that in some ways it was. I'll definitely say that being dedicated to the gospel helped keep me out of trouble because I was a pretty adventurous kid. I wouldn't say that I was rebellious because I was following the gospel so much that, you know, the rebellious things that I did didn't really have to do with the gospel. You know, I was never one to want to do drugs or to drink or to have sex or anything like that.

Nathan Byrd [00:25:56] And so. But my parents were very, very, I guess, like you said, orthodox, you know, so there were a lot of things that were, that we weren't allowed to do. So, you know, most PG13 movies, we weren't allowed to watch, you know, forget about rated R movies, we weren't allowed to read Harry Potter, you know, because it had to do with witchcraft and it was demonic and stuff like that.

Nathan Byrd [00:26:18] So, you know, a lot of the, A lot of the rebellions that I did would be things like, against that, you know, so I would, I would read Harry Potter secretly or. And we weren't allowed to read Lord of the Rings and so I would read Lord of the Rings secretly, things like that.

John Dehlin [00:26:32] That's a healthy kind of rebellion.

Nathan Byrd [00:26:34] Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. And you know, my, my, my big vice was, was watching porn. That was something that I found when I was like 9 or 10. You know, I've been going to therapy for that too. I think it was definitely a way to cope and to feel, I don't know, just to feel like normal, I suppose.

Nathan Byrd [00:26:56] But I definitely faced a lot of, I guess emotional abuse at that. Something I never really talked about publicly before. But you know, because we were so entrenched in the gospel, I was just made to feel very, very horrible about that.

Nathan Byrd [00:27:16] You know, it's one thing to want to help someone who maybe has an unhealthy compulsion or unhealthy addiction, but the extent to which, you know, I was a very young kid, you know, 10, 11, 12, and my dad would, you know, he would ask me about it if I had watched porn that week or that day or what have you. And if I said yes, then he would get very, very upset and he sometimes wouldn't talk to me for days at a time, you know. And so here I am, this 12 year old kid wanting approval from my dad and he like, won't talk to me, won't really look at me, won't really touch me.

Nathan Byrd [00:27:51] And you know, that was probably just him going through his own turmoil because he was very, very afraid for us all the time. He was afraid that we would end up in a state of poverty or in jail or what have you. Those are always deep fears for him. And he wanted to keep us away from those things, which is, I think, part of why he depended so heavily on the church and its teachings. But because of that fear, his reaction would be very, very damaging for me. And so when you're that young and you getting shunned by your parents or by your father, especially as a young boy, that kind of has a tough effect on you.

Nathan Byrd [00:28:27] And so it led me to want to kind of like hide things, not talk to them about things, and not just porn, but like pretty much everything. So I grew up very, very isolated where I didn't really talk to my parents about much of what I was going through.

Nathan Byrd [00:28:40] And it, it was difficult to develop like emotional intelligence. That's something that I'm still working on to this day, is being able to articulate my feelings. And just because of how my childhood

John Dehlin [00:28:52] was, it's super hard because when a parent does that, it's because they, in their minds, they love you and they want to keep you safe. And so they will shun you and withdraw love, thinking that that will teach you to behave better. But yeah, but sometimes it's not received that way.

Nathan Byrd [00:29:08] Honestly, I don't even think it was a form of punishment. That was just his way of dealing with things. He's like, oh, I'm so afraid for my son and trying to figure out how I'm feeling that I just can't talk to him. I can't. You know, I'm so worried for him. I think it was more of that.

John Dehlin [00:29:22] Overwhelmed?

Nathan Byrd [00:29:23] Yeah, I think so. I think it was just his, his way of dealing with things. But then when he would talk to me, it would be yelling or, you know, like fussing about whatever and then that would come later. But at that point I was so relieved that my dad is talking to me again that, you know, I just kind of took it. But yeah, those things definitely had an effect on me as a kid.

John Dehlin [00:29:44] Well, we'll come back to that for sure. Chanel, do you have a question?

Chanel Achenbach [00:29:49] Wow. Just listening to him, I'm, I mean, I can relate. At the same time, I mean, I call him a kid, but not in a derogatory way. It's just because I'm so much older. I'm 51. But he's a young man and I'm, and I'm listening to his story and, and I'm listening to him talk and my kids, I'm, I'm a mother of kids his age that have gone through those things and thinking about what I was trying to teach them.

Chanel Achenbach [00:30:25] But the thing about his story that's so powerful too is that we are what, I'm 50, what, 51 next week he's 26, 27. And the things are still the same. Like nothing's changed. That nothing's changed since I was 18 in the church. Those teachings are still there. They're still affecting families. They're still hurting people. They're still you. You would think 20 something years later, 10 years later, things have changed, but they have not. He's talking about walking from boy scouts by himself and fill in alone as a 8, 9 year old child. I did that as an 18, 19 year old woman walking away from different meetings because I'm just feeling like I can't relate.

Chanel Achenbach [00:31:17] And then he's talking about sitting on the first row. I did that to my kids. We sat on the first roll. I didn't care if I was sick, what I was going through. Church started at 8:30. We were there at 8 on the first roll ready to go.

Chanel Achenbach [00:31:29] Why? Everything he said, you, you have to do it better, you have to do it perfect. You cannot make mistakes. As a black member of the church, you. So you have to be a good member. You have to be a Good black person. You have to be the token. And there is some pride with that. You're the only novelty or whatever they label you in the whole ward. You're not like everybody else. So that's a. It's like a catch 22. It's like, it's not good, but it's not bad because you get a little bit more of, hey, that black family. The, the lights on you.

Chanel Achenbach [00:32:10] And now you have to behave. And so you're living the gospel pretty much better than anybody because you don't. You read your. He's talking about reading scripture. We read scriptures every day. I mean, even as a single mom, reading scriptures, not doing anything on Sundays. No, PG 13. All of that.

Chanel Achenbach [00:32:27] I mean, I'm. I'm listening to him talk and I, I can, I can see all of that, but I can see how I harmed my kids with some of those things that I did.

John Dehlin [00:32:36] Yeah. Thanks for sharing, Chanel. Thank you. So. But I'm also thinking about how when Chanel described her upbringing and we just interviewed Liz, and Liz talked about growing up as a biracial kid with a. With a black single father and just how chaotic her family was, and that's what drew her to the church. And should. I think that might have been what drew you to Mormonism were some perfect, beautiful Mormon families. And Nate, in your case, you didn't convert to the church admiring those perfect Mormon families. You kind of were one of those perfect Mormon families. And so I, I want to say that it sounds like the Mormon church was good for your family structure in spite of there being abusive and hard parts.

John Dehlin [00:33:25] It provided your family with safety, with structure, with a set of values, with the community. That was helpful. I don't want to interject that in your story, but I'm wondering.

Nathan Byrd [00:33:35] No, that's absolutely right. It gave us direction, like a place to go, an objective. And it was something that my dad hadn't really seen before. He had a pretty tumultuous upbringing. And so I think seeing those families in the church and seeing that potential there was something that he definitely strived for. And so, I mean, I have a lot of respect for my father being able to raise six black kids. You know, some of them are still at home, some of us are out of the house, but all of us are doing well, you know, and that's not an easy task to do. You know, it's not easy to be a parent at all.

Nathan Byrd [00:34:08] But the parent of black children and then six black children, I think that that is. It's an incredible Burden. So I have a lot of respect to him for. And to my mom as well. You know, my mom is. My dad is the one that, like, you know, all the hard parts, that was, you know, that was his thing. And my mom, you know, she dealt with the nuances of things, you know, the day to day, the teaching us and things like that. But both of them together, they were a really, really good team. It's just that, you know, some of the things that they did as an adult, I see now that they maybe weren't the healthiest or things that I necessarily agree with, but it was, you know, it got our family to where we are.

John Dehlin [00:34:50] I'm now remembering growing up in Katy, Texas, which is a suburb of Houston.

Nathan Byrd [00:34:56] I served my mission in Houston, so.

John Dehlin [00:34:58] What's that?

Nathan Byrd [00:34:58] I served my mission in Houston.

John Dehlin [00:34:59] You know, Katie.

Nathan Byrd [00:34:59] Yeah, that was in my mission.

John Dehlin [00:35:00] Okay.

Nathan Byrd [00:35:01] I served in Waller.

John Dehlin [00:35:02] Oh, cool. Yeah, Waller was in my stake, so my first branch president was named Aubrey Chudley, and he was from Waller, so. Okay. Well, back when Katie was a branch, not even a stake yet. Anyway, so in Katy, there. There were kind of these white suburbs, and then there was a part of town that was predominantly black with, you know, with black people. And Katie existed all the way back pre kind of Civil War. And. And so they had rice plantations in, you know, Katy, Houston area.

John Dehlin [00:35:40] And that's where literally the. The slaves were housed. And fast forward 100 years, 150 years. You know, I grew up in a high school where there were. Where there still were white water fountains and black water fountains labeled as such. Now, they've since taken those down, but like in the 80s, you could still see kind of colored and white water fountains in the high school I grew up in. And just like that, neighborhoods were segregated.

John Dehlin [00:36:08] Most of the black kids on the basketball team lived in this lower SES community of all black people that literally was where the slaves were 100 years prior. And. But then I had my friend Yancey, whose dad was a postal worker and he lived in West Memorial in. In the suburb with all white people. And I would think about, like, the difference between what it was like for Yancey to grow up in West Memorial surrounded by white people. And then all my, like Jojo and. And Kibu and all my friends who grew up in a predominantly lower SES black community. And I'm wondering if there's anything that occurred to you about, like, we're clearly black, but we're surrounded by white people and we're being raised kind of in white culture.

John Dehlin [00:36:53] There's Got. It's got to feel like there's some advantages to that. But then you're also not being raised with a lot of other people that you may want to associate with or may, you know, may want to learn about that culture. But instead, you're kind of surrounded by white culture. Is that something that even occurs to a kid growing up in your situation or. Or is that, like, not so?

Nathan Byrd [00:37:18] I don't know if it necessarily is something that occurred to me, but I, you know, like I mentioned feeling like an outsider. I felt like that in the. A lot of the black spaces that I interacted in as well, because, you know, this was at a younger age. It wasn't until middle school and high school that I really started to kind of identify more with my black identity. You know, growing up, our parents taught us about black history. That was always a huge part of our curriculum. So, you know, I was pretty knowledgeable about the accomplishments of black people, and I understood that I was a black person, but I didn't necessarily understood what that meant on a.

Nathan Byrd [00:37:51] On a grander scale, you know, what that meant in society, because a lot of those things were kind of kept from us, you know, as a way to kind of protect us. And so growing up surrounded by white people was difficult. Like I said, I definitely felt like an outsider. And then being a member of the church, there's kind of that added layer, because all of my social circles were white kids and white families. And so, honestly, at a younger age, my goal was just to try and assimilate. You know, I tried to.

Nathan Byrd [00:38:22] To say and do things the way that the white kids did it, and that was pretty much all I did. And I would kind of take some flack at home because it'd be like, oh, stop acting like a white kid. And it's like, well, who else am I supposed to act like? That's all I know. You know, I remember, you know, when it was popular to say tight and sick and all those words. You know, I was saying those things, and my dad would be like, why are you saying that? You know, that's what the white kids say. I don't want you to talk like that.

Nathan Byrd [00:38:50] And, you know, that was really. That was the only example that I had, you know, aside from my parents. But, you know, they. They grew up in the 70s and 80s, and so their language was a lot different than what I was using in the early 2000s.

Nathan Byrd [00:39:02] But, yeah, for. For most of my childhood, I was just trying to assimilate. And then when I started to get around Other black people in middle school and high school, then they would. I felt kind of a disconnect from them, you know, and I definitely had to do some adapting. And then there's also the homeschooling aspect, too. But because I was a part of such a white church, a lot of the things that I did and a lot of the ways that I believed didn't necessarily align with a lot of the other black people that I would interact with.

Nathan Byrd [00:39:29] And so, you know, and then also with my upbringing, my parents not really wanting me to associate with people who weren't in the church or, you know, just being very protective. It kind of limited my access to other kids, you know, so when kids at school would hang out or go to parties or go to dances or prom or whatever, I wasn't allowed to go to those, but I was allowed to go to, you know, the LDS formal or church dances or youth conference, things like that.

Nathan Byrd [00:39:56] And so my whole world growing up was. Was pretty much white, aside from exposure that I got at home to black history. And so I knew the academic side of things, but the cultural side of things definitely came a little bit later.

Black Role Models and Racism in Mormon Scripture

John Dehlin [00:40:09] Who are some of the historical role models or heroes that would have been important in your life who were black?

Nathan Byrd [00:40:15] Yeah. So, I mean, growing up, we had a wall right by our kitchen table that was just full of black historical figures. So, of course, we had Martin Luther King and Malcolm X up on the wall. And then we also had people like Benjamin Banneker, Oprah Winfrey, Venus and Serena Williams, Mae Jamison, who was the first black woman in space? Benjamin Banneker. Actually, he's the one that designed Washington, D.C. so there were so many different black historical figures. I mean, we had, like, books and books. I'd read books about Harriet Tubman and read Books about A. J. Green and magic Johnson, you know, so pretty much. Pretty much everyone, you know. So I understood the academic side of things and, like, that part. But as far as me identifying as a black person, culturally, that was a different story.

John Dehlin [00:41:00] I grew up feeling like Malcolm X was a bad guy, was pro violence and kind of radical and associated with Black Panthers, which I had been taught by my police, by my father, who was a policeman for several years. All that was bad. How was Malcolm X presented to you?

Nathan Byrd [00:41:18] He was presented as not. Definitely not as bad. He was presented as someone who. Who had a lot of good ideas, who talked about black nationalism and just the empowerment of black people. You know, basically, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, they were at odds for a while, but then towards the end of their lives, they actually started to. To kind of have more similar ideas. A lot of people don't talk about how Martin Luther King, towards the end, started to realize that his dream or the idea of desegregation was not working out the way that he wanted to. And he was starting to move more towards the empowerment of black people.

Nathan Byrd [00:41:52] He wrote a book talking about financial empowerment of black people and things like that. And then Malcolm X, he had started off as very, very radical. He didn't want desegregation at all. And a lot of people believe that he was violent. That wasn't the case. But he was willing to defend himself by any means necessary. And that's one of the quotes that people will use to villainize him. And really what it was is, no, I'm going to protect me and mine in whatever way. And if that means killing a white person when they come and attack us, then I'm going to do that. And so people were very afraid of him.

Nathan Byrd [00:42:22] And also because of how much power he had. If you watch Spike Lee's movie X or Malcolm X and where they depict the power that he had and the influence that he had in the Muslim community, the black Muslim community, he was something else. And so for that reason, that's why he was killed. And same with Dr. King, because the power and influence he had. And Fred Hampton, who was a leader in the Black Panther party, he was 21 when he was killed by the FBI. So those people that had a lot of power within the black community and a lot of influence, they were targeted. And so I definitely understood that they were. They were good people with good ideas who were killed for them.

John Dehlin [00:42:59] It was a BYU that I first read. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley.

Nathan Byrd [00:43:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:04] And then Spike Lee came out with that movie soon after with Denzel Washington. Never forget that line. That's too much powerful one man to have. And I think someone corrects him and says that's too much power for one black man to have, Right?

Nathan Byrd [00:43:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:16] Yeah, that's how I remember it. But Malcolm X is definitely here to me. Once I kind of learned a little bit. I'm curious. I'm curious what it was like for you to have those heroes, you know, black historical figures then to be reading the scriptures, reading the Book of Mormon, you know, reading about church history, LDS church history, all the prophets historically, and. And, you know, in the Book of Mormon, it's rare for the people of color to be the heroes. It happens, but it's rare. And then, of course, all The Mormon Church leaders are pretty much all white. What was that like? And did you even notice racism in the Book of Mormon or in the Book of Moses or the Book of Abraham?

Nathan Byrd [00:44:06] Yeah, I didn't notice the racism. It wasn't pointed out to me. And you know, there's only so much that you can understand when you're reading the Book of Mormon as an 8 year old or you know, as a teenager. And so I understood, you know, I knew all the stories both and I, I was someone who read, you know, because of my parents Southern Baptist upbringing. They made sure that we were well versed in the Bible as well. So I, I read the whole Bible from COVID to cover.

Nathan Byrd [00:44:27] I only did that once though. But I knew all the stories, you know, and I, I had, I had all the church comic books, you know, from the Doctrine and Covenants and the Book of Mormon, you know, all of those where they had all the comic books and everything opened up and I had an action Bible which was a comic book version of the Bible. And I mean I used to read those all the time. Like I would read those for fun, you know. And so I knew all the stories, all the names in the Book of Mormon, all of the major points, a lot of the doctrinal points of the Book of Mormon, I didn't really fully grasp those until I was a missionary.

Nathan Byrd [00:44:58] But before then I just understood like the basic principles and I understood the, you know, the different things that happen in the Book of Mormon. I remember, you know, reading in the picture, we called it the Picture Book of Mormon and you know, where they had the illustrations of the Lamanites and it talked about their skin turning dark.

Nathan Byrd [00:45:17] And then there was like a painting where, you know, it went from the Lamanites looking like the Nephites to them being dark skinned and then they were painting red marks on each other, marking themselves with the mark of whatever it was.

Nathan Byrd [00:45:30] And I just remember, you know, reading that and not really processing that. And I don't think that I really identified the same as the Lamanites. Like, I didn't realize that that curse of skin extended to me and my dark skin. I just looked at it as like, oh, those are the Lamanites, you know, the Native Americans, what have you. And so that, that didn't really Sit, sit or it didn't, it wasn't something that I connected with or understood to be a racist issue during that time. Again, like all of that really came on my mission when I actually studied for myself. Because before then, you know, I was doing Everything.

Nathan Byrd [00:46:10] But a lot of it was doing what other people told me to do, you know, and believing what other people told me to believe.

The Priesthood Ban and Curse of Cain

John Dehlin [00:46:18] So had you learned at all about the Curse of Cain kind of in middle school or high school?

Nathan Byrd [00:46:23] No, I hadn't.

John Dehlin [00:46:25] Like, I'm just like, what? You know, like, that's 18, 19 years.

Nathan Byrd [00:46:32] Yeah. A long time.

John Dehlin [00:46:33] Lifelong Mormon. And. And it's in the Book of Moses, and it's in the Book of Abraham, and it's in the Doctrine Covenants, I think. You know, like, it's kind of in all the Mormon scripture.

Nathan Byrd [00:46:44] It was definitely something that just was never discussed. And so it was something that. That kind of went over my head.

Chanel Achenbach [00:46:51] And.

Nathan Byrd [00:46:51] Yeah. It wasn't until I stopped doing what people told me to do and started kind of trying to learn on my own and realizing, hold on, this doesn't add up now. Why is this like this? And then learning to study things that I started to make some of those connections and realized, wow, this is about me, and I don't like the way this feels.

