The Nephites had passed judgment on the Lamanites because of the color of their skin. Such racial prejudice has been the source of endless conflict and injustice in our generation. The scriptures never justify this type of pride, all are alike unto God (2 Nephi 26:33), and all flesh is mine, and I am no respecter of persons (DC 38:16).
A quote from Professor Ruth Benedict and Dr. Gene Weltfish:
“Race prejudice is, after all, a determination to keep a people down, and it misuses the label ‘inferior’ to justify unfairness and injustice. Race prejudice makes people ruthless; it invites violence… It turns on this point of inferiority and superiority. The man with race prejudice says of a man of another race, ’No matter who he is, I don’t have to compare myself with him. I’m superior anyway. I was born that way…’” (Franklin S. Harris, Jr., The Book of Mormon: Message and Evidences, p. 27)
A prominent journalist, Richard C. Hottlelet, said:
“The matter of prejudice is not a monopoly of the South. There is nothing that we in the North or you in the West can be smug about or sanctimonious about. There is prejudice and discrimination running throughout our society. Black and white is the most spectacular, but there is racial discrimination of other kinds. Every big city in the North and in the Midwest knows of various kinds of discrimination against minorities. There is religious discrimination, too, endemic in the American society, perhaps a product, some of the slag, some of the froth left in the American melting pot which is still bubbling away. But the aspect that I want to address myself to, very briefly, is the aspect of sheer efficiency, of sheer political and economic performance. You cannot bring out of a productive society all that could be if so much of it is turned in upon and against itself…There is loss to the American community of the brain power of children who are denied access to schools, of the productive, creative capacity of men who are not permitted, not given the opportunity to fulfill their promise in their professions, in the fields of science, in the fields of technology. Who is to gauge how much the United States has already lost, and who is to say that the United States can go on blithely booking this loss as though it meant nothing at all?” (Richard C. Hottelet, BYU Speeches of the Year, Feb. 6, 1964)
Spencer W. Kimball
“We do wish that there would be no racial prejudice…. Racial prejudice is of the devil. Racial prejudice is of ignorance. There is no place for it in the gospel of Jesus Christ.” (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, p. 237)