The most charitable explanation possible for Mormon leaders' racism

[SeattleUte]

I've been struck by the fact that Steve Benson lived such a sheltered life inside Mormonism. At age 39, after he won the Pulitzer Prize for cartoons, he went through much the same questioning and rebellious stage culiminating in apostasy that I've said is normal to occur in college. I read once where he said that when he met Spencer W. Kimball he was struck by what a simple, unrefined man he was. No doubt Steve's grandfather Ezra Taft Benson was highly educated and brilliant and maybe this gave Steve a distorted, insular view of Mormonism. Anyway, I think the most charitable explanation for Mormon leaders' racism is that they have really been pretty provincial and unworldly, even lacking in much education, Ezra Taft Benson, Dallen Oaks, and Geoff Holland and a few others being the exceptions.