John Dehlin [00:47:08] I mean, what's kind of weird is I was taught all about the Cursed King growing up, but I'm imagining a white Mormon not wanting to teach that to a black family. Right. Even though they'll teach it to white people, if there's a black person in the room, maybe they would be less likely to teach it because they weren't ashamed to teach that to me.

Nathan Byrd [00:47:26] Right.

John Dehlin [00:47:26] Does that make sense?

Nathan Byrd [00:47:27] Yeah, absolutely. And, yeah, I think it was probably the same. That was never something that came up in Sunday school, if it came up in my, you know, my parents classes. They never talked about it with us.

John Dehlin [00:47:37] And they never brought it up.

Nathan Byrd [00:47:39] No, they never brought it up. I think they. They definitely wanted to protect our innocence and. And, you know, keep us safe. I think that had a lot to do with the way that they were brought up, you know, the environments that they grew up in.

John Dehlin [00:47:52] Yeah.

Nathan Byrd [00:47:53] And so I think that there was just an overwhelming desire to protect us, but it definitely took the form of, like, helicoptering at some points.

Chanel Achenbach [00:48:01] What.

John Dehlin [00:48:02] What about dating? Did you date in high school? And if so, did you date Mormons?

Nathan Byrd [00:48:07] Yeah, so I didn't date in high school. I was always too awkward, too shy to really date anyone. And then on top of that, within our household, we were encouraged to date within our race. Right. So I remember one time when I was, like, 17, there was this girl that I thought was cute, and she had shown some interest in me, and we were trying to go to, like, a carnival together, like, A little festival, like amusement park rides and stuff like that.

Nathan Byrd [00:48:36] And we had set it up and then my dad told me that I had to tell her that I couldn't go because she wasn't black. And so that was, you know, it wasn't like anything significant, but it was still kind of frustrating for me at the time because I was like, well, you know, this is someone that I'm interested in. This isn't even really like an official date. Like nothing's necessarily going to come of it. It's just, you know, I just wanted to go and hang out with this girl that I thought was cute and she thought I was cute.

Nathan Byrd [00:49:04] And so yeah, it was kind of a weird mix between like hyper blackness and then like avoiding that same conversation within the church. So it was a lot of duality within me as a teenager because I have this super white church that I'm a part of and all these rules that I'm following. And then also this black identity that I'm trying to cultivate while being a member of this know, very white church. It, it was definitely very difficult. So yeah, growing up there was, you know, the same thing with, with high school, you know.

John Dehlin [00:49:38] Can I ask a quick question?

Nathan Byrd [00:49:39] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:49:40] Sorry. So like I was never taught only date white people, but I imagine that if I had dated a, a person of color, I would have heard about it, you know what I'm saying? So you were literally taught to date within your race. What was that about? Was that religious? Was that cultural pride? Because I was never taught that. I was just, you know, you know what I'm saying?

Nathan Byrd [00:50:03] You know, I'm honestly, I'm not entirely sure. It could have been a little bit of both. I think that there's definitely the cultural pride there and there's a lot of black women who have trouble finding someone to be with or to marry because of, because of black men choosing to be with other people. There's definitely a lot of anti blackness and white supremacy within black culture.

Nathan Byrd [00:50:38] And a lot of times you'll hear about, I don't know if you've familiar with colorism where black people will elevate people who have a skin color that's closer to a white person and then, you know, demean or criticize someone with a darker skin complexion.

Nathan Byrd [00:50:55] And so I think just all of those things I was just encouraged to, to be proud of who I was as a black person. And so I think that's where that came from is, you know, be proud of who you are as a black person and then date Those people that are proud of who they are as black people as well.

John Dehlin [00:51:09] And did you get the sense that your parents were proud to, to be black?

Nathan Byrd [00:51:13] Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:14] Love it. I'm glad. Chanel.

Chanel Achenbach [00:51:17] John. I, I, I can't answer for his parents, but I can answer for my own life, especially being a lot older. What my dad told me, even though we have white ancestors, he, when I was dating a white man, he was like, I need to talk to you.

Chanel Achenbach [00:51:33] He never told me not to not date outside my race or anything, but he said, you need to be careful. So it was for safety, because back then, if he dated a white woman, they were going to hurt him. And they, and I, I believe, I don't know his parents. It was for safety. When white people tell somebody not to date a black person, it's because of hate and racism. If a black person saying, don't, it's, it's for your safety. If somebody sees, I mean, if you think about what happened back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, black person being with a white person, that wasn't good.

Chanel Achenbach [00:52:03] Not because we didn't want to, but because they would hurt you for doing so. And so my father said, hey, this guy might like you just fine. Do you know what his family feels? Do you know what they're gonna do to you? Do you feel safe doing that? It was more of safety. And I think that's important to clarify because I know how people, well, see, y' all say you can't date Elder. Yeah, for our safety. And there's nothing wrong with also, I mean, if his parents felt, you know, for the reasons he said, you know, there was a lot of colorism, a lot of things happening where a lot of black men were feeling that white was better.

Chanel Achenbach [00:52:39] And so you had all these black here without a partner. And so I think that played a part of it too. And then when you talk about this, I can identify with what he's saying. The church, so the LDS church is white. It was predominantly white. And me and my children being there, everything's white. And I don't think people understand. We're being taught. He was taught, I'm being taught to be white. I'm not being taught to be just human. I'm being taught mannerisms, everything white. And so when the church does have something that they promote black, it's a genesis group outside of a normal or a regular ward.

Chanel Achenbach [00:53:20] That's not inclusion. That's, you go do your own thing so you don't affect our pool. That's, that's the truth of it. So if. If you are a predominantly white organization and you really care about black people and you want them to feel included, then learn what that means. Learn what that is. To have them there. Teach people that they're not cursing. Teach people that, hey, this is how you don't say micro.

Chanel Achenbach [00:53:47] What do you call it? Microaggressions and stuff that you understand that it's not funny to say these things because. Because those things are racist. Include them and the teachings. Include them in being your leaders so that you can see who they are and what they are instead of. Nope. You know, I mean, even thinking about the monument with Green Flake and Jane Manning when they did this this past May, why did it take so long for people to know about that? When Green Flake actually helped settle Utah with. With Brigham Young, why weren't they. Why weren't they teaching about that? So you've got these kids growing up in this predominantly white church not knowing how to relate to anybody.

Chanel Achenbach [00:54:29] So it's a. It's a double sword. So in the church, you're being told something's wrong with you, but you're being taught by them how to be a human being. And then you try to talk to somebody in. In your community, they don't get you because you're not understanding them because you've been taught by somebody else.

John Dehlin [00:54:48] It.

Chanel Achenbach [00:54:49] Yeah, there's no win.

John Dehlin [00:54:50] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that point about safety makes total sense to me because from what I've read about civil rights movement and stuff, like, the biggest fear was white men worrying that their daughters or their wives would be, you know, sexually involved with a black man like that. It was the, you know, imam until. Wasn't he killed by just making. He was the wrong comment to a white woman, basically.

Nathan Byrd [00:55:16] He actually didn't even do anything.

John Dehlin [00:55:17] Okay.

Nathan Byrd [00:55:18] She just accused him of it.

John Dehlin [00:55:19] She accused him of it.

Nathan Byrd [00:55:19] And she's still free. She's still walking free.

John Dehlin [00:55:21] So she's still walking free.

Nathan Byrd [00:55:23] Yeah. She's like 80 something.

John Dehlin [00:55:24] Yeah.

Nathan Byrd [00:55:25] And yeah, she's. She's still around. She's been complaining because she's been getting harassed and had to move a few times. But you deserve it.

John Dehlin [00:55:30] Yeah. Okay, well, this is really, really. Thank you so much for. For sharing so far, everything you've shared. So. So you were. But you were. You were told to date within your race, but then you were probably only supposed to date Mormons if you're orthodox Mormon. And by. By high school, you're in Detroit, Right. Or Michigan. Where?

Nathan Byrd [00:55:55] Canton. It's 30 minutes outside Detroit.

John Dehlin [00:55:58] Okay. And a white word.

Nathan Byrd [00:56:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:56:02] So they're probably. Who were a lot of people even in your stake, were there black Mormons to date?

Nathan Byrd [00:56:06] Just maybe one or two.

John Dehlin [00:56:08] Okay, so you probably. So you said you didn't date much in high school?

Nathan Byrd [00:56:12] I didn't date at all.

John Dehlin [00:56:13] Okay. Never really did it. Okay.

Nathan Byrd [00:56:15] Never really dated.

John Dehlin [00:56:15] Okay. Anything you want to share about your Mormon upbringing that we didn't cover? Kind of premission, important things in your life you talked about law of chastity, kind of masturbation, porn, shame and trauma. Anything else either faith wise or just experiences that you want to share about your experience before we kind of go to the mission?

Pressure to Attend BYU and Family Church Life

Nathan Byrd [00:56:38] Yeah, just that, you know, I was, from the time I was young, I was strongly encouraged to go to byu. And actually when it came time to apply to college, I was told that I, I wasn't allowed to apply anywhere else. And one of the reasons for me going to BYU was so that I could find a spouse who was both black and a member of the church. That was, that was, was one of the main goals for going to BYU is because they wanted me to stay in the church, but they also wanted me to, to marry someone who was black. And so that was one of the big reasons for going to byu. And then also the religious aspect and them, you know, kind of being able to extend that, that arm of protection through the church, you know, and all of that.

John Dehlin [00:57:20] What I, I'm curious, what callings were your parents given in their white Michigan ward?

Nathan Byrd [00:57:29] Yeah, so were they were bishop or

John Dehlin [00:57:32] relief study president or anything like that.

Nathan Byrd [00:57:33] So there was a period of time my parents. Interesting. I, as kids, they, they kept a lot of things from us, but at the same time we weren't stupid. So we noticed a lot of things. There was definitely a lot of racial incidents that happened. I remember one time there was a member of the ward who accused my father of, of something, I think of giving money to a kid or bribing a kid or something like that, which wasn't the situation at all. Rather than come talk to him about it, he just went and tattled to the bishop and that created a whole situation.

Nathan Byrd [00:58:03] I remember my dad getting a lot of pushback on ideas that he had, you know, that were good ideas. He was a young men's president for a little while and then he actually asked to be released because everything that he tried to implement, he got pushback from counselors and from leaders that they just didn't want to do it. And it was something as simple as, you know, for high adventure. He wanted us to build our own kayaks and then go out. And that's, you know, not something that's hard to do. It's something that falls within the whole Boy Scout theme. But he just was hard lined at, you know, every corner.

Nathan Byrd [00:58:31] He was. He was in the bishop brick for a little while. Same thing he was. He received a lot of pushback, and so eventually he just kind of asked to be released from that position as well. He was a Sunday school teacher.

Nathan Byrd [00:58:42] He was released from that position after teaching a lesson about race in the priesthood. So, you know, a few different things like that. My mom. My mom's been primary president. She's been Sunday school teacher, Relief Society teacher. And yeah, she's had a few other callings as well, like activities committee. I don't remember all of them, but

John Dehlin [00:58:59] yeah, so it sounds like your mom had a kind of a relatively normal Mormon experience as an adult woman. But your dad got pushback a lot. Did he ever talk about what, what. What he thought the origins of that were, why people were giving him pushback?

Nathan Byrd [00:59:19] Not necessarily. He didn't necessarily talk about any racial aspect, but I do think that that definitely had an effect on him. Over the years, I've kind of seen my dad go down a more, I guess, extreme path. I don't know my parents now, they are.

Nathan Byrd [00:59:38] They identify as Hebrew Israelite black Jews, but they're also still active within the Mormon Church. So it's kind of interesting because in my head I'm like, well, if you go into a temple recommend interview and they ask you if any of your beliefs contradict the teachings of the church, then the honest answer would be yes. But I think to them, those ideas don't necessarily contradict. And so there's kind of this idea that, oh, the leaders of the church, they know what's really going on, but they can't say that black people are the real Jews because then the white members of the church would be upset and all of this.

Nathan Byrd [01:00:12] And so it's an interesting. It's an interesting path to have seen them gone down. But I think a lot of the ways that they were treated by members of the church had a lot to do with that. And so I think that those incidents that they had with different members fallings out because of issues and because of prejudice, I think that it kind of spurred this. Spurred them down this path of getting them to where they are now.

John Dehlin [01:00:37] What's the historical genesis of black Americans identifying as Hebrew Israelite black Jews? Is there a historical foundation for that? Is it just a cultural phenomenon?

Nathan Byrd [01:00:52] There is historical foundation for it. I'm not familiar with all of it, so I don't, I don't want to say anything that's incorrect. I do know that there is a lot of biblical context for black people being descended from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. And then also if you just look at a map, it doesn't really make sense that people who are Hebrew would not be descended from African people. I don't know all of the details that go into it. I don't know where like modern day Jewish people come into that. And I certainly am not going to be one to say that someone is not who they say they are.

Chanel Achenbach [01:01:32] Right.

Nathan Byrd [01:01:33] And so just because I don't have all of the context for that, I don't want to say anything that's incorrect. And then on top of that, I don't necessarily know that I trust the Bible. Right. Because it's so all over the place and anybody can take it and use it for anything. You had slave masters taking it and using it to, to justify slavery. Then you've got people using it to justify genocide and murder and the Crusades and, you know, so there's just so many different things within the Bible that I'm not sure that I trust that as a reliable source. So, you know, it's not really something that I've studied much into. So I don't necessarily understand the full historical context.

John Dehlin [01:02:12] I remember growing up watching Good Times. You know, I want, I love the Jeffersons and Good Times and Sanford Sons and. First time, this is the first time I saw a painting of a black Jesus. I was like, whoa, that's radical. But that's not accurate.

Nathan Byrd [01:02:28] You know, parents have that same painting in their house.

John Dehlin [01:02:29] They do, yeah. Yeah. But then when I read Malcolm X and he talked about Jesus wasn't white.

Nathan Byrd [01:02:34] No, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:02:35] There's no way Jesus was white.

Nathan Byrd [01:02:36] Yeah, there's a lot of white supremacy in the church that wants you to think. You know, even if you look at the illustrations and the, the, the Book of Mormon stories, picture books and things like that, the Lamanites are always dark and the Nephites are always white people. Or if you look at the most recent Book of Mormon videos that they made, I actually stopped watching those because I was like, okay, all the main characters are just straight white. And then you have Polynesians and Native Americans in the background playing the rest of the Nephites and Lamanites, but all the main characters are white. Nephi is white, Alma is white. You know, And I just remember thinking that that doesn't sit well with me.

John Dehlin [01:03:12] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's something to the fact that Israelis, there's no way they were white. So I can see at least how that might make sense. But. But that's probably not Mormon for people to think of themselves as literal, you know, Israelites or Hebrews. So that's an interesting combination of your parents ascribing to one kind of cultural context and another that maybe aren't super compatible, but. But they make it work.

Nathan Byrd [01:03:42] Yeah, they make it work.

John Dehlin [01:03:43] Yeah. Okay, so. All right, so anything else about your high school experience? Any more live chassis stuff like with your bishop? Did you have any bad interactions with your. With your bishops at all for any worthiness kind of stuff or.

High School, Discipline, and Patriarchal Blessings

Nathan Byrd [01:04:03] Not necessarily bad interactions, but I do remember, you know, being made to go and confess to the bishop, and they would, you know, restrict me from taking the sacrament for weeks at a time, you know, so, you know, I couldn't pass the sacrament or I couldn't take it. And so, you know, my friends would be like, hey, it's your turn to pass the sacrament. And I'd be like, oh, I can't pass it this week. Or, oh, I can't take the sacrament. And being ashamed and not really being able to say why or what was going on, but then just kind of like feeling that. That additional shame from that and then guilt and things like that on top of it.

Nathan Byrd [01:04:35] Yeah, not necessarily any bad interactions with bishops. You know, they were all good men, but they just had different ways of going about things. That's one thing I realized, too, is that every bishop is. Is different.

John Dehlin [01:04:48] Did you have close friends in high school? And I'm also interested just quickly in, like, hobbies or interests for. For your identity development, kind of what you were into in high school.

Nathan Byrd [01:04:59] Yeah, so in high school, I love to read, so I was always reading. I wasn't allowed to have technology, really, so I didn't have a smartphone. I didn't get a flip. I got a flip phone when I was 14. That was about it. And yeah, so I spent a lot of time reading. I spent a lot of time playing sports when I could.

John Dehlin [01:05:21] Which sports?

Nathan Byrd [01:05:22] Basketball mostly. A little bit of football. I would spend a lot of time with my siblings. I'm definitely very close to them. And so we would spend a lot of time playing card games, board games, just hanging out with each other. Most weekends we just spent watching tv. But what we could watch was very limited. There were periods of time where Disney was considered to Be evil. And so sometimes we could watch Disney movies, sometimes we couldn't. And so we spent a lot of time watching, like, old school movies, like black and white movies, Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant and, you know, all those old stuff. So a lot of time watching those old school TV shows, like the Fugitive, Colombo, you know, so we watched a lot of that. And that was pretty much my upbringing.

John Dehlin [01:06:06] Your upbringing was more strict than the average orthodox Mormon?

Nathan Byrd [01:06:11] Yeah, in some ways, for sure.

John Dehlin [01:06:13] Definitely stricter than my upbringing. And I consider myself very orthodox.

Nathan Byrd [01:06:16] Yeah, I feel like it was like, orthodox Mormon mixed with, like, some. Some Southern Baptist in there as well.

John Dehlin [01:06:22] Yeah. Okay. And academically, were you intimidated by the prospect of having to go to BYU and having to get in? Were you. Did you have great grades? Did you feel a lot of pressure from that?

Nathan Byrd [01:06:36] I know. So when I was. When I was in school, I spent about six years being homeschooled and about six years in school, kind of very sporadically, back and forth. It definitely took a toll on my education, but my grades were good. I think I graduated. Well, when I was in school, I maintained about a 3.8, 3.9 GPA. And then when I was homeschooled, you know, I did pretty well. I did pretty good on the act, and so I wasn't super concerned about getting into byu. But. Yeah, and then I did a year, about a year and a half before I went on my mission.

John Dehlin [01:07:11] Where? At byu.

Nathan Byrd [01:07:13] At byu.

John Dehlin [01:07:13] Oh, okay.

Nathan Byrd [01:07:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:15] Oh, really quickly, how old were you and you got your patriarchal Blessing?

Nathan Byrd [01:07:19] I was 12.

John Dehlin [01:07:21] Do you remember anything interesting about your patriarchal blessing? And of course, I want to ask about your lineage that was declared in the patriarchal blessing.

