As the political fortunes of our Marxian messiah appear on the wane, no stone is being left unturned in rallying the faithful to his defense.  As a consequence, candidate Mitt Romney is being tarred with the brush of "racism by proxy" and facing character assassination by being tied to puzzling historical "Just So" stories from the Latter-Day Saints past.  Black men and women are understandably concerned and correct in seeking answers to this indictment of the Mormon past -- a past that, like America in general on the subject of race, is not without stain.

It is an undeniable fact that the LDS church did not allow black men into the priesthood or condone interracial unions before the Apostolic Revelation of 1978, although blacks had been known to be a part of the general body of believers since Mormonism's inception, albeit not in significant numbers.  It is also true that despite repeated requests for a formal repudiation of this historical discrimination, one has not been forthcoming -- and this is likely due to the strain that such an admission would have on the Church's doctrinal authority, and not necessarily a reticence at correcting what is now universally perceived as a moral wrong.  Since 1978, however, the last de jure barriers limiting the full admission of blacks have caused a great harvest of black members, which unofficially total about 500,000 worldwide and constitute about 5% of the church's total roster.  Moreover, the aggressive Mormon Missions Program is a significant entity in Central and South America, the Caribbean, and West Africa, where two temples currently exist.  Despite politically charged rhetoric to the contrary -- that the LDS Church is dismissive of or uncharitable toward black interests, the African poor have been the beneficiaries of the church's largesse in the building of schools, general nutrition, water projects, measles and AIDS eradication, neo-natal education, and famine relief for victims regardless of creed or membership.

It is not my intent here to uncover the dogmatic roots of the Mormon faith or to cast judgment on the credibility of its origins, but to defang the calumny perpetrated by desperate operatives who see their political vision dripping through their trembling fingers like wax.  Having only a compendium of foreign and domestic executive failures to show for their troubles, their stratagems turned ultra-negative long ago, causing Obama's operatives to seek out the destruction of Romney by any means necessary.  This, clearly, is their only avenue for November success.  By perpetuating the canard that Mormonism is adverse to black interests (yet another indictment saturated in racist psychobabble and carte blanche determinism), the Obama nomenklatura have been reduced to flinging their ideological excrement wherever it will stick, without regard to the fact that a growing number of black followers, including the famous singer Gladys Knight and even the late former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, have embraced the faith.

There is exactly a zero percent chance that any outdated or perhaps fanciful Mormon theology is going to place manacles back on black people or to attenuate their status as equal and moral beings in any way.  Conversely, we should consider the dehumanizing effects of the progressive plantation mentality through liberal social policies bringing about the destruction of the black nuclear family, the perpetuation of learned helplessness, the conspiratorial positioning of the racist/eugenicist Margaret Sanger's Planned Parenthood clinics in black communities, the monstrously high incidence of African-American selective abortions, the precipitous decline in black education, the devastation of America's urban cities under liberal leadership, and the very real negative repercussions of liberal economic policies on black employment.  These are not some speculative arcane theology, but the spoiled fruit of liberalism's de facto "soft racism of lowered expectations."  The very fact that these broad strokes of distinction in political worldviews are for the most part opaque to the black community is a stunning indictment on just how cynical some operatives have become in commandeering votes for an ideology that acts as a cultural narcotic -- a slow-release embalming fluid to the black spirit.

With the possible exception of perhaps a few incendiary non-Mormon nutcases who lack the moral authority to pronounce a considered political opinion on anything more complex than an armadillo burrow, I have yet to hear any Mormon pronounce that he will be voting for Romney because he is white.  They may be swayed by his religious affiliation, as good men and women are indeed joined by common interests, but his concentration of epidermal melanin is not a motivating factor in their rational considerations.  In contradistinction, a not inconsiderable number of visible and vocal black celebrities have embraced racial identity politics as the primal factor for their vote -- and feel a perverse sense of racial pride in justifying it.  But logic and perception have always ratcheted in one direction on the idyllic fields of the liberal plantation: where you are given just enough cornmeal to tide you over and just enough rope to hang yourself and one's future generations in perpetuity -- worshiping at the feet of the progressive taskmaster -- an indentured servitude without end.