627: Black Athletes at BYU with Darron Smith, Ph.D. Pt. 1
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2016
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Race, Religion, and Sport Collide tells the story of Brandon Davies’ dismissal from Brigham Young University’s NCAA playoff basketball team to illustrate the thorny intersection of religion, race, and sport at BYU and beyond. Author Darron T. Smith analyzes the athletes dismissed through BYU’s honor code violations and suggests that they are disproportionately African American, which has troubling implications. He ties these dismissals to the complicated history of negative views towards African Americans in the LDS faith. These honor code dismissals elucidate the challenges facing black athletes at predominantly white institutions. Weaving together the history of the black athlete in America and the experience of blackness in Mormon theology, When Race, Religion, and Sport Collide offers a timely and powerful analysis of the challenges facing African American athletes in the NCAA today.
Dr. Darron T. Smith is a frequent political and cultural commentator on various issues of U.S. based issues of race, racism, and discrimination in forums ranging from Religion Dispatches, The New York Times and Chicago Tribune op-ed to ESPN's Outside the Lines. His research spans a wide myriad of topics on race including healthcare disparities, Religious studies, Race & Sports, and Race, Adoption and the Black Family. His current research focuses on health care workforce discrimination involving African American physicians and physician assistants. He is the co-author of White Parents, Black Children: Experiencing Transracial Adoption and co-editor of Black and Mormon. His current book, When Race & Religion Collide: Black Athletics at BYU and Beyond was released in 2015.
Transcript
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| 0:32.0 | The Kindly Light of Myth in Circling Glue |
| 0:37.0 | Lead thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home. |
| 0:44.0 | Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host John DeLin. |
| 0:59.0 | And today I'm super excited to bring back one of our original guests on Mormon Stories podcast. |
| 1:07.0 | And Darren and I were just sort of noticing this. Darren asked how long ago it was that we did our first interview. |
| 1:14.0 | It turns out on March 30th 2006, I released episodes 22 through 24 of Mormon Stories called the Black and Mormon the Darren Smith Story. |
| 1:27.0 | And just completely coincidentally, it's now sort of March 2016. |
| 1:34.0 | So Darren, we're in our 10 year anniversary of that first Mormon Stories interview. |
| 1:38.0 | Yeah, I believe it's faith. |
| 1:41.0 | It's faith. |
| 1:42.0 | It brought us together. It brought us together this time around. |
| 1:46.0 | Surely a lot has happened since then. |
| 1:49.0 | So it'll be nice to catch up. |
| 1:50.0 | A little bit's happened on this end. |
| 1:52.0 | I'm guessing some stuff's happened on your end as well. |
| 1:55.0 | Indeed, indeed it has. |
| 1:57.0 | All right, so we're here to, I mean, one of the main reasons we're here is to explore this book that I'm holding up to the camera for those of you who are watching on YouTube. |
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