Nathan Byrd [01:07:29] Yeah, so my lineage was Ephraim, and I remember my parents being confused about that because both of them were Manasseh. And so they asked the patriarch if that was normal, if someone with both tribes of Manasseh could be born in the lineage of Ephraim. And the patriarch said, yes. But the thing about my patriarchal blessing that I found kind of frustrating as I read it growing up was that it wasn't really.

Nathan Byrd [01:07:52] Especially as I heard other people talking about their patriarchal blessings, there was nothing really unique about mine. It was very generic. It was, you know, be righteous and you'll go on a mission, and then you'll get married, and then you'll have kids, and then you'll arise in the morning of the first resurrection. And there wasn't any specific promise other than if you keep the commandments, then, you know, you'll get this. And so there was actually a time where I wanted. I was wondering if I could get a second patriarchal blessing, because I felt like mine didn't really give me a lot of direction or anything like that.

Nathan Byrd [01:08:20] It just felt very generic. And so, yeah, that was. That was the main thing about mine. There weren't any specific promises or anything particularly special about it. It was just, be good, follow the commandments, and then you'll get these things, you know? But it was, like, the same thing that you would expect anybody in the church to give.

John Dehlin [01:08:38] It makes no sense to me that you're both your parents could be declared the lineage of Manasseh, you're their offspring, and somehow you're Ephraim.

Nathan Byrd [01:08:47] Yeah, I don't really remember the explanation

John Dehlin [01:08:49] for that, but still, sense. Yes, Chanel.

Chanel Achenbach [01:08:53] Okay, so I have a question for both of you. What is the whole purpose of getting a patriarchal blessing? What's the top two things?

John Dehlin [01:09:01] They say it's definitely a lineage.

Chanel Achenbach [01:09:04] Guess who didn't get a lineage.

John Dehlin [01:09:06] You didn't get a lineage?

Chanel Achenbach [01:09:07] Nope.

John Dehlin [01:09:08] They just skipped that part.

Chanel Achenbach [01:09:10] Sure did. And I asked them about it, and they were like, well, and then everybody kept giving me different excuses on why I didn't have mine. And then I got the excuse, well, black people, such and such and such and such. And the reason why you didn't get a lineage, because you can't be. And, you know, the thing is, you're adopted now because, you know, you got baptized, so you don't need a lineage. And I'm like, but isn't that the purpose? Everybody I know got a lineage except for me.

John Dehlin [01:09:42] That's so fascinating, because I'm sure in the mind of that white patriarch, he was old. You could. You couldn't have. What?

Chanel Achenbach [01:09:49] He was old.

John Dehlin [01:09:49] Yeah, but in his mind, you couldn't have been a descendant of the twelve tribes of Israel because you were black. But that's very different than the logic that your parents, Nate, used to identify as black Jews. Because we all know that if. If the Israelites were one thing, it wasn't white. Right. So you're denied. Chanel.

Chanel Achenbach [01:10:10] Again, denied.

John Dehlin [01:10:12] Yeah, you're. You're denied a lineage for the opposite of. Of a truthful or a viable reason.

Chanel Achenbach [01:10:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:20] Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, that's. That's really ironic. Anyway. Well, I'm sorry. You. You know, I remember my patriarchal blessing providing me with a lot of, like, confidence and, like, excitement and energy. It would not be fun to. To feel disappointed by your patriarchal blessing.

Nathan Byrd [01:10:37] A part of it. You know how they tell you to wait until you're ready to get your patriarchal blessing. In my household, it was very much, you do what you're told. And so I think part of that is why I was never really one to think for myself on a lot of things, because it was always, you do as you're told, you respect your elders. And so my parents said, you're ready to get your patriarchal blessing. So I said, okay. And I went and did the interviews, and then I got it. But honestly, you know, if there ever is a time that you're ready, I don't think that I was necessarily ready at that time.

Nathan Byrd [01:11:07] So I've always wondered, you know, if I had waited, would it have been different or if I got it from a different patriarch or whatever. I just don't think he really knew what to say to a 12 year old or 13 year old.

John Dehlin [01:11:16] For sure. It would have been different. Yeah. He had patriarchal patriarchy roulette, basically.

Nathan Byrd [01:11:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:22] Yeah.

Chanel Achenbach [01:11:24] So can I ask, Nate, do you believe in a patriarchal blessing, or was it something that you accepted at the time? Because you remember at this point today where you're sitting here, do you believe that it is a real something from God,

John Dehlin [01:11:39] or do we want to wait and have you share your beliefs at the very end?

Chanel Achenbach [01:11:42] Oh, you know what? That's a good.

John Dehlin [01:11:43] No. No. I don't want to step on your question, but I also don't want to give the ending away, But I'm also dying the notion. Oh, it's a great question. Anyway, however you want to answer, we

Nathan Byrd [01:11:52] can do it at the end. That's fine.

John Dehlin [01:11:53] Yeah. Chanel, do you feel okay about that?

Chanel Achenbach [01:11:55] Yeah, I just want to get the question now before I forget, but yes.

John Dehlin [01:11:58] Okay.

Chanel Achenbach [01:11:58] Definitely the end.

John Dehlin [01:11:59] We'll put a pin in that for sure. Thank you, Chanel.

Chanel Achenbach [01:12:02] You're welcome.

John Dehlin [01:12:02] An audience. Some audience to get mad at me for, like, neutralizing Chanel's question, but.

Chanel Achenbach [01:12:06] Oh, no, no.

John Dehlin [01:12:07] Yeah. But I don't want to give away the ending, so.

Chanel Achenbach [01:12:10] Me neither.

John Dehlin [01:12:10] Thank you.

Chanel Achenbach [01:12:11] We.

John Dehlin [01:12:11] We'll definitely ask that. Okay. So applying for byu. Do you want to talk about your BYU experience now?

Arriving at BYU and Finding the Black Community

Nathan Byrd [01:12:20] Yeah. So I applied to byu. I remember I applied around the same time as a few other people in my ward. I think you'd asked me earlier if I had close friends in high school. I think we kind of moved away from it, but I wouldn't say that I had close friends. I definitely had people that I was friends with in the ward, but the same thing I Always kind of felt that disconnect. I think part of that had to do with moving a lot. You know, they had grown up together or had been together for several years. And here I come, this random Black kid at 12, 13 years old.

Nathan Byrd [01:12:48] And so, you know, there were. You know, we definitely did things that were fun, but also because of how orthodox my family was, there were a lot of things that I didn't necessarily get to participate in. So if they went to go see movies, like they went to go see, you know, the Dark Night. When that came out, and I wasn't allowed to go see that, or they went to go see Harry Potter, I wasn't allowed to see that.

Nathan Byrd [01:13:05] And, you know, they would have sleepovers, and my parents would come pick me up early because they didn't want me to spend the night. So different things like that kind of helped me feel a little bit. A little bit disconnected. But they were still, you know, really good, really good kids. But they also had their prejudices. There was a kid that definitely gave me hell for a while.

John Dehlin [01:13:25] Mormon kid.

Nathan Byrd [01:13:26] Yeah, in the word. He just. He picked on me. He loved to mess with me. Bishop's kid. He loved to mess with me, and he made me pretty miserable for a while. Then it kind of all came to a head. And then things, you know, they got a little bit better after that. But I remember applying to BYU at the same time as a couple other kids, and I remember getting told, oh, of course you'll get into byu. You're black. You know, and that was just kind of the. The excuse is like, oh, well, you know, he'll get in because he's black. It wasn't about the fact that I got a better ACT score than they did or the fact that I had good grades. It was, oh, because I'm black, I'm going to get into byu.

John Dehlin [01:14:02] So I remember people would say that.

Nathan Byrd [01:14:04] Yeah, I remember hearing that a couple of times and just thinking like, well, okay, I mean, no, that's not why I'm getting in. I'm getting in because I did well in school and, you know, because my grades are good and because I did well in the actual. But, yeah, the assumption was that I would get into BYU because I was black, you know, because of affirmative action, which doesn't really do much for black people anyway. But, yeah, and then I applied. I got in, and then I went out. I was actually 17 when I started. My parents couldn't wait for me to get out of the house. Yeah. So they booted me out there, and I started spring of 2014. And I remember a couple months in, I just remember feeling very, very,

Chanel Achenbach [01:14:46] I

Nathan Byrd [01:14:46] was very upset, very frustrated. My roommate, he was a nice enough guy, but I remember being like, wow, this guy is not living the standards of the church, you know, And I was very holier than thou, very self righteous, you know, growing up, expecting to follow all the commandments. I remember he would sneak over to the girls dorm and spend the night there. And I would just be like, that doesn't mesh. You know, why this person is, they're supposed to be member of the church. Why aren't they following the, the commandments? And I just remember noticing a lot of people at BYU not following that lifestyle.

Nathan Byrd [01:15:15] And that was the first time that I had really seen that play out. Because in my house we did everything, you know, the Sabbath, we kept the Sabbath day holy. And like we only watched Bible movies on Sundays, you know, to that, to that extent. And so I remember calling my parents and just talking about how alone I felt and how much I didn't fit in.

Nathan Byrd [01:15:35] And they basically just kind of told me, hey, you know, give it some time, you'll find those people eventually. And yeah, so I toughed it out through spring and summer.

John Dehlin [01:15:46] Were you in the dorms?

Chanel Achenbach [01:15:47] Your.

Nathan Byrd [01:15:47] Yeah, I was in the dorms. Heelman or Healing halls.

John Dehlin [01:15:50] Okay.

Nathan Byrd [01:15:51] And so yeah, I was in the dorms.

John Dehlin [01:15:52] Are healing halls pretty white these days or.

Nathan Byrd [01:15:55] Oh yeah, they've, they've always been. I mean, BYU itself, when I was

John Dehlin [01:15:59] at byu, pretty much the only black students would have been athletes and maybe a few students from Africa and that was it. And it would have been less than what, 5%, like 2%, 1%.

Nathan Byrd [01:16:12] Oh, it's 0.44.

John Dehlin [01:16:14] Holy moly. And that's in 2023.

Nathan Byrd [01:16:16] Yeah. Of 36, 000 students. So that's about 3, 400 out of 36, 000. And that includes anyone who checks the black box. So they could be biracial, they could be international students, they could be, you know, anybody. So I would say I know probably like 200 of those and the rest I've never heard of or never seen. But yeah, so 0.44% black population at BYU. So BYU is very, very white school. I think it's 81% white. And yeah, so my time there, you know, I was surrounded by white people that I didn't mesh with on a spiritual level or on a cultural level.

John Dehlin [01:16:55] Spiritually, you were probably more righteous than ever or more in terms of the church Orthodox.

Nathan Byrd [01:17:01] Yeah. In terms of the gospel I was definitely more righteous.

John Dehlin [01:17:06] So I, I, I would, I was a really obedient student byu. So I just like think of all BYU students as being like really orthodox. So you saw a different side of that?

Nathan Byrd [01:17:18] Oh yeah, very different side.

John Dehlin [01:17:19] So what are, what are white kids at BYU like in your experience on average, in terms of how they're less orthodox?

Nathan Byrd [01:17:28] I would say that you have, you definitely have those ones that are very, very obedient. And then you also have the ones who are just like regular college students but on the, on the down low. They just kind of keep things hidden.

John Dehlin [01:17:40] Meaning they're doing what?

Nathan Byrd [01:17:42] Just mostly, I think it's mostly just having sex. You know, they'll be messing around with each other having sex, but then they just kind of keep it a secret and it's, you know, you pretend not to. When I was, when I first got to be with byu, Nick Mo's were popular. I don't know if you have, it's non committal makeouts is what they called it, which is basically just like a one night stand, but you just kiss instead of, instead of have sex, you know, and some kids would take it further. But yeah, it's very, very weird environment. And you know, a lot of kids trying to find loopholes around things, go oral, stay moral, that kind of stuff. Right. So it's like if you're not having penetrative sex, then you're still following the commandments or you know, okay, so you,

John Dehlin [01:18:23] you hear about that now like on Tick Tock as like a 53 year old Mormon and you don't know how much that's real versus just like hyperbole or rumor that ex Mormon tick tockers want to kind of throw in the church's face. Are you saying that, you know, the, the soaking, the docking, the that that's jump pumping or whatever, that's real.

Nathan Byrd [01:18:48] You know, I, I don't, I don't know anybody personally that ever did that. I don't know anybody personally that jump pumped or docked or anything like that. But then again, most of my time at BYU was spent associating with people that I trusted, which is mainly black people. And so I didn't really run in those communities. So I'm sure that it happens. You know, I definitely have heard about it, but I just didn't know anybody personally because people that I knew were the kind of people who would just be like, I'm just going to have sex. Right? I don't, you know, they were people that would just say and this is black and White people, they were just people that were like, you know, if I'm going to break the rules, I'm just going to do what I want to do, live my life.

Nathan Byrd [01:19:23] I'm not going to be fake about it. I think that's probably the thing that separates a lot of BYU students from other college students is that there's a. There's this idea of perfectionism and there's this idea and culture of being the perfect Mormon, but then nobody is, and they just keep it all a secret. And I think that kind of contributes to the toxic culture at byu.

John Dehlin [01:19:41] But. But the go oral, stay moral. That's something it sounds like you heard or.

Nathan Byrd [01:19:47] Yeah, I definitely heard that. And that's not. That's not something that's new that's been around for, for decades.

John Dehlin [01:19:51] And I have heard about Mormon kids and this is graphic. So turn off the volume if their kids watching or listening, having anal sex, because that's not.

Nathan Byrd [01:20:02] Yeah, that was a thing too. Yeah, I definitely heard about.

John Dehlin [01:20:04] So you did, you did hear about that happening? Yeah.

Nathan Byrd [01:20:07] Anal sex is not real sex in some people's eyes. Or it's like a way of getting around that.

John Dehlin [01:20:13] Okay, Chanel.

Chanel Achenbach [01:20:16] So he might not know people personally. And we think about circles around. And I still know people now. I knew people then. And the thing that I tried to do on Facebook a lot is tell parents, listen to your kids. Your children are talking to me. I know what your kids are doing and they want to feel safe. A lot of them are struggling with porn. A lot of them are struggling with all kinds of different things and they don't feel comfortable telling their parents. And at this age, embracing their sexuality is important. You might not want to hear, you might not like it. I mean, I joke with nate about my 14 year old's questions and.

Chanel Achenbach [01:20:57] It's normal, it's going to happen. So accept it. Talk to your kids. And yes, and the thing about it is it's not just with kids. I know adults in marriages that are doing these same things outside their marriages because, you know, it's not really cheating and it's not really doing this. I mean, there's all of these things that are happening. The only thing I don't know about personally or have heard about personally is the armpit sex. Everything else they've told me about it. Who's with why? Because they trusted that I wouldn't judge them and said, hey, you know, you got to think about this. This is what can happen.

Chanel Achenbach [01:21:32] But everything else, yes, on a pretty consistent basis, having conversations with with teenage, not teenagers, but with like people my age and younger, like 20 year olds, 19 year olds, 22 year olds, people that are married. Yeah, this, this stuff happens.

John Dehlin [01:21:49] Yeah. Okay.

Chanel Achenbach [01:21:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:21:53] So you're hanging mostly around black kids at byu and where do you find them?

Nathan Byrd [01:21:59] Through the Black Student Union. That didn't come for a while.

John Dehlin [01:22:01] Oh, so where'd you, how did you find friends your freshman year?

Nathan Byrd [01:22:05] So my freshman year, I remember specifically after the end of summer term, I remember making the decision that I was going to. And I told myself I was going to reinvent myself. And at the time I thought that was a healthy thing, but really what I was just doing was changing my personality to assimilate. I started to come into my black identity when I was in high school.

Nathan Byrd [01:22:24] During the times that I was in school, you know, I was connecting with more black people. And so I definitely started to come into that identity. And then when I got to byu, I realized that identity was not going to mesh. And so I ended up saying, oh, I'm going to reinvent myself. And I tried to become that likable black guy, the one who always makes the self deprecating racist jokes and says stuff like, oh, if it's not, it's not racist. It's not what I used to say. I think I would say it's not racist if it's funny, you know, things like that to kind of make myself more palatable.

Nathan Byrd [01:22:54] And I did that for like a semester. And then I was like, I can't do this, I hate this. And then I kind of closed off and I stopped. Stopped really associating with white people. And that's when I really, you know, connected with the Black Student Union, started connecting more with them. And yeah, from then on it was,

John Dehlin [01:23:11] if you'll share what were the elements of your black identity that you, that you matured into in high school that you ended up undoing when you went through your re. Reinventing, how did you. What aspects of your blackness did you end up undoing to reinvent yourself? If you're able to share, was it closed? Was it talk? Was it lots of things?

Nathan Byrd [01:23:36] So a lot of it was. So in high school is when I really learned how to code switch.

John Dehlin [01:23:40] Tell us what that is.

Nathan Byrd [01:23:41] Yeah. So for those who don't know, code switching is basically the ability of a black person or a person of color to change the way that they interact in different environments. So for instance, if you speak to a black person in a corporate setting or at their job, they're not going to talk to you the same way that they would talk to their family or to another black person.

Nathan Byrd [01:24:03] And so in high school is when I really learned how to code switch, because I realized that, okay, me acting the same way that I act at church is not going to fly, you know, with these middle school kids or these high school kids. And so I learned how to code switch, interact with black people. I started getting more into just different aspects of black culture. You know, I used to think that hip hop was evil, right? That rap was evil. And so I wouldn't listen to rappers because, you know, I thought that their music was demonic. And so I only listened to Christian rap.

Nathan Byrd [01:24:30] So I started to get more into. Just into different elements of black culture and trying to understand that. So I was still very, very new in that, still developing. And then when I got to high school or when I got to byu, a lot of that was kind of undone as I tried to become more palatable and go back to acting like that, that good black Mormon in school.

John Dehlin [01:24:52] Hmm. So, yeah, so you would have started out BYU speaking, even dressing in certain ways that you ended up undoing?

Nathan Byrd [01:25:07] Not necessarily. It was more so more of a mindset than anything. I just kind of went back to thinking. I think I went back to kind of putting my black self into a box and kind of bringing out that black Mormon kid. It's difficult to describe, but I think I just kind of. I realized that if I was going to fit in, I would have to be more palatable. And so I just kind of, like, toned down certain things about myself and certain beliefs that I may have had. I think I just kind of toned all of those down and just tried to fit in as much as I could, you know, tell racist jokes about myself or talk about that.

John Dehlin [01:25:52] What would make you feel pressured to tell racist jokes in front of white BYU students?

Nathan Byrd [01:25:59] Because if I could make them laugh and make them see, like, oh, I was that cool guy, the cool black guy, then they would be more inclined to talk to me, to invite me to things, to accept me. And it worked, you know, because I became very palatable in some. In some respects. And, yeah, I just kind of, like, put myself into that position of being the token for a little while. And I did that, you know, before my mission. And then I. I started to kind of move more away from that. But it took the form because I hadn't really found that black community entirely yet. It just took the form of me kind of closing myself off and not really talking to people as much. But, yeah, there was definitely just that effort to, to kind of make myself into the token.

John Dehlin [01:26:45] I'm going to just be honest and disclose something. Like, I'm trying to think, okay, how do I connect this to my experience? I'm thinking, oh wait, as a BYU student, I never knew a black person, so like, there's no way for me to even like try and connect with the experience that you're saying. Because I didn't even have a single black friend as a BYU student. What the four or five years. Maybe someone's going to email me and remind me that I did, but I can't think of one. But I'm trying to think about what is this cultural phenomenon where white people are going to feel better if a black person says racist things and makes racist jokes?

John Dehlin [01:27:21] And a couple things come to mind as I'm just trying to put my brain in that space. It would be. One is that white people would have racist thoughts. And so having the black person say those things would help reinforce what they already think and feel. That's one theory. And then the other is just they might feel stressed or tense about like not knowing how awkward they should feel or how much white guilt they should feel or how, how bad they should feel. And so if the, if the black person they're hanging around is jokey and self effacing and even racist, that diffuses the tension of potential guilt or awkwardness.

John Dehlin [01:27:59] But then I'm just thinking how awful that burdens on you. Not only to be like almost betraying your culture, but, but, but unraveling important parts of your identity to please the people around you. Like, I'm just, I'm working, just kind of really put myself in that scenario and understand it. And I'm feeling sad. Not that it's about me, I'm just trying to relate.

Nathan Byrd [01:28:24] One thing I've learned is that most white people hate being uncomfortable. And a black person who is proud of who they are as a black person and who is unabashed in that is going to make them feel uncomfortable because it's going to remind them of the things that probably they and their ancestors have done to black people in this country.

Nathan Byrd [01:28:48] And so it's kind of like you said, making those racist jokes, it kind of alleviates that gut. And it's like, oh, well, if he's saying that, then I don't have to feel uncomfortable because he doesn't really care about it. I know this is someone who's not gonna make me feel uncomfortable, but one of the things about the black menaces is that we make people Uncomfortable, we make them sit in that feeling. And, and it's not a feeling that white people have to experience very often because everything around them is designed to make them comfortable, whether it's the movies that they watch.

Nathan Byrd [01:29:16] If you go to the store and you buy a band Aid, all the Band Aids are white. Skin tone, things like that that we don't even think about that are designed to make white people feel like the norm or make them feel comfortable. So anything that challenges that is going to be very difficult for them. So that's why a lot of white people feel so awkward around black people people is because it challenges their idea of. Of, of normality and it challenges their idea of what it means to be a white person in America.

John Dehlin [01:29:44] Okay, so you, you don't, you don't have the social interactions that you want, so you try to assimilate. And you do that for a little while by having your re. Reinventing of yourself. But you say after like a semester, that was what for you.

Nathan Byrd [01:30:01] It was just exhausting. And so I definitely scaled it back. I stopped trying to get to know as many people. You know, there are a couple people that I would talk with, hang out with, but I definitely started moving, gravitating more towards people of color and black people. And then not too long after that, I ended up going on my mission. And that was a difficult experience in itself because there's me trying to figure out my black identity and who I am as a black person, but then also having to live and communicate with white people 24, seven for. For two straight years. So that, that definitely. I think my mission was definitely one of the. It was one of the most formative times of my life and also one of the most difficult times because it, it taught me a lot about myself and about other people and about the church.

John Dehlin [01:30:49] So where were you called?

Nathan Byrd [01:30:50] Houston, Texas.

John Dehlin [01:30:52] Okay.

Nathan Byrd [01:30:52] Houston, Texas. It was the Texas Houston Mission, but it covered North Texas. So all the way up to. It's been so long Waller. And I'm see Crockett. Crockett, Texas, and then Huntsville, all the way up there. Oh, and then it went all the way down to like the, the northern part of Houston. So we stopped at like Fifth Ward,

John Dehlin [01:31:14] the Heights, really quickly. So, you know, there's this analogy of, of going to Utah, going to byu, kind of like Oz, like Dorothy going to Oz, or Galinda going to Oz. You've built up something as like the place is like the God's university or the Lord's state or like where Mormonism is really done right and you say you were BYU a year and a half before your mission, is that right?

Nathan Byrd [01:31:44] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:31:46] Was there a sense of disappointment about what Utah and BYU were like versus what you had hoped and expected it would be? Just overall?

Nathan Byrd [01:31:57] Yeah, absolutely. I thought it was going to be a place where I could find like minded people, where I could find black people who, you know, were members of the church like me. And then I got here and I found out that that wasn't the case, that there was a lot of, I guess you could call it hypocrisy or just duality with people pretending to be something that they weren't. And I just found that Utah and BYU just had a very, I guess OZ is the best way to put it, a very not as good as people hold it up to be. And the only experiences that I'd ever heard from BYU were people that had left BYU and were active in the church and all of that.

Nathan Byrd [01:32:34] And so those are only experiences I ever heard. And so course it was always going to be the, oh, I met my wife at byu, then I graduated from the business school and then I got a job working for such and such. And those are the only experiences I ever heard. And that's all, that's what I expected to find here. And then when I got here that wasn't the case. And I realized it was also wasn't the case for me being a black person at BYU because that was like another layer of ways that I didn't fit in.

John Dehlin [01:32:57] I would imagine that would have felt disappointing.

Nathan Byrd [01:32:59] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:33:03] Really quickly in terms of microaggressions at BYU and in Utah, the pre mission time, I'm just imagining everybody's assuming you're an athlete. That's one. But that's all the time. What were some of those microaggressions?

Nathan Byrd [01:33:16] Well, people assuming that I was an athlete, people assuming that I was a convert to the church. You know, there's kind of that idea like, oh, well, you had to have joined the church because there's no way that you have a family that's, you know, I remember one time I, you know, there was a time that I wanted to play football for BYU and I remember going over near the practice and just looking through the fence and I got stopped by a security guard and he asked to see my ID and he's like, oh, I just wanted to make sure you weren't, you know. And then he saw that I was a BYU student and he was like, oh, well I, I just wanted to make sure you weren't A spy for uvu.

Nathan Byrd [01:33:45] And I didn't think about it at the time, but I was like, UVU doesn't even have a football team. Like, why would I be, you know, so just things like that. I remember I got pulled over by police on bikes all the time. They would reprimand me for.

John Dehlin [01:33:58] You're on your bike?

Nathan Byrd [01:33:59] Yeah, well, I'd be on a bike, and they'd be on a bike too. And they would stop me and reprimand me for riding my bike on campus as another student would ride past on their bike. I got ticketed for longboarding on campus. I don't know if that was necessarily like a microaggression or if it was just a. But I've never heard of anybody else getting ticketed.

John Dehlin [01:34:17] Oh, you got like, you had to pay a fine kind of ticket?

Nathan Byrd [01:34:19] Yes, I was longboarding and a cop on a bike pulled me over and gave me an $80 ticket for. For longboarding on campus. Okay. And now I go there and students longboard all the time. So I don't think that was necessarily a microaggression. Like, I probably shouldn't have been longboarding, but, you know, just little things like that that just made my experience more difficult.

John Dehlin [01:34:37] Like, this is stereotypical. Like people wanting to touch your hair with it.

Nathan Byrd [01:34:41] Yeah, that too.

John Dehlin [01:34:42] Yeah.

Nathan Byrd [01:34:43] Just like wanting to feel it because at the time I just had like a buzz cut. But they would always want to feel my head. Um, the kids asking me, like, if I liked fried chicken, stuff like that.

John Dehlin [01:34:51] So that. That was real. Okay. Okay. And was that something that, like, weighed on you or is this funny? No big deal. Like, all those microaggressions, do they add up?

Nathan Byrd [01:35:03] They do, but you don't necessarily realize it. I think there's different stages to racial development. There's actually a model. There's like five different stages of racial development. There's a time where you're not really aware of things. There's a time where you start to become aware of them. And then there's a time where you kind of. That awareness turns into anger and you start to. To just feel a lot of anger. Maybe you can explain it, maybe you can't. And then, you know, after that stage, then you move into a stage where you start to. To kind of turn it into activism. Right. So you've. And then after that, there's like a.

Nathan Byrd [01:35:36] Like a self actualization stage where, like, you know, you have a desire not just to, to do activism and to surround yourself with symbols, but then you have a desire to help Other people as well. So it's definitely progression.

Nathan Byrd [01:35:46] But, yeah, during that time, I think I started to feel angry, and I just didn't really understand where that anger was coming from. But all those things definitely added up.

Mission Calls and Missionary Experiences

John Dehlin [01:35:54] So did you want to go foreign? Did you, you know, did you have hopes of where you would go? And then how did you feel to get called to Houston?

Nathan Byrd [01:36:04] Yeah, I actually really wanted to go to Australia and speak Chinese. That was my. My thing. I had taken some Chinese lessons when I was in high school, middle school, and, yeah, I just always felt interested in that. And so I actually really wanted to go to Australia and speak Chinese there.

Nathan Byrd [01:36:20] But, you know, small chance of that happening. I thought it would have been cool to go foreign. But, yeah, it was called the Houston, and I wasn't necessarily disappointed. I remember thinking, oh, you know, I was. Because I'd never been out of the country. I was hoping to just kind of go out and experience something different. But I was like, well, this is where the Lord wants me. So. So that's where I'm going to go. I'm going to make the best of it.

Nathan Byrd [01:36:37] And so that's what I did. I went to Houston and I worked hard to become the best missionary that I could. And when I first got out, I didn't get the best start. My trainer, he was a good guy, but he was also a little bit interesting. He'd only been out for a few months, and he was from Utah, and he had some.

Nathan Byrd [01:36:59] Some interesting ideas about life and about the world and about being a missionary. His goal was not to change. That was his whole goal. He would tell me frequently, I want to go home with all the same clothes that I got or that I came out with. So he didn't want to wear out his shoes. He didn't want to get any holes in his pants. And we were in a biking area. And so I remember as a young missionary, I'm biking, and I would have to stop and wait for him to catch up because he was biking slowly because he didn't want to tear his pants.

John Dehlin [01:37:25] It sounds like ocd probably.

Nathan Byrd [01:37:27] It could have been. I don't know if he had a diagnosis at the time, but it could have been something like that. But, yeah, he would say he wanted to go home and the day after his mission, come downstairs, cut on the TV, grab a Dr. Pepper, and he wanted his mom to come down and say, you haven't changed a bit. That was like his whole thing.

Nathan Byrd [01:37:45] So he didn't want to change at all. And he did his Best to train me, but he didn't really teach me the rules. And so I didn't start off as the most obedient missionary. You know, I was. I was motivated. I wanted to work hard. But it wasn't until I was about six months in that I really kind of got my.

Nathan Byrd [01:38:04] I guess my awakening moment where I was like, oh, I need to be a more obedient missionary. Our mission president had done his own conference where he, you know, basically chastises. Chastised all of us for not being obedient enough and told us that if we wanted to see success, then we would need to.

Nathan Byrd [01:38:20] To follow the rules and practice perfect obedience. And so that's when I really started working on that. But during my mission, I had a lot of interesting companions, like my first one. And my mission president would put me into areas where there were more black people, which is to be expected because he wanted me to baptize black people, or he felt that I would be more effective in that. And my goal was to bring more black people into the church because at this point, you know, I really felt like I wanted to spread the gospel, but I also wanted to see more people like me in the church.

Nathan Byrd [01:38:56] And I was very, very, very passionate about making the church a better place for black people. And so, yeah, a lot of my work was spent trying to bring black people into the church, get them baptized. And I was just decently successful at that. I baptized 19 people.

Nathan Byrd [01:39:15] Most of them, or let me see, all of them were either Hispanic or black, except for one person. And they were someone who was. Was trans, had identified as trans as a teenager, and then had switched back to not being trans. And then they had gotten baptized. They were a white person, but they still had that. That marginalized or that. That marginalized part of their. Of who they were.

Nathan Byrd [01:39:41] But pretty much no one that I baptized, I don't think anyone that I baptized is still fully active in the church. And all of them were people of color. So that was. That definitely hurt for me because it was like, you know, I want to bring these people in, and then once they come in and then once I leave, then they just, you know, that was it.

John Dehlin [01:40:02] Did you have theories about why your black converts, black Mormon converts, would fall inactive?

Nathan Byrd [01:40:07] Oh, no, it was because of the war members, for sure.

John Dehlin [01:40:11] Why? What about them?

Nathan Byrd [01:40:12] Yeah, so in one of my last areas, it was an area that hadn't baptized, I think in. I think they hadn't baptized in. It was at least nine months. It might have been a year, But I Think it was about nine months to a year that they had not baptized anyone in that area. And at this point, I was a powerhouse missionary.

Nathan Byrd [01:40:28] You know, I, you know, people were. People in the mission were saying, oh, you're going to be the next ap and, you know, all of that kind of stuff. And I. I did my best to be humble and to be righteous, but those things did kind of get to me as a missionary. Being in leadership positions is kind of very sought after. And it's like a blueprint of your success in the church. You go on, you get to be a district leader, and if you do that fast, then you're a good missionary. And then if you get to be a zone leader quickly, then you're a good missionary.

Nathan Byrd [01:40:58] And then the next step after that, the best of the best get picked to be the assistant to the mission president. And so, you know, even though I was trying to be humble, there was still kind of that ambition there of wanting to be the best missionary, but also at the same time wanting to serve the Lord, you know. And so people definitely recognized me as a very good missionary. And I definitely stood out because I was a black missionary. And so again, there was that pressure to represent all black people and to represent all black missionaries in the church.

Nathan Byrd [01:41:27] So in one of the areas I was in, one of my last areas, hadn't baptized in many, many months. And I came in and I ended up baptizing nine people in that area in the. I think I was there for one transfer, maybe two. I was there for two transfers. And so in the two transfers that I was there, I baptized nine people. One of them was a black family.

Nathan Byrd [01:41:53] It was a mom and five kids. And then the father and I was able to, you know, my goal. I remember writing in my journal that I wanted to baptize a black family before I went home. And so I found them. You know, we tracked it into them and we taught them, and, you know, they felt really, really strongly that they wanted to join the church. And the father had actually been. He'd been baptized before and then had just not been in the church for a while. But he went, you know, got back active and got the priesthood so that he could baptize his family.

Nathan Byrd [01:42:24] And, you know, so we worked to make sure that everything worked out for that. And we had him, you know, got him all baptized, and the dad was able to baptize the family. It was beautiful. And I got really close to the kids. But then as soon as I left, pretty much within a couple of weeks after I Left. They stopped going to church. And I remember wondering why. And I talked to them about it, and they said it was because of some of the things that some members of the ward had said. There was one lady in particular who said that she felt like the.

Nathan Byrd [01:42:50] The church had saved them. You know, making comments like, oh, you know, the church saved you guys, or we saved you, and the kids not really feeling welcome in the. The youth program, where a lot of the reasons they did just stop going. And so, yeah, that happened.

John Dehlin [01:43:06] Let's insult, just for those who aren't going to connect, what's insulting about being told the church saved the family?

Nathan Byrd [01:43:13] Again, it kind of goes into that idea of black people not belonging in the church, you know, the assumption that there's something wrong with black people, that black people are cursed. So saying that the church saved someone, you're assuming that for that family, that things were bad for them before they became members of the church, or that being black was a bad thing, and that coming into the church helped remove them from that bad thing. He was an older woman, older white woman, and, you know, obviously she didn't mean anything by it, but still just those. Those ideas in her head that the church is taught and, you know, the ideas about black people being cursed, all of those things just kind of led to her making those comments and saying a few other things. So.

John Dehlin [01:43:59] So it was predominantly white Mormon ward members saying racist or uncomfortable, awkward things, bigoted things, or feeling uncomfortable or marginalizing the new black converts.

Nathan Byrd [01:44:15] I would say it was not necessarily even a lot of people saying things, but more so just the overall feeling of not feeling welcome or not feeling like a part of wherever they were, which I'd say is. Was very common amongst all the people that I baptized. They would go, and then they would just not really feel comfortable there, and the members of the ward wouldn't really know what to do with them.

Chanel Achenbach [01:44:35] Chanel, so I have a couple of questions. So first, I had a question about your farewell, and when you opened your mission call, I would be curious to. To know what that was like, because my experience was really weird because my family wasn't members. So I opened my call by myself. So I'd like to know what that was like for him to open his call. Was he. Did he do it like the typical Mormons do it now, where you get your family together and it's broadcast and you. You guys do it that way? And also he said, oh, yeah, and his farewell. There's some protocols. I didn't know about a farewell. I was what? 21. And I didn't know. I picked a song and everyone and was like, why'd you pick that song? But anyway, my point is, I would just be curious about his farewell and his mission call.

John Dehlin [01:45:27] Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Byrd [01:45:28] So I. I don't really remember my farewell, to be honest. My family had moved into a new ward while I was at byu, so when I came home, I was just there for a couple of months and I gave my farewell speech. I don't remember what I said as far as opening my mission call. It was very. Just regular. It was just my immediate family, and then I had my grandparents on the phone, and so I just opened it up and read where I was going, and that was about. It wasn't really too much to it.

John Dehlin [01:45:55] Okay, okay.

Chanel Achenbach [01:45:56] Also, um. When he was talking about. I think there's something important to know, John, is when he was talking about how the overall feeling of that family being in that ward when they first got baptized. I think something that people need to understand is, if you notice, especially here in Utah, all of the Mormons in, like, say it's Fifth Ward, everybody pretty much lives around each other. So they hang out. They hang out outside of church, they barbecue together. Some of them go on skiing trips together. They go on boating trips. Right. They're not including black people. Like, they invite me to dinner. But when it came to engaging on a serious friendship level, it was more fellowshipping than it was friendshiping. They weren't my friends. They were. And that happens a lot with black people and members.

John Dehlin [01:46:48] Yeah. Thank you, Chanel. You know, this is. This is probably a really big topic, but growing up again in Katy, Texas, one of the saddest realizations I had is when I'd walk into the lunchroom in high school and there'd be white kids, and then the black kids would all sit together, and then the Hispanic kids would all sit together.

John Dehlin [01:47:09] And it was. Every year, it was that way. You just, you know, there might have been a tiny bit of. But that people wanted to be with people like them. And I hated that. Even as a Mormon kid, I hated that. But. But that's also makes all the sense in the world. You tend to want to hang around people that are more like you than not.

John Dehlin [01:47:27] And so I can imagine that also being a factor if these converts are being. Being brought into a ward where nobody looks like them. That's probably just not even culturally comfortable. Is that a thing?

Nathan Byrd [01:47:43] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:47:44] Yeah.

Nathan Byrd [01:47:44] And I think some of it could be historical as well.

John Dehlin [01:47:47] Yeah.

Nathan Byrd [01:47:49] White people have a historical predisposition To. To harm people that don't look like them. Back in the day, that was more physical, you know, just not. Not that long ago, 67 years ago, it took the form of lynchings and. And, you know, mob riots and burnings and things like that. And now I think it's more.

Nathan Byrd [01:48:13] More social or more emotional, things like that. And, you know, I don't think that it's necessarily intent now. Not like it was then. For most people. I don't think it's an intent, but I think it's just a socialization. And the way that culture has played out, and then also the way that people view race, I think it can be very, very difficult to kind of break down those barriers. And so I think a lot of the. I think the black people that I baptized, when they went into those space. Spaces, white people just didn't know what to do in order to help them feel truly welcome.

Nathan Byrd [01:48:46] And, you know, it's like you said, they would invite them to dinner, but not necessarily, like, include them in everything. And it's a difficult spot to be in. And so it's much easier to just kind of go back to what you're familiar with, what you're comfortable with. And then on top of that, there's also the layer of racism within the church, things that church leaders have said. A lot of times what would happen is family members would find out that, you know, these people were talking with Mormon missionaries and they would say, well, hey, don't you know that they said this about black people? Or don't you know about the priesthood ban? And then that would kind of be one of those humps that's hard to get over for a good reason.

Confronting the Priesthood Ban on a Mission

John Dehlin [01:49:21] So going back to your BYU time, I wanted to ask you about this then. Did you learn about the Curse of Cain and the priesthood ban by the time you're at byu?

Nathan Byrd [01:49:31] I feel like it was mentioned a couple of times, but again, I still didn't really. It wasn't really something that I fully understood the implications of. I definitely knew about it, but I hadn't taken the time to figure out what that meant to me. It wasn't to my mission that I. That I really did that.

John Dehlin [01:49:50] So do you want to talk about what about your mission woke you up to the Curse of Cain slash priesthood ban kind of Mormon doctrine slash history.

Nathan Byrd [01:50:00] Yeah. So I started to study the scriptures differently as a missionary. Before, I would just read. But as a missionary, you know, you're taught to study and understand. And I remember being like, well, if I'm going To go out and teach people. I need to know more than just the stories. I need to understand the doctrine. And so I started to read things differently. And I remember reading about, you know, the dark skinned curse and just thinking, well, that's weird. You know, that doesn't make any sense. God's not racist. And so I remember, you know, trying to figure that out. And then I would go through and I watched blacks in the scriptures where,

John Dehlin [01:50:33] you know, this is Marvin Perkins.

Nathan Byrd [01:50:35] Yeah, Marvin Perkins and Darius Gray. And they talk about their interpretation of that and how it's not actually skin, it's scales of darkness. And then you see the, where the church changed the footnotes to talk about scales and they reference you to another scripture in Alma where it talks about the scales of darkness falling, falling off of their eyes. And it's like, oh, scales mean skin and this and that. And I just remember thinking, okay, I mean that doesn't make a ton of sense, but I'll accept it. And then, you know, I listened to. There was this guy named Mr. Mormon. I don't know if you've heard of him before, but he would just like talk about different points of Mormon doctrine and kind of provide his own theories on it.

Nathan Byrd [01:51:08] And so he talked about how he didn't fully understand blacks in the priesthood, but the Levites were banned from having the priesthood for X amount of. No, no. Was it all the Jews were banned from having the priesthood except for the Levites for X amount of time. So maybe that's why God did it. I just remember listening to all those kinds of things and like, okay, that I guess, but it just still didn't quite sit well with me. And so I started looking into other things and I, you know, I started reading what, what people like Bruce R. McConkie had said about black people and David who's What Bruce R.

Nathan Byrd [01:51:40] McConkey, he taught, you know, all the things black people were cursed that, that they shouldn't mix seed with white people and the Negro is not equal to that of any other race. And they were fence sitters in heaven, meaning that in the war in heaven that they talk about in revelations that black people couldn't decide which side they were going to be on. And so they sat on the fence. And then when they came to earth, God cursed them with black skin. He taught those ideas or at least perpetuated those. I don't think they originated with him, but he wrote in the first edition of Mormon doctrine so many inaccuracies that had to be recalled, different things like that.

Nathan Byrd [01:52:22] And Then I read more about things that Brigham Young said, and I started to think, okay, this goes beyond just something that was a blip in history. This goes beyond something that this wasn't something that was of God. This was something that was taught by men. And so that's kind of when I adopted the idea I'm sort of moving away from the church is true, which is something even as a kid, I never said. I never said the church is true or I know this church is true. I always didn't really like that saying.

Nathan Byrd [01:52:51] And so I would just say that. You know, I would state statements. I said, I believe that Joseph Smith is a prophet. I believe that this church has the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I believe that, you know, we need the ordinances to get back to God. I would say all those things. And then I started moving away from saying, you know, I started saying that the. The gospel is true, but the church isn't.

John Dehlin [01:53:10] What's the difference in your mind when you're developing that more nuanced view of Mormonism? Yeah, go ahead.

Nathan Byrd [01:53:18] Sorry. No, so. So for me, saying that the gospel is true but the church wasn't, was. Was me saying that the church had a lot of flaws in it, that there were a lot of imperfections within the church, things that didn't add up, but that the gospel of Jesus Christ, the things that he taught, were perfect. And so then I really started to focus on what did Jesus Christ teach?

Nathan Byrd [01:53:40] And, you know, focusing on that. When I taught. When I taught the people that I was teaching on my mission, I would teach them about the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that's really how I would get through to them, is by focusing on him rather than focusing on all the different rules in the church.

Nathan Byrd [01:53:56] But, yeah, so when I had started studying all those things and realizing all these different things, and I think I read about. I was like, they don't talk about it now, but I think it was like, in 1949, I think it was Joseph Fielding Smith released the First Presidency, released a statement talking about the church and the Negro.

Nathan Byrd [01:54:14] And they said that it was a doctrine. They said it was a church doctrine that black people were cursed. And now they try to say it's a policy, but that's not true because the First Presidency literally said it was a doctrine.

Nathan Byrd [01:54:27] But you can't find that declaration without a lot of searching. When I was reading those things, and I realized, okay, I have to kind of start distancing myself from the church aspect. But I never had any notions of thinking that it wasn't true or anything like that. I still very much believed in the gospel, very much believed in the principles of the church, but just some of those doctrinal issues I had decided to kind of distance myself from. And so that's what I did. I started saying, you know, the gospel is true, the church isn't true, you know, the people are messed up, but the gospel remains perfect. And that was. That was my way of rationalizing things for a long time.

John Dehlin [01:55:07] It's basic cognitive dissonance management. Yeah, exactly. Facing something really problematic, and so you start justifying. And that's what nuance is. It's justification, rationalization.

Nathan Byrd [01:55:19] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:55:20] Yeah.

Nathan Byrd [01:55:20] Did it work for a while?

John Dehlin [01:55:23] Yeah.

Nathan Byrd [01:55:24] A lot of, you know, a lot of the experiences that I had on my mission, in addition to the things that I was studying, definitely helped me develop that idea because, you know, like I said, my companions, as mentioned, companions, you know, and not even necessarily that they were racist towards me, but just some of the things that I did. I'm like, man, why are you a missionary? Why are you out here?

Nathan Byrd [01:55:45] What brought you? And I started to realize that a lot of missionaries weren't out there because they were dedicated to the cause or because they wanted to be missionaries. They were just out there because it was what was expected of them.

Nathan Byrd [01:55:55] I did have a missionary. One of my companions, he called me a fence sitter. I remember that he called me that two different times where he said we were trying to decide where to go to eat. And he's like, well, where do you want to go to eat? And I was like, I don't really know. I haven't thought about it. And he's like, well, didn't you get in trouble for being a fence sitter once? And I just remember being like, that was an interesting thing to say. And I didn't really address it in the time, but it just kind of stuck with me. He called me offense sitter one other time as well.

John Dehlin [01:56:24] But, like, I experienced that as deeply racist and offensive. But in your context where you're just, like, starting to learn about this stuff, I'm wondering if that even really registered.

Nathan Byrd [01:56:34] Well, so me and him for our first semester did not. Or for our first transfer, which is six weeks, we did not get along at all. We butted heads quite a bit. And it was because of a lot of those ideas he had and things that he would say like that where I really. I had to work hard not to be violent with him because there were a few times where he came very, very close to getting beat Up.

John Dehlin [01:56:59] You wanted to hurt him?

Nathan Byrd [01:57:00] Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:57:01] So you were offended?

Nathan Byrd [01:57:02] Yeah, I was. And one of the things that stopped me was my desire, one to represent, you know, because if the one black missionary in the mission beats up another missionary, then, you know, that affects how people see me.

Nathan Byrd [01:57:17] And then also, you know, being a good missionary was my whole goal. And so I set aside a lot of my personal offenses and things like that to try and make companionships work. Because they tell you, oh, the way that you. If you can't get along with your companion on your mission, then you can't get along with your future spouse. That's like the correlation. So in my head, I'm thinking, well, if I can't get along with this person who's racist and offensive and I want to beat them up, then how am I going to get along with my future wife?

Nathan Byrd [01:57:42] And so I would set a lot of those things aside to try and make companionships work. And I remember going to my mission president and being like, president, I am going to kill this kid. And he actually ended up getting sent home that semester. But even then, I showed him a lot of love. When he found out he was going home, he was. He literally collapsed on the ground and was crying. And I picked him up off the ground and I held him. You know, he was slobbering and snot all over my shoulder and everything. Here's this kid that just called me a fence sitter, and I'm showing this outpouring of love toward him that.

Nathan Byrd [01:58:09] That changed his behavior towards me later on. But, you know, there were a lot of things like that that I did just to try and be, I guess, as Christlike as possible to try and make those companionships work. And I think because of that, because I kind of developed a reputation of being able to get along with. With. With difficult missionaries. My mission president started to put me with more difficult missionaries. He would also send me into areas that were more predominantly black in hopes that I could, you know, have success there. And so I took those challenges on and did my best.

Chanel Achenbach [01:58:45] So I. I hear him. I hear him talk, and I. The part where he says that this missionary is. Or just called him these things falls to the floor. He picks him up, he's showing him compassion. That's what we do, John. That's what we're doing. People are saying horrible things to us. They're calling us racial things, and we're always comforting them, even in their racism. And when he's talking, I. I refuse to read my missionary journal for years I. I wouldn't read it because I already knew.

Nathan Byrd [01:59:22] I haven't read mine. I need to go back.

Chanel Achenbach [01:59:24] I read it.

John Dehlin [01:59:24] What?

Nathan Byrd [01:59:25] Say that I said, I haven't read my journals either. I need to go back and read them. But it's kind of been something I've been avoiding for a long time.

Chanel Achenbach [01:59:30] See, he avoided. I read it, and I was triggered. I was. I had hives on my arm. I was in tears. I called a friend. I'm like. And then I called my cousin because I talked to him a lot while I was on my mission. I said, I. I can't. I can't finish this. I cannot read this. And one of. One of the parts is the one I shared on a last episode where we went to that Pizza Hut and those missionaries were saying these racist things. And the thing about it is that affected me and maybe the reason why I couldn't read it. I didn't realize my companion was part of that.

Chanel Achenbach [02:00:05] She was part of that. She said some racist things. And it was similar to that about the fifth. No. She said, I don't know what your problem is anyway. Aren't you guys used to be sitting in the back? Maybe you should go sit in the back. Because I was mad at the racist things that that one elder was saying. And so I was getting irritated. And like, Nate, I wanted to slap some people, but I didn't. And I thought, you are female. You're a black woman. You cannot. And they were being pretty awful. But when I was reading it and I did get mad, and I didn't physically hurt anybody, but I made them uncomfortable on purpose.

Chanel Achenbach [02:00:47] I made them very uncomfortable for the racist thing they were saying. But the thing that just is killing me now is remembering my companion. She joined in with them. And before. I didn't remember that until I read it. And that missionary journal is extremely hard to read. And as Nate is talking about his experiences, I'm starting to remember things. And I've forgotten about a lot of stuff, too. But I have people on my mission contacting me after they've seen a Mormon episode, apologizing for things that. That they said and did. And I don't think people understand that. I don't. I don't think people really understand what it's like for black members around their children, other black missionaries around their.

John Dehlin [02:01:33] Thank you. So that. So you. You left for your mission in what year?

Nathan Byrd [02:01:44] Approximately 2016.

John Dehlin [02:01:46] Okay. So, yeah, you know, I referenced the bubble earlier, and I do it a lot like your high school years and even your BYU years. Were during the Internet age. So, like, the one. The one observation I have is I'm just stunned that it's not until your mission. You're 19, you're 20, where you're kind of first being made aware of these statements by Brigham Young, these statements by Joseph Smith, these, you know, Bruce Army Conkey statements, and Joseph Fielding Smith statements. Like, growing up.

Nathan Byrd [02:02:16] I also had very, very limited access to the Internet as well.

John Dehlin [02:02:19] Yeah. By design. Because your parents are trying to keep you safe, which meant keeping. It's interesting. I don't know how much your parents knew, but it's interesting that your parents, in trying to keep you Mormon and keep you safe, were actually complicit in the withholding of important information, allowing you to have informed consent about your engagement with the church.

Nathan Byrd [02:02:44] Yeah, it definitely. My upbringing definitely made it difficult to think for myself, and that's something that I'm still learning how to do. You know, obviously, I've gotten to a point where I can. But, like, I'm still learning how to just make decisions for myself and make conclusions for myself.

John Dehlin [02:02:59] Yeah. And I'm not judging anyone. I'm just saying, like, that the bubble is real. And I just can't believe that in 2015, this is like CES letter, like Mormon think, like Mormon stories. A gazillion ways on the Internet, you could have learned about all this stuff. I mean, I'm interviewing Darius Gray in 2005 on Mormon stories. You know what I mean? Like. Or Darren Smith. I don't know if that name means anything to you, but by 2006, I'm interviewing Darren Smith, who is a B. We professor who left and. But it's just amazing how effective the Church is at keeping very basic and yet super crucial information from the members who would need to learn that information the most. And that was your experience.

Nathan Byrd [02:03:46] And I was taught that all of those things were anti Mormon literature. I think it was Gordon B. Hinckley that said to stay away from that. And so that was also taught in the house. Like, stay away from anti Mormon literature. It'll, you know, destroy your testimony. And that's, you know, when you're young, that's like, the worst thing that can happen to you is having your testimony taken away. So it was just that added fear to stay away from all of those things, too.

John Dehlin [02:04:05] Yeah. And by informed by. By anti Mormon literature, they mean factual history.

Nathan Byrd [02:04:10] Right. Anything that paints the church in a bad light.

John Dehlin [02:04:13] Yeah. Yeah. So. So then you're discovering this stuff on your mission. Like, that's weird. I like Were you having black investigators say, why are you a Mormon, you're black, your church was racist, and now you're coming and trying to get me to be Mormon. Did you. Did that ever happen?

Nathan Byrd [02:04:31] I mean, that happened a couple of times, but not. Not that much. It was mostly just people not being interested, but I think, you know, it was me learning more about those things and, like, just kind of diving more into church history.

Chanel Achenbach [02:04:44] Yeah.

Nathan Byrd [02:04:45] And then also wondering why it was so difficult to get black people into the church and keep them there. I think all of those things just kind of help me be like, okay, what. What's the deal here? You know, why is it so hard for. For black people to be a part of this? You know, if it's. If it's something that's true, then why isn't it working? You know?

John Dehlin [02:05:03] Yeah. And I'm also just stunned. Like, I was alive when the priesthood band was lifted, and it bothered me before. I mean, that means I would have been eight or nine, and it would have been bothering me then, and it was bothering me after it was lifted. So I was aware of it. I was bothered by it. But I'm white, and I'm living 20, 30 years before you. And so, like, I. My brain can't get around the fact that it bothered me as a white kid growing up in Houston, way before, you know, in high school, I would have been bothered by the priesthood ban. And yet, somehow you were raised in such a bubble that it wasn't until your mission where you even started really thinking about it. Like, I. And it was with the Internet, 30 years later, for all those reasons, I, I. That. That's really stunning.

Nathan Byrd [02:06:01] Yeah, no, it is. For sure.

John Dehlin [02:06:02] Yeah. Sorry. I'm just. I'm just processing this, and I'm. I'm stunned. I would not have guessed it really quickly. So you were watching that Marvin Perkins Darius Gray dvd, what is it called again?

Nathan Byrd [02:06:17] Blacks in the Scriptures.

John Dehlin [02:06:18] How would you have gotten a copy of that on your mission?

Nathan Byrd [02:06:20] They had. They had just, like, church library, or I think they had a few at the. At the mission office. You know, it was one of the ways that you could use to teach investigators who maybe had trouble with it. So, yeah, I just remember watching it. I'd seen a little bit of it before, but it was on my mission that I really watched the whole thing. And then I had also, like, a couple other articles that I had gotten a hold of. You know, I've always had, you know, I've always loved to read, had a thirst for knowledge.

Nathan Byrd [02:06:47] I hate School, but I love to learn. And so, yeah, I just had a knack for getting my hands on different things. So I had all kind of articles and I had binders full of quotes and I would, you know, write in the footnotes of my scriptures and links to different websites and all kinds of things. But yeah, just the more I delved into it, the more things got inconsistent.

John Dehlin [02:07:06] There's a. There's a form of apologetics around race that I think is mostly applied to the Book of Mormon, but I think I remember it being associated with the blacks and Scriptures DVD and Marva Perkins trying to distinguish between the curse and the mark and somehow trying to say how the Book of Mormon wasn't racist because the. The curse wasn't the darkened skin, the curse was something else. But there's the mark, but that's not skin. Or it is. And so there's the curse and then the mark of the curse.

John Dehlin [02:07:43] Kind of this mental gymnastics that's basically trying to say that the Mormon Church is never racist. The Book of Mormon isn't racist. It didn't mean black skin. It meant black countenance, stark countenance. Are you aware of that basic justification or apologetic? And if so, can you explain it to me? Because it never. That was never the Mormonism I grew up with. It was just the curse of Cain was dark skin. Lamanite curse was dark skin, period. Did you hear a different apologetic?

Nathan Byrd [02:08:13] I heard some of that. It's been a long time, but I do remember them saying that it didn't stick with you. I remember they talked about how black and white meant different things. If you translate it into the Hebrew language, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean literal, like dark skin. It meant gloomy countenance and all those kinds of things. And so they would say, oh, it wasn't a dark skin, it was a dark countenance that was given to them. So, yeah, a lot of those same things I had heard.

Nathan Byrd [02:08:39] And I guess during this time, all of this studying that I was doing, trying to figure all of this out, I was still trying to like, prove everything to be right and like, find those rationalizations. And it was as. The more I kept doing it, I couldn't find those, you know, and things weren't adding up. But yeah, you know, all of the, all of the apologetic stuff, like, you know, fair Mormon, all of those, you know, I went and read all of those and I just remember thinking that none of these really add up. They don't make sense. And, you know, no matter how many ways you Spend this. This was still something racist that happened within the church, you know.

John Dehlin [02:09:10] So for you, the apologetics, once you were kind of awakened to the problems, the apologetics didn't even really register as being credible or relevant.

Nathan Byrd [02:09:20] No, not really, because it just. A lot of it felt like it was reaching and a lot of it just. It just felt in inconsistent, you know, a lot of different theories from different people trying to explain different things, and it just didn't make a lot of sense.

John Dehlin [02:09:34] And the idea that it was never doctrine, it was just a policy. How was that for you?

Nathan Byrd [02:09:40] Yeah, that one, that never sat well with me, especially after I found that. That official declaration, I think it's called a proclamation to the world. It talks about. Talks about. I have to go and look it up again and see if I can find it.

John Dehlin [02:09:50] But there are at least two First Presidency signed statements affirming the priesthood ban and the curse of Cain and all that. So, yeah, there's no place to call that policy and not doctrine. Chanel.

Chanel Achenbach [02:10:04] Yeah, so one of the best sources. So if you go to the Internet, there's mega links to all different places, but if you wanted to just have these things answered. Joanna Brooks, Mormonism and White Supremacy. She's a good member of the church. She lays it all out for you. She has pictures of the documents, references them, shows the signing of the. The first presidency, 1967, I believe, is one of them, because it was a letter to Dr. Lowry, Nelson Lowry, he was a professor of some sort, and he was asking questions and they answered that. So let's say this, though. Let's say that the apologetics are right, that skin meant this curse, means that that's great.

Chanel Achenbach [02:10:54] It has nothing to do with how the members still treated people because of what they believed. It doesn't matter what it actually possibly could mean. It matters what they thought it meant and how the Church let them treat. Because here's the thing, the church right now, like I've said before, if I, If I were to teach a Sunday school class and I would say sex before marriage is okay, just because I interpret it, because this one scripture said that just would shut it down, because they don't agree with that. So if something is wrong and it actually means something, they allowed it to be taught.

Chanel Achenbach [02:11:26] They allowed it to harm people, and they allowed it to go for. So it doesn't really matter what it means, which we know what it does mean. I mean, it does mean skin, black, white, but it, it, it doesn't, because they still treated people according to what they bel they believed it meant. And the church didn't confirm or squash that and say, hey, guys, this isn't even about skin. They are not cursing the way you think and they're worthy. They're this and that. No, the first presidency had a sign letter saying, excuse me, this is doctrine. This is not a policy. This is not somebody thinking something up. This is from God. And they say pretty boldly, this is from God. Deal with it.

John Dehlin [02:12:11] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good reminder. But it's also. Oh, God.

Nathan Byrd [02:12:16] I was gonna say, I got about 30 minutes.

John Dehlin [02:12:18] Okay. Okay. Okay. So anything else about your mission that was really crucial to you in terms of just your kind of your evolving testimony or your commitment to the church or anything like that?

The Church's Troubled Relationship with Black Members

Nathan Byrd [02:12:33] No, just that, you know, I. I had developed that idea that the. The gospel was perfect, but the church wasn't.

John Dehlin [02:12:40] Yeah.

Nathan Byrd [02:12:40] And then also, you know, the idea of sustaining some. Some church leaders, but not others. And then also I just had a lot of anger that I didn't really. Couldn't really identify and didn't really know where to. Where to put.

John Dehlin [02:12:56] Yeah, okay. Okay. So you come. So you finish up your mission and it's back to byu. But you didn't have a great BYU experience, and now your mission had kind of made you angry and unsettled and probably reinforce the idea that there might not be a really good place for black people in the Mormon Church. So what was it like going back to byu?

Nathan Byrd [02:13:18] So going back to byu, I was definitely in that angry stage of racial development. And part of that involves surrounding yourself with symbols. And so, you know, one of the things that I did is I started buying a bunch of, like, black American and African American style things. You know, I had, like, a bunch of different shirts that had, like, corny sayings and logos on them and stuff like that.

John Dehlin [02:13:43] Like what?

Nathan Byrd [02:13:44] Like, you ever seen the. When. When the Washington commanders used to be called the. The Redskins, they had the logo. There was one that had a logo, and it was a white guy and it said Caucasians. So I had that shirt.

John Dehlin [02:13:55] Spicy.

Nathan Byrd [02:13:56] Yeah, I had, like a shirt with Colin Kaepernick on it. I had a shirt with. With. I always forget their names, but the. The two brothers who stood up in the 1969 or 1968 Olympics.

John Dehlin [02:14:09] Black power.

Nathan Byrd [02:14:10] Yeah. I always forget their names, but you know that. So I have. I had that on a shirt. I had just a bunch of different things like that. You know, I bought some dashikis and, you know, things like that. Like the, The. The brightly colored, like, African Pullover shirts. Sometimes I'll have, like, a little zipper on the side, but it's just like a brightly color with, you know, with a pattern. It's like African fabric or African style fabric. So I had some of those. And yeah, I just kind of started to surround myself with things like that. I was pretty much exclusively talking with and hanging out with black people. You know, me and some of my friends, we all moved in together. So, you know, all of my roommates were either black or people of color.

John Dehlin [02:14:50] And he found them through the Black Studio Union.

Nathan Byrd [02:14:52] Black Student Union. Yep. And I. I became president of the Black Student Union. Before I had been in the presidency, I became president and I started working to. To really try and make BYU a better place and create a safe space for black students.

Nathan Byrd [02:15:06] And at that point, it was just only black students. Like, that was my concern was black people. Black people, Black people. And so, yeah, you know, I started doing different things on campus, started talking to different people, trying to.

Nathan Byrd [02:15:18] To just promote a safe space for black people. And so, you know, BSU had struggled a little bit before, but it had really started to grow. And then I became the president. You know, I started recruiting people and reaching out to people and inviting them to come to BSU and thinking of different activities. And I created something that still goes on now. It's called BSU Junior or Black Student Union Junior. We would invite black kids in from the community to come and hang out with members of BSU for the night, which is important because a lot of black kids in Utah don't have the opportunity to hang out with other black people or to see themselves reflected in older black people.

Nathan Byrd [02:15:54] And I remember I kind of drew a lot from my childhood experiences of feeling isolated and alone to want to do that. And so I was like, well, I don't want these kids to have these core memories so that they can see themselves reflected and realize that this is something that they can have as well. And so I created that event and we started having that.

Nathan Byrd [02:16:11] And so, yeah, I just. I took all of that anger and I poured it into trying to create a better space for black students at BYU and with. And, you know, an extension of that with the church. So then I started talking to the church leaders, and I met with the head of government and community relations for the church, and I had him come and sit down and talk to the Black Student Union. And he came and interviewed the Black Student Union for an hour and a half, and he wrote a report and he submitted it to the Brethren. And I followed up by the Brethren, I mean the 12 apostles and the three in the first presidency, it was supposed to be submitted to them.

Nathan Byrd [02:16:46] And I followed up with him, I was like, hey, who was the ones that were supposed to get this report? He told me their names. And so then I went to a state conference where one of the apostles was at. And I walked up to the apostle and I said, hey, brother, so and so submitted this report X amount of months ago. Have you seen it? He said, no, I haven't seen it.

Nathan Byrd [02:17:03] And I was like, well, you know, these are experiences of black students that you really need to know about. These are black people in the church that are struggling, that have these different feelings. I'm like, well, why haven't you seen this? You know?

Nathan Byrd [02:17:12] And, you know, I communicated with them. I got tickets to go to General Conference and I took 30 black people to General Conference. And we saw Peter Johnson speak. You know, he was the first black American to speak in General Conference. So we were there when he spoke. You know, different things like that.

John Dehlin [02:17:26] What was that like to see a black person speak? Was, I mean, there was, there was Helio Martinez. Was that his name? I mean, there was the Brazilian black guy, that general. The first black general authority from Brazil. He would have spoken a long time ago.

Nathan Byrd [02:17:42] Yeah. The difference is that black Americans in the church especially, that's where the church has really shown its ass to, to be frank.

John Dehlin [02:17:53] Shown its ass?

Nathan Byrd [02:17:54] Yeah. What does that mean? Just they specifically discriminated against black Americans back in the day. You know, one of the reasons that they lifted the priesthood ban was so that they could build a temple in Brazil. Black Fijians were allowed to have the priesthood, but black Americans were not. You know, so it was different things like that where the church specifically discriminated against black Americans.

Nathan Byrd [02:18:15] You know, the prophets used to speak out. Spencer W. Kimball used to speak out against the NAACP and called Martin Luther King a communist. There was a lot of anti black sentiment within the church here in the United States. And because the church is based in the United States, black Americans were the basis for those bands, for those prejudices and things like that. And so to see a black American speak in General Conference, even though we were there at the very beginning, people like Elijah Abel, Jane Manning, they were there at the very beginning. And then they were told that the ordinances and things that they had wanted to get were no longer valid or that they couldn't have.

Nathan Byrd [02:18:55] And then for it to be 170 plus years before you see another black American as a General Authority, it was good to See, but it also felt like a little bit too little too late. So I was like, oh. Because I wasn't expecting him to be there. And when I saw him, I was like, well, this is great. This is good to see, but it's not enough. This is the bare minimum. I think it was 2019 at the. that time, I was like, this is 2019. Like, this is not a significant accomplishment to allow a black person to speak at General Conference.

John Dehlin [02:19:24] Yeah, I think to white Mormons, it's like, oh, oh, a black Brazilian spoken General Conference a couple decades ago. Check. Black people are taken care of. They don't register that there's a. Probably a difference to white Mormon leaders in, like, Fijians or Brazilians or even Africans. That that's somehow more okay than a. Than a black American. There's somehow an extra level of racism against black Americans than against black international. Is that right?

Nathan Byrd [02:19:58] Yeah, it is. And Africans are treated differently within the church than black Americans are. They're given a. I would almost say that they're kind of given an honorary white status within the church. African people are, in a lot of ways, and the church definitely interacts differently with African people. If you notice, whenever. Well, if you notice whenever they share stories in General Conference about black people, it's always about African people. And they kind of portray them as childlike or just having so much faith. Kind of like the story of the anti nephi Lehi. It's always very much that name narrative of African people being so faithful and so willing to do this and so willing to sacrifice.

John Dehlin [02:20:45] Kind of humble and submissive.

Nathan Byrd [02:20:47] Exactly. And that's kind of the view, and that's why. And the church looks very different over there because in Africa, they don't have the same structure in terms of, like, societal structure with racism and things like that in the United States.

Nathan Byrd [02:21:03] And so before they, you know, before Africans come to the United States, are not really aware of the things that black Americans go through here in the United States. You know, there's no. There's no police shootings and those kinds of things, you know, and discriminations and things like that going on because they're surrounded by people that look like them, and the society is built around their needs and what they want.

Nathan Byrd [02:21:24] So when the church comes in, they always. One thing is that they mostly send white missionaries to Africa. And because the church is the standard and because the church leadership is very white, whiteness is kind of held at a high standard within church in Africa. And, you know, even interacting with African students at byu, there's definitely this idea that black students, that black American students are to be avoided.

Nathan Byrd [02:21:57] And so definitely experienced that a lot. And, you know, the few people that were African that we interacted with were. It was usually because they had experienced racism of some sort that woke them up to the condition that we as black Americans face.

Nathan Byrd [02:22:12] That was another thing that I did as Black Student Union president. There was an African student that got that the. He was in a class where the N word was said in class and no one addressed it. And so he reached out to the Black Student Union. I went to that class. I spoke to those students. I spoke to the professor. We basically just did kind of like a takeover. And even, you know, right before I graduated, there were still people coming up to me and saying, hey, was it you in that class back in 2019 that said this and this? I'd be like, yeah, that was me.

Nathan Byrd [02:22:37] And they say, oh, thank you so much for saying that. You know, that that changed. Changed the way I think about a lot of things. It was really helpful. And so, yeah, that was a lot of what I did at BYU was just try to create a safer space for. Specifically for being black American students, because they were the ones that suffered the most, and I wanted them to have a better space, both at BYU and in the church.

John Dehlin [02:23:00] Yeah, makes sense. I kind of want to ask this now. Ahmad Corbett, I don't know if that name rings a bell to you.

Nathan Byrd [02:23:07] I know Ahmad, but he.

John Dehlin [02:23:09] He would be a black American, and he would right now be a prominent black American church leader, because the church has been using him for some of the more, you know, the. The Brad Wilcox thing. And then recently gives this talk condemning activism towards the church. I kind of want to ask you. I don't want to pit you against him or have you call him out, because systems on people. But I'm curious if you have thoughts or reactions that you want to share about at least that talk about them using him for the Brad Wilcox thing, or maybe we can come back to that. But also just this idea of condemning activism towards the church.

Nathan Byrd [02:23:49] Yeah. So with Ahmad Corbett, I met him a while back. I met him back in 2018. And I remember it was when the. The church had partnered with the naacp. I went to the luncheon, and they had a luncheon with. With. With members of the NAACP leaders and things like that. And there were several apostles there. And I remember during the luncheon with all these members of the NAACP there, Elder Christofferson got up and he gave a speech about LGBTQ rights. And I Remember being like, it's an interesting place for that. Like, why are we talking about LGBTQIA rights at a luncheon with the naacp?

Nathan Byrd [02:24:26] And I just remember that didn't sit well with me. I was like, well, why didn't they talk about race? Why didn't they talk about what the church has done to black people in America? Why didn't they talk about the comments that they made specifically about the naacp? Right. And so I actually, that's when I met Ahmad, and I asked him,

Chanel Achenbach [02:24:42] you

Nathan Byrd [02:24:42] know, I asked him that question, and he basically gave me a statement. Just. I don't even remember exactly what he said, but it was at the time he was the public relations person for the church, and he gave me a very public relations answer.

Nathan Byrd [02:24:56] And there have been a couple other times that I've interacted with him. I don't claim to know him super well, but I've definitely interacted with him on a couple different times. And I definitely think that he's an example of someone who has put the church before his. His identity as a black American.

Nathan Byrd [02:25:13] And that's fine. You know, you have to do whatever you got to do. I did that for a long time as well. And there are a lot of black people in the church who never get to that point or who be. You know, because of where they came from.

Nathan Byrd [02:25:28] The church becomes everything for them. So I don't hold that against him, but I don't trust him to be someone that can speak for the black experience within the church.

How the Black Menaces Formed and Went Viral

John Dehlin [02:25:41] Well, let's jump right into how the. If you want, how the Black Menaces formed, how and when and why.

Nathan Byrd [02:25:46] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:25:47] And what that was like.

Nathan Byrd [02:25:48] Yeah. So Black Menace is formed back in February of 2022, and it was actually in response to some racism from Brad Wilcox. I'm sure you probably covered that, talked about that.

John Dehlin [02:25:59] Yeah, we broke the news. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Byrd [02:26:01] There you go. So do you want to tell that

John Dehlin [02:26:04] story of how you heard about it and what you heard and.

Nathan Byrd [02:26:06] Yes. I mean, I just. I just woke up one morning, and it was. It was on my feed, and people talked about it. I saw the video on Twitter a few different times, and, you know, I just remember reading it, or not reading, but listening to it and just kind of being like, man, what is this guy saying?

John Dehlin [02:26:20] And just what did he say that was most offensive to you?

Nathan Byrd [02:26:22] So he said a lot of things. I actually listened to the whole speech, and. And it was just bomb after bomb after bomb. He started off by talking about how every other religion was playing church, and then he made some sexist comments. He made some xenophobic comments. And he said. He started talking about blacks in the priesthood. He's like, well, why couldn't blacks have the priesthood before 1978? Why is that, Brother Wilcox? And then he says, maybe that's not the question we should be asking. We shouldn't be asking why didn't the blacks have the priesthood? What we should be asking is, why did the whites have to wait for so long until the blacks had the priesthood? Or something like. Something like that.

John Dehlin [02:26:57] Until 1830 or whatever.

Nathan Byrd [02:26:58] Yeah, yeah. Why did the whites have to wait until 1830 to have the priesthood? And I was like, oh, man. So, you know, we heard that, and basically we just made a reaction video. We were at a Black Student Union meeting, and, you know, me and a couple of friends were talking about it. We should just make a video reacting to it. So we made a TikTok and we made the video and just reacted to it. We called ourselves the Black Menaces, and people started following us. And then by the end of. I think the first. By the end of the first week, we had 10,000 followers. And then we just kind of, you know, ballooned up until we got to where we are now.

John Dehlin [02:27:32] Where'd you get. Who got the idea to just ask, to go around. Do the roving reporter thing where you just go around byu? And how did that originate? Go around BYU students and just ask them questions?

Nathan Byrd [02:27:43] Yeah, so it basically started, you know, after we made that reaction video. We realized, oh, people want more content. So we started off just by talking with each other. We're just like, we should just ask each other how we're feeling about this and that.

Nathan Byrd [02:27:54] And so, yeah, we just started recording our experiences, being like, hey, how. How does it feel to be a student at byu? What's been your experience with this? With that? And, you know, people started seeing our experiences, and then people in the comments section actually started saying, interview other BYU students. And she's like, okay, sure, we'll do that. So then we started asking white students the same questions that we asked, you know, about us. You know, is byu, you know, do you feel like BYU is a good school or is it inclusive? I don't remember all the questions that we asked was so long ago, but we started asking those questions, and we just started asking them about things that we knew that they would give interesting answers to.

Nathan Byrd [02:28:25] Because we knew our audience at byu, we know the kind of place that it is. And so we'd ask them, do you support gay marriage? Do you support black Lives matter. Do you support blue Lives matter? Do you believe the priesthood ban was something that was from God? And so as we. We, you know, started getting all of those. Those answers, we just posted them, and people would just say whatever's on their mind because they've never been challenged, they've never felt uncomfortable, and they never had any reason to think that what they believed was wrong or incorrect in any way. And so they're perfectly willing to say whatever they thought, whatever they felt.

Nathan Byrd [02:28:54] And, yeah, we put it out there, and then the awareness started to spread, and then we had, like, a whole little trend that went on for a while.

John Dehlin [02:29:01] But what were some of the most noteworthy or cringy things that BYU students would. Would say, would it would agree, would own in terms of their beliefs or perspectives?

Nathan Byrd [02:29:13] Well, there was one video where we asked people if they believe that the priesthood ban came from God. And then a few people in there said, yes. There were. There were a couple of quotes that we read from church leaders, and we said, well, hey, who do you think said this quote? Was it Brigham Young? Or was it Robert E. Lee? Or was it Adolf Hitler or Bruce R. McConkie? And they'd be like, just turn it bright red on camera.

Nathan Byrd [02:29:41] You know what the answer is. And then it was so funny to see them know the answer and then still be like, was it Hitler? No, it wasn't Hitler. It was Bruce R. McConkey. You know, so answering those questions was funny. I remember we went and asked, what do we ask? Should queer people be allowed to date on campus? We asked that not too long after General Conference. And there was one guy who's just like, I just go with what the leaders say, man. I just do what they tell me. Like, wow, that's really your answer, huh? You're gonna. That's what you're gonna put on the Internet.

Nathan Byrd [02:30:13] And, yeah, that. You know, he said that we had people doubling down on the proclamation, all those kinds of things. So very interesting to hear those perspectives. And it was also interesting to see the response that we got. You know, it kind of became like a smokescreen, or maybe not a smokescreen, but like a litmus test for if you could trust someone or not. Because before it was just all BYU students. If they're, you know, if they're white, you might want to just avoid them. But then if you have somebody come to you and be like, oh, you guys are black menaces. I love what you do, then it was much easier to be like, okay, this is somebody that we can maybe talk with a Little bit more interact with or have a conversation with. But it was just a great way to spread awareness and interact with the student population and then the world.

John Dehlin [02:31:01] As I watched those videos emerge and I was just loving them, I thought a lot about your intentions and the ways you needed to show restraint or not show restraint, because I'm sure, for example, you could have just cherry picked all the most awful things that students said. But my observation, maybe you, maybe you just showed whatever people said, but it seemed like there was always a balance of, like, embarrassing things students said, but also really progressive, thoughtful, supportive students.

John Dehlin [02:31:34] And. But, but I thought a lot about, number one, balance and whether you were striving for balance or just reporting what you heard. And then the second thing I wondered about was, was there an intent to, like, embarrass the church or put its feet to the fire or make BYU look stupid or something else? So what can you talk about? Number one, your intentions and number two, the level that you tried to be balanced or even show restraint.

Nathan Byrd [02:32:04] Yeah. So there was never any intent to embarrass the church. The whole goal was just to, first of all, it was just to talk about the experience of black students. And then it turned into showing the contrast between the black experience at BYU and the white experience and just spreading awareness about that because it's something that people were not privy to. So to hear a black student say that they have a tough time at BYU or that the experience of a black woman trying to date at BYU is a 1 out of 10, and then to hear a white person say something that's completely the opposite of that, it creates this contrast that a lot of people would never be aware of because they never had access to our thoughts or anything like that, because they don't put themselves in spaces that we are.

Nathan Byrd [02:32:43] So there was never any intent to, to make the church look bad or make BYU look bad or anything like that. The students did that all on their own just by expressing just how backwards some of the things that they believe are. You know, by admitting that you believe that, that God banned black people from having the priesthood, you're, you're admitting that you believe in a racist God, you know, or by admitting that you don't support gay people getting married. It's like, why are you even inserting yourself into that conversation? Why not just say, if somebody wants to do something, let them do it? You know?

Nathan Byrd [02:33:14] So, yeah, there was never any intent for that. And we never censored anything. You know, whoever we asked, we posted it unless they asked us before. We posted it not to put their video up. So sometimes we'll have. We'll interview somebody, and then they'll come back, you know, five minutes later and be like, hey, can you guys actually not post my video? I don't like the answer I gave. We'll say, okay, okay, that's fine, and we delete it.

Nathan Byrd [02:33:34] But if somebody, you know, said something with their whole chest and then we post it, and then people start to give them crap about it, and they're like, oh, can you take that down? I'm being bullied. Or like, no, I'm sorry. Can you prove to us that you're being bullied? And to this day, no one has ever actually said, oh, you know, this is the proof, you know?

Nathan Byrd [02:33:51] So, yeah, we've never. We've never censored anything. We've never cherry picked. We just. We. Literally, somebody's walking towards us. We would actually ask them the question, and whatever answer they gave, we put it in the video. And so everything that you saw is everybody that we asked, unless they specifically asked us not to put the video up, and we just respected their. Their privacy.

John Dehlin [02:34:07] And really quick, you. You. It was clear your intent was not to argue or educate or debate. What was that about? Because you just let them. You just let them say what they said, and you would always end by saying, like, purr or per. Perfect or word. What were. So there were reactions you'd give when they. When they make their statement.

Nathan Byrd [02:34:26] Yeah, we'd just be like, that's it. And so mine was. Does it. Thank you. And Sebastian's was cool, cool, cool, cool. Rachel was. Rachel was per. You know, so we all had our different ways of. Of ending it. But what was the.

John Dehlin [02:34:38] Tell us about the decision to not comment or educate or even call them out?

Nathan Byrd [02:34:42] Yeah, so one of the. One of the reasons for that was because of how black people are viewed and how we're portrayed. Even though we just asked the question, hold the microphone up, and then say thank you, people were still saying, oh, why are you bullying these people? Why are you shaming them? Why are you targeting them? Why are you being so aggressive? All these kinds of things.

Nathan Byrd [02:35:00] BYU administrators tried to paint us as militant. They tried to. There was discussion about trying to kick us out of school to set an example because we were bullying students. And that eventually faded away. But, you know, even though we. We weren't doing anything at all, we were still being painted as these aggressive, angry black people, you know, and so part of that decision was to protect ourselves, you know, and then also Just because we wanted to make sure that the people that we were talking to felt comfortable sharing what was really on their minds. You know, if we're arguing with someone, then they're not going to be as comfortable trying to talk.

Nathan Byrd [02:35:37] They're going to get embarrassed or whatever. But if we just ask them a question and allow them to answer, answer honestly, then that's going to spread that awareness far more than, than we ever could by trying to argue with someone.

John Dehlin [02:35:47] That's why I started Mormon Stories, just to let people tell their stories. And how do you argue with people's stories? Right. So that was brilliant in my, my view is brilliant. And so talk about the adversity when because it's, you know, the honor code, you can get kicked out of byu. The thing the church hates most is bad priority. And all of a sudden your videos are going viral, national. How, how was the reaction? Did you feel unsafe? Did people contact you? Wasn't. At some point, didn't they say you couldn't do this anymore? They started to restrict you talk about the BYU's reaction.

National Attention and Interviewing BYU Students

Nathan Byrd [02:36:25] So to be honest, BYU didn't react very much. There was the initial talk about, you know, when the, when Brad Wilcox situation happened, we had gone to his class to do a sit in and I mentioned before that we had done this before we went to a class, we sat in the class, the professor sat to the side and we had a discussion and you know, kind of talked about it and I led that. And so we tried to do the same thing. And Brad Wilcox, you know, he was terrified of us for some reason.

John Dehlin [02:36:50] Wait, when you came to his class?

Nathan Byrd [02:36:52] Yeah, so part of the, I think part of the issue. So it was, it was for Black Student Union. We were doing Spirit Week. It was the week before Perspective, which is our big Black History Month celebration. It was Spirit Week on this particular day. It was Black Panther Day. So we were dressed as Black Panthers and we show up to his class. But before we ever got there, he had already had security out the door. So he had security outside of his door because he had heard that we were coming and he was afraid that we were going. I don't know what he was afraid of, but, you know, so we sat outside, we sat outside the classroom, waited for class to be over because he didn't want us to come in.

Nathan Byrd [02:37:24] He said he wasn't comfortable having us there, even though this, you know, he said he didn't feel comfortable with so many students in his class that he didn't know. And it's like this is A man who travels around the world speaking to youth conferences and, you know, efy. So all of a sudden, he was scared of us?

John Dehlin [02:37:38] He wasn't warm and inviting?

Nathan Byrd [02:37:40] No, not at all. So we waited till after the class was done, and then we went inside, and he was literally shaking, like his hands were shaking, talking to us. And he could barely speak. But he, you know, he's like, I email my assistant, email my assistant, and we'll set up an appointment, you know, and then he, like, ran out of the classroom. And so, you know, we emailed with whoever.

John Dehlin [02:38:00] He didn't just sit you down and say, tell me what you think. Tell me what you feel. Tell me how my. My talk hurt you. I want to learn.

Nathan Byrd [02:38:08] He very much took the stance of a victim. He talked about how he had been persecuted and stuff like that. You know, even though he gave those public, you know, the online apologies or whatever, you know, I think about a week, two weeks later, we were able to sit down with him in a room, and the vice president of student life was there, and then a couple other people and then some members of Black Student Union, we were able to sit down. But by then he had already been coached by the church's PR team or whatever. And he just apologized to us profusely. And we said, well, that's great that you're apologizing to us.

Nathan Byrd [02:38:41] However, what you need to do is apologize publicly for the comments that you made about black people, because now you made those comments, and white people are thinking that it's okay to say those things or it's okay to believe those things. You're justifying all of these things that the church claims to have disavowed by making these kind of statements. And the response basically was, oh, well, I. You know, I can't say anything about that, or I'll have to ask. I'll have to check with the board of administrators, or I'll have to check with the higher ups. And so we said, so basically what you're telling us is that you need permission to repent.

Nathan Byrd [02:39:13] And he's like, oh, well, I don't want to say that. But that's what you're saying is that you need permission to repent for what you did, because part of repentance in the church, the whole repentance process, is you're supposed to make restitution to the people that you've harmed. And so now we're asking you to actually make restitution, and you're saying that you need permission to do that. And so that was the general response from that. And we said, well, what else can we do? Are there other action items? Is there anything that we can do? And just nothing. Nobody wanted to do anything. So it was just all talk.

Nathan Byrd [02:39:41] And the. The NAACP has actually mentioned that, too. They had. The. The legal. Legal counsel for the president of the NAACP said that the church has been saying a lot of things and talking a lot, but not actually doing anything about what they're saying. And so that's very. It's been very, very consistent. There's a lot of words that get put out, but not a lot of actions to back them up. And it was the same with Brad Wilcox.

John Dehlin [02:40:06] What'd you think about his public statement with Ahmad Corbett? Did you watch that?

Nathan Byrd [02:40:12] I did, yep. And in that. That's, you know, he used Ahmad as a token to kind of justify.

John Dehlin [02:40:18] I mean, it would have been the church, right?

Nathan Byrd [02:40:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:40:21] Using Ahmad as a token. Sorry, I didn't mean.

Nathan Byrd [02:40:23] Oh, well, yeah, yeah. So the church, you know, definitely use them. Even the way that they. That they cut it. You know, he said, I've been. I've talked to my dear black friends. And then it cut to Ahmad. Yeah. And then it cut back, and we actually. We made a video. We made a reaction video to that apology as well. And I held up a little sign that said token in that apology, because we were just appalled at that. And it was after that that we had the meeting with him and said, hey, you need to give a real apology, and you need to apologize specifically to black people. You didn't hurt white members of the church. You hurt black people in this church. And it's already hard enough for us to be here. So.

John Dehlin [02:40:58] So. So as the black menaces becomes, like, a global phenomenon, you start doing interviews with, like, national newspapers and TV shows. Is that right?

Nathan Byrd [02:41:08] Yeah, we. I don't know if we did any TV shows, but we do. We definitely interviewed on a few different podcasts, and we interviewed with. With Business Insider, with Newsweek, USA Today, abc, like, a few other ones. And, yeah, just kind of talked about, like, what we were doing there.

John Dehlin [02:41:25] Did the church ever say back off or stop doing this? Or did any of you ever feel like your membership was in jeopardy or anything?

Nathan Byrd [02:41:32] No, nothing like that. People asked us that question, but honestly, BYU was very, very quiet when it came to that, and they have been ever since. You know, we definitely. We had someone reach out. You know, I knew somebody in. In administration, and they reached out and said, hey, you know, maybe just want you to read the BYU media policy. Just, you know, Just look at that. They didn't explicitly say, don't do this. And then maybe a month or so ago, they started sending out decease and desists to a couple other creators who film on. On.

John Dehlin [02:42:03] But not y'. All.

Nathan Byrd [02:42:04] But not to us. Yeah. Okay. Part of it is because we don't monetize the videos that we have on campus. That could be part of it. I'm not sure. But they didn't reach out to us. And I think part of it is just a reluctance to be in the press again for. For racism, because it's. It's been a running theme the last couple years.

John Dehlin [02:42:22] So to this day, the black Menaces can still interview on BYU campus.

Nathan Byrd [02:42:26] Yes, we can.

John Dehlin [02:42:26] Are you still doing interviews?

Nathan Byrd [02:42:28] Oh, yeah, we do. We still do. So we've been posting videos. Just recently, we asked people when Black History Month was, and somebody said November, somebody said March. So, yeah, we still interview on campus, too.

John Dehlin [02:42:39] Okay, so black businesses are still going strong at byu.

Nathan Byrd [02:42:41] Yep. Still going strong there. And then we also have Menace chapters around the country.

John Dehlin [02:42:45] Okay. And you have a podcast. You and Rebecca.

Nathan Byrd [02:42:49] Rachel. Rachel podcast. Yep.

John Dehlin [02:42:51] I need to meet Rachel. Well, there's a fear, like, I wanted you all to come on Mormon Stories, like, a year ago or however long it was ago. There's. There's some fears about the fact that some are still students. So is. Is there difficulty in trying to stay safe and be a black menace on BYU campus? Are there areas where you don't feel like you can tread as a BYU student?

Nathan Byrd [02:43:16] Well, I mean, all of BYU is really a place where you don't want to tread. We never felt comfortable just being on campus. It's a very unwelcoming feeling in general. And so the way that we dealt with that was by creating spaces that were safe for us. So we have what's called the black table. That's part of the reason the black ministers got started is because we'd all just congregate it at one table.

Nathan Byrd [02:43:36] But it's basically just a table in the Wilkinson Student center that we just all sit at, and that was our safe space. So all the black people would just come hang out at that table, talk with each other in between classes, and then, you know, we'd have black Student union once a week. But even when we tried to get a space for black students, I met with different people and said, hey, we just want a room. Can we have a room that we can just hang out in? You know, the University of Utah has an entire house. Can we just have a room? For a few hours a week.

Nathan Byrd [02:44:04] And they said no. Actually, the initial response was, we don't have room. All the rooms on campus are used. I was like, every single room on this campus, you can't spare one room? That was the initial response. And then basically after that, it was just, oh, well, I'll talk to somebody about it. We'll see what we can do. So same thing, just kind of more words. Well, how can we help? And then when we provide solutions, there were no solutions. I wrote a letter to the president of the university, gave him three things that they could do. Very, very simple.

Nathan Byrd [02:44:32] None of those things ever got done. And they were not hard things. It was, you know, give a room to black students on campus, make a speech and. Or no, not even a speech. I just asked President Worthen to acknowledge that BYU was on Native American land and that slaves had helped to build byu. So it wasn't even like a full speech apologizing for anything. It was just an acknowledgment that other things happened. There was one other thing that I had put in there, but none of those things ever, ever were done or were properly addressed or anything like that.

John Dehlin [02:45:01] So the Black Student Union at BYU doesn't have a room?

Nathan Byrd [02:45:04] Well, we do have a room that we meet in on Tuesdays or I guess I'm not technically in the Black Student Union anymore, but they do have a room that meets on Tuesday nights at 7. And you have it for an hour and a half.

John Dehlin [02:45:17] But there's not like a place people can go at any time to congregate and.

Nathan Byrd [02:45:21] Yeah, and, you know, at most other places they'll have like a diversity and inclusion office. The University of Utah has the Black Cultural center, which is an entire house dedicated as a safe space for black students. We just recently went to the University of Michigan. They have a building called the Trotter Multicultural center where black students can come and congregate. Most universities have something like that. BYU doesn't have that.

Faith Transitions, Identity, and Leaving the Church

John Dehlin [02:45:44] Okay, well, I know you gotta run, but I do want to ask if you want to talk about your faith and how you're awakening to issues of racism within the Mormon Church. You're evolving identity and then kind of seeing the church as something you need to kind of be an activist against and try to change from within and then you meet resistance. How has all that affected your faith? And do you want to talk about your. Your faith?

Nathan Byrd [02:46:14] Yeah, absolutely. So I would say that my faith is in. It's an interesting place. A lot of the things that I was taught about the church growing up, I no longer believe I stopped going to church like last, last spring, basically when I graduated from BYU was pretty much when I stopped.

Nathan Byrd [02:46:35] That's when it became safe not to go to church anymore. Because, you know, as a student, you, you're required to go at least once a week. So to make sure I had my ecclesiastical endorsement, I was still going, but I had detached myself a long time ago. I think during the pandemic was when I really started to think about just those things. Because during the pandemic, for a brief amount of time, we didn't go to church. And I just remember thinking like, man, this is great, not having to go to church, not having to interact with people that I don't want to interact with, not having to feel this pressure to perform or to be that, that token black person, you know, all of those things.

John Dehlin [02:47:10] So BYU wards didn't end, ever end up feeling comfortable to you?

Nathan Byrd [02:47:14] No.

John Dehlin [02:47:15] Really?

Nathan Byrd [02:47:16] No. Never.

John Dehlin [02:47:17] I mean, all these students, 2022, 2023, they're, they're raised in a more, theoretically a more progressive, less racist world. That's what someone might assume, but that wasn't your experience.

Nathan Byrd [02:47:30] So even if they were raised in that, there's still no way of knowing that, you know, you just walk into this place and you're the only black person or you're one of a couple of black people. People are, you know, even if someone is born or is raised thinking more progressively, that still doesn't teach them how to interact with black people.

Nathan Byrd [02:47:48] And so they didn't know. And so usually it was just, you were just on your own. You know, you'd show up, people would look at you or they'd be nervous to talk to you or what have you. And so unless you took steps to make yourself more, more approachable, you weren't really going to get much interaction there. And then, you know, there would be the people that would say things in church that just were off putting.

Nathan Byrd [02:48:09] And so, yeah, I just never, never fully felt comfortable at church. So being able to not go for a while was very relieving. And then after that, you know, I did start going back for a couple of years and then finally I just got to a point where I was just like, I, you know, I don't want to do this anymore.

Nathan Byrd [02:48:27] And I made the decision, it was the first time that I actually made the decision deliberately to not go to church when I could, you know, because before I'd, you know, been out of town or the pandemic or what have you. But this Time I actually deliberately said, I'm not going to go to church this week. And it felt amazing, you know, I didn't have to walk into this place and feel my walls go up, you know, feel like I had to protect myself from people around me. Because when I would go to church, I would go, I would sit there quietly, I wouldn't talk to anybody, and then I would leave, you know, But I was so afraid of stepping away from that, because growing up, you're taught that losing your testimony is the worst thing that can happen to you.

Nathan Byrd [02:49:01] And you're taught that once you leave the church, then you're miserable, and, you know, you lose that light and, you know, everything departs. And you're. You know, if you leave the church, then your marriages end in divorce, and, you know, your kids fall away and they do drugs, and, you know, just all of these different things that.

Nathan Byrd [02:49:19] That you're taught to believe that there is no life outside of the church. And it was such a part of. A huge part of my identity for so long that I. That I didn't. I couldn't imagine myself without it. One of the things that kind of helped snap me out of it was a therapist who.

Nathan Byrd [02:49:39] He was really, really influential and helped me to process through a lot. But one of the things he said is when I was telling him about my experience with the church, and he said, it sounds like it's similar to being in an abusive marriage, where you think that staying is going to help change that person, but really they're going to continue being who they are. They're going to continue to abuse you until you leave the situation.

Nathan Byrd [02:49:59] And that was tough for me to hear, but it was something I definitely needed to hear and realize. And then kind of the last straw was dealing with the whole Brad Wilcox situation, meeting, meeting with the president of the university, and just hearing them say a lot of words and refuse to act. I specifically would ask them, let's do something to make this a better space, a better space for black students. Let's do this to make a better space for black members of the church. And to hear them deliberately object to doing anything about the problems that they were hearing about. It just made me realize that right now there's not going to be any change.

Nathan Byrd [02:50:39] There may come some change in the future, but for right now, there's nothing that I can do by staying in the church. And so, really, just to protect my peace, I stepped away and focused on just developing my own identity as a black person and as just an individual outside of the LDS Church.

John Dehlin [02:51:02] And didn't. Didn't BYU create, like, a diversity and inclusion office and have David. David Archuleta come sing a song or something?

Nathan Byrd [02:51:10] I don't know if they had David Archuleta sing. I hadn't heard about that. But, yeah, they didn't. They created what's called an Office of Belonging. So after George Floyd's murder in 2020, they. BYU, you know, when everybody was doing their scramble to seem progressive and, you know, Uber and McDonald's and your local library were sending out emails talking about how much they love black people, BYU scrambled and they put together a committee on race and ethnicity, and they had them collect some data, and they submitted that data. It's called the Core Report, and you can look it up anywhere. But they submitted data and they talked about the plight of different cultures at BYU.

Nathan Byrd [02:51:55] BYU, black students have a graduation rate of 58% compared to 79% for white students. The only one that's lower than that is Native Americans. I think they were at, like, 41%. So that means, like, one out of two black people at BYU don't graduate. And I've seen that. I've seen a lot of my friends drop out from school.

Nathan Byrd [02:52:15] But, yeah, they had that report made. And in that report, there were several recommendations that were made. The very first recommendation was to create an Office of Inclusion and. And Belonging. And BYU said, well, we're going to create an Office of Belonging. And so I asked the President, I said, why. Why did you take the word inclusion out? He said, oh, we felt that that would be too divisive.

Nathan Byrd [02:52:36] So I thought. So you think that diversity and inclusion is too divisive? And so the Office of Belonging, I. I don't know much about it or what it's doing. I don't know. You know, it's still a very new office, so they have it there. I don't know what it's doing just yet. I don't know what impact it's going to have. But I do know that they were already policing its use or its, you know, its name before it was ever brought into fruition.

John Dehlin [02:53:08] Did you, as you ceased attending church and you started distancing yourself from it, did you have to distance yourself theologically or historically? So Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, like, priesthood authority, did you have to do a theological and historical deconstruction separate from, like, a social deconstruction? Does that make sense?

Nathan Byrd [02:53:30] Yeah, there's definitely a lot of, like, deprogramming that goes into stepping away from the church. You have to. To kind of figure out what you do and don't believe and, you know, all of those things that you had rationalized that just don't make sense. It's like, okay, well, now I don't have to believe that anymore to feel good about myself or to feel, you know, to feel faithful or whatever. And so, yeah, it does take some. Some deconstruction to kind of figure out where you stand on different things. So, yeah, I'm still in the process of that and, you know, just getting more comfortable with. With being a person and finding my identity outside of the church because it was such a huge part of who I was for such a long time that it's. It's definitely taken some work to. To move away from that.

John Dehlin [02:54:22] Are your parents. Do your parents know? And have they been sad? You know, they. They cared so much about raising you. Devout Mormon. Have you been able to talk to them about it? And if so, what's that been like?

Nathan Byrd [02:54:35] They might have an idea. I haven't really told anybody outright, you know, like my. The people that I'm close to. No, but it's not something that I've stated publicly ever. And as far as my parents go, I don't talk with my parents as often for. For some other reasons. I talk to my mom a little bit more. But I had talked with my dad a few months ago, and I told him that I hadn't really been. I hadn't been going to church. And his response was, well, I didn't raise you to be inactive.

Nathan Byrd [02:55:07] And, you know, we talked about some of the things in the gospel, and I told him that, you know, I still believe most things, but I just hadn't really been to church. And that was true at the time. Things are a little bit different now. But, yeah, as far as how. I don't know if they know how far out or how far gone I am, so to speak.

Nathan Byrd [02:55:28] But, yeah, it hasn't really been something that I talked with him about. I think because of our relationship growing up, because of the things that they kept from me and the ways in which I wasn't really allowed to be an individual. I kept a lot of things from them, and that's just kind of contained into adulthood, where I don't really talk with them much about how I'm doing or how I'm feeling. It's more so just kind of figuring things out on my own.

John Dehlin [02:55:54] So you're. I imagine after coming on Mormon stories, they might catch wind.

Nathan Byrd [02:56:00] They might. I don't know. It depends on on who. Who listens, who says anything. I know that that's how they. They found out about black menaces through people in the ward. So they may hear about this, too. We'll see.

John Dehlin [02:56:09] Are you. Are you in any way fearful or concerned about them finding out or not?

Nathan Byrd [02:56:14] No, I'm definitely. I'm definitely at a point where I don't really. You know, I used to care very, very much about what they thought. And then another thing that a therapist helped me through is just realizing that they're going to be who they are. At the end of the day, I'm going to be who I am, and I don't need to expect them to change, if that makes sense. You know, I can respect them for who they are as people, for what they believe, and I can want them to respect me for that. But if they don't, then that's not something that I have any control over. So it's not something that I'm worried about or fearful about.

John Dehlin [02:56:49] There are LGBT people that just say, if they were counseling an LGBT person, they would say, get out of the church. Not all of them, but there are some of them that would just say, the church is not healthy for gay people. You probably got to leave to be healthy. Do you have a position about whether the church is a healthy place overall for. For black Americans?

Reflections on Mormonism's Impact on Black Americans

Nathan Byrd [02:57:09] I think, overall, I do not think that the church is a healthy space for black Americans. I think that it has a detrimental effect on mental health, on identity. But I do think that there are those black Americans out there who make it work and who have found a way to reconcile those parts of their identity. But I think that that's a very, very difficult thing to do.

Nathan Byrd [02:57:37] You've got the two polar opposites. One is to assimilate, to become someone who just kind of denies aspects of your black identity. And then on the other end, you have people who leave. If you can find a happy medium, then good for you. But I don't know that I've met anybody who's been able to truly do that. I thought that I had, but looking back, it really, really affected my mental health. It affected how I viewed myself, how I viewed the world. It made me very, very angry. And it's taken a lot of work, and it's still taking a lot of work to break away from some of that.

John Dehlin [02:58:15] And if. If the church were to come to you and. And you. I don't want to put you in the position of having to answer this because it's not your job, but answer it. If you want to. And if you don't, great. If the church were to send a consultant to you to say, listen, Nate, we're going to do whatever you say, so what do we need to do to make it better? Would you have recommendations at this point? If so, what would they be? And, you know, what are your thoughts about that?

Nathan Byrd [02:58:43] Yeah, so the biggest thing, the number one thing, is that they need to acknowledge the harm that they've done. For a church that expects so much from its members and expects repentance on such a grand scale, they have never repented themselves for the harm that they've done. You know, was it Elder Oaks who said the church doesn't make mistakes or we don't apologize?

Nathan Byrd [02:59:06] Things like that, where it's, you know, you're expecting your members to repent, to apologize, but you yourself as a whole won't do that. So the first thing they need to do is to acknowledge the harm that they've done and to make restitution for it. And more so than just talking about it or throwing money at the naacp, they need to.

Nathan Byrd [02:59:26] They need to acknowledge the black membership and the black American membership in the church. I should say they need to acknowledge the black American members from the church. They need to acknowledge the things that past prophets and apostles have said, and they need to do more than just disavow. They need to apologize for it and state specifically that it was wrong and that it was not something that was from God. But the problem with that is that to do that, basically they'd have to admit that the entire structure of the church is flawed. Because the whole idea is that prophets speak for God and that everything that they say is from him.

Nathan Byrd [03:00:00] And so if prophets have said anything that is racist or that is incorrect, and if they say that that's not right, then all of a sudden not every prophet is of God. You know, so that would be the first thing, the number one thing, and really probably the biggest thing. But I don't think that that'll ever happen.

John Dehlin [03:00:17] You think it would hurt the church to do that? So it's not absolutely.

Nathan Byrd [03:00:20] Yeah. The church is a business before it's. Before it's a religion at this point. And I think that the main reason they won't do that is because then they lose credibility. Right. People are not, you know, they'll lose tithe payers, they'll lose membership. It'll be bad PR in some respects. In other respects it'll be good. But yeah, I think a lot of things will start to crumble if they Admit wrongdoing.

John Dehlin [03:00:46] And then there's the problem of maybe there's a decent percentage of Mormons that are racist. And they wouldn't, they would, they would not like to see the church backtrack or denounce these teachings that they may still believe. Like, I'll never forget once I met Bruce, I'm a conkey's grandson, one of his grandsons, and the grandson told me when Bruce, I'm a conkey, took that stuff out of Mormon doctrine, it wasn't because it wasn't true. It's because it was embarrassing to the church, but it was still true. In other words, my friend, grandson of Bruce Armaconki, still believed that blacks were less valid pre existence and that's why they were cursed with dark skin. But it just receded into. There's some things we can't say. There's the quiet things that we can't say out loud, but we still believe them.

Nathan Byrd [03:01:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:01:33] So I'm sure you wonder if there'd be a chunk of people who'd be mad at the Brethren for changing because they like those racist teachings or believe them. Is that right?

Nathan Byrd [03:01:42] They absolutely do. And I firmly believe that a lot of the Brethren themselves are still believe those things. I mean, if you look at the, the book when they were doing the, or I guess there still are the Come follow me manuals, when they released the Book of Mormon one, they literally printed in there that Lamanites were cursed with dark skin. And then they quickly recalled all the books. Or no, they didn't recall the books, but they changed all the, they changed it in the, in the, the gospel library. But I still have the book at home that says, you know, that people with dark skin are cursed.

Nathan Byrd [03:02:12] You know, so those mean that. That came out in 2019. Those things are still believed, they're still taught. And somebody let that all the way through the editing process because, you know, they're meticulous with that and they, somebody let that all the way through the editing process into printing and distributing worldwide. So those things are still believed and they're still said quietly. And a lot of church members still believe them, which is why BYU is such an unsafe space because so many students there harbor such racist ideas and teachings and they have God to back it up in their heads.

Closing Thoughts and How to Support Black Menaces

John Dehlin [03:02:44] All right, so. So I guess just to kind of close, there's going to be progressive liberal Mormons that are watching the show and there's going to be ex Mormons. It's not your job to tell us what we should be doing. But a lot of times there is this sense of helplessness. It's like, what can we do to make things better? It's not your job to tell us. Is there anything you would want to say to somebody that's like, I want to move the needle. I want to be a part of the solution, but I just don't know what to do? It seems too big. It seems too insolvable. Is there anything you would want to say to the audience, even though it's not your job to tell us? It's our job to figure it out.

Nathan Byrd [03:03:22] Absolutely. I think one of the most important things you can do is that there are a lot of spaces, as liberal Mormons, as ex Mormons, and being white, that you have access to. There are a lot of spaces that you have access to that I myself might not have access to. Being in the black Menaces, we definitely gain access to more of those spaces, but there's a lot of spaces that we can't be in and that we don't have a voice as black people. And so whenever you're in those spaces, it's important to be the mouthpiece

John Dehlin [03:03:56] for

Nathan Byrd [03:03:57] marginalized communities that are not there. You know, whether it's boardrooms, whether it's. It's, you know, conferences, academic areas, wherever. You have to be a voice for the people.

John Dehlin [03:04:09] Sunday schools, Quorum.

Nathan Byrd [03:04:10] Exactly.

John Dehlin [03:04:11] Relief Society.

Nathan Byrd [03:04:11] You have to be Seminary Institute.

Chanel Achenbach [03:04:14] Right.

Nathan Byrd [03:04:14] You have to be the voice for people that aren't there. And that's the only way that those people are going to learn, you know. So be the voice. Yeah, be the voice. That's probably the best thing to say. And, you know, that means just speaking up. It's. It's a scary thing to do, and people will look at you differently, but you never know who you might help in that situation or who might be afraid to say something.

Nathan Byrd [03:04:36] Somebody that I know just recently told me that in one of their classes, they talked about Colin Kaepernick, and the professor said that Colin Kaepernick was un American for kneeling during the national anthem. And this person said something. It was a black person. They said something about it. The professor interrupted them and wouldn't let them finish their statement, continued to argue that Colin Kaepernick was unamerican, and then just continued on with class, and nobody said anything. But then after the class, somebody came up to this person and said, oh, thank you so much for saying something. It's like, well, why didn't you back me up?

Nathan Byrd [03:05:08] You know, you could have said something in that situation, and Then maybe somebody else would have piped up. Then maybe somebody else would have piped up. But if nobody says anything and if you leave that burden on black people, then nothing changes. And, you know, there's going to be spaces where there is no black person to say anything. And that's when you have to be the one to step up and say something or do something, whether it means recommending that, you know, this person of color be hired or this marginalized group be included in this activity. You know, those things are important when those people aren't there to represent themselves.

John Dehlin [03:05:36] Beautiful. What can any of us do to support Black Menaces is donate, you know, by Merge. What can we do?

Nathan Byrd [03:05:44] Yeah, so we're still working on the merch. The website is live. Our merch is up for sale. We're still, like, adding some things to the website, but you're welcome to buy those. And then we also have a space where you can donate on the website. So please, if you. If you want to see Black Menaces continue. We don't get paid. Right. We do this for. Just for fun. And so, you know, we also have, like, jobs and, you know, some of us are still in school. So any donations help a lot.

John Dehlin [03:06:09] To support the podcast?

Nathan Byrd [03:06:10] Yeah, to support the podcast and also to support, you know, us going out and interviewing and traveling to different places to do that as well. So.

John Dehlin [03:06:17] All right, so there's a Donut but donate button, maybe monthly donations or something.

Nathan Byrd [03:06:21] Yeah, you can subscribe if you want to. Yeah, it's all on the blackminister.org okay.

John Dehlin [03:06:26] Any final things? You've gone a little bit longer than you wanted to. Any final things you wanted to say before we end?

Nathan Byrd [03:06:31] I think that's it. Thank you so much for interviewing me and thank you, Chanel, for. For asking questions as well.

John Dehlin [03:06:36] And the other Black Menaces, their names are.

Nathan Byrd [03:06:39] So the other Black Menaces are Rachel Weaver, Kylie Shepherd, Sebastian Stewart Johnson, and Kennethia Dorsey.

John Dehlin [03:06:46] And, you know, we. We appreciate all of you. You know, Nate's the first to kind of come on Mormon Stories, but we appreciate and value all of you and we hope, you know, open invitation for any of you to come on Mormon Stories if and when it feels like the right time and safe for you to do so. But thank you to all Black Menaces. And thanks to you, Nate.

John Dehlin [03:07:09] You know, it's not your job to educate us, so it's an act of. Of sacrifice and of end of compassion and self sacrifice to. To expend the energy and the time to educate us when we should be Educating ourselves. So thank you. Thank you for helping us and for displaying, as someone who's tried to be an activist in certain ways, displaying such effective act activism with such poise and grace and wisdom and effectiveness. You guys just blew my mind at how effective and graceful and wise you were. And I. I was just in. I was just in awe, and I remain in awe. So thank you.

Nathan Byrd [03:07:56] Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:07:58] Yeah, Chanel, you stayed quiet towards the end. I think you were allowing Nate to get everything he needed to get out, but absolutely. But thanks for bringing Nate here, and thanks for bringing your voice to Mormon stories.

Chanel Achenbach [03:08:09] I'm so glad he came. I just need to say something really quick. When I saw them on TikTok, Spencer and I were talking. We were going crazy. We were going nuts because we're old. We're old school. We've been saying this for years, and people have been shutting us down. And these kids, these young people were able to speak, and we're like, that's what we've been saying. That's. What do you hear? What the. Did you hear? And so me and Spencer sharing videos back and forth. Did you see what they said now? Did you see what they said? I mean, we. We. We are not to.

Chanel Achenbach [03:08:38] We are not. And we want to support them, and we love them. We're asking anybody else who wants support, support them monetarily. Support them. These are beautiful young people doing great things, and they're saying what we've been saying, and they're saying it beautifully, gracefully, like John said. And. And they're good. They're just educating, and I like what they're doing as opposed to how I probably would have done it. They're just asking a question and saying, okay, you know me. I would have been like, well, why about this? They're doing it right. They're doing it right, and I appreciate all of them, and I'm so glad I got to meet Nate.

John Dehlin [03:09:15] So, yeah, and you've got. You're on Tick Tock and on Instagram, right? Yeah.

Nathan Byrd [03:09:19] So we're on Tick Tock, Instagram, Twitter, and I think that's it.

John Dehlin [03:09:23] And the handles. Black Menaces. Right?

Nathan Byrd [03:09:24] Black Menaces.

John Dehlin [03:09:25] All right. Thanks, Nate Bird, such an honor. Keep up the good work. And Chanel, you too.

Chanel Achenbach [03:09:32] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:09:33] And your Chanel, your. Your Tick Tock handle is.

Chanel Achenbach [03:09:37] Is bet noir 4B.

John Dehlin [03:09:39] Spell that for us.

Chanel Achenbach [03:09:40] B, E, T, T, E, N, O, I, R, number four.

John Dehlin [03:09:44] All right, Keep up your good work on Tik Tok as well. All right? Please support Black Menaces. Donate to them. Support them and fight the power. Thanks, Nate.

Nathan Byrd [03:09:55] Thanks.

John Dehlin [03:09:55] Take care.

Nathan Byrd [03:09:56] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [03:09:56] All right, we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. And. And go, Black Menaces. Take care.

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.