The false rhetoric of cursing

I just came across a claim that "Just like the church believed and taught that a colored individual was cursed to hell years ago. " This is demonsttably false. The Church teaches that the door to salvation is baptism, thus no one who is baptized can be cursed to hell. So, the fact that the Church has always been willing to baptize individuals of African descent shows this misrepresents what the Church taught.

Beyond this, most of the rhetoric about the LDS Church and race is put forth too much in a vacuum. I have known people of African descent who argued vehemently that the way the Church approached the policy avoided the creation of a seperate black LDS Church. Considering what happened with the 3rd convention in Mexico, where the white Americans were not an ever present force, there may be validity to this argument. 

On the other hand, I feel that some people in the Church do not try enough to reach across racial boundaries. In Southfield Ward they seem to do such reach across fairly well, but sometimes I wonder if the people who insist on living in Berkley because it has "better schools", do not at times alienate those members of the ward who hesitate to send their children to school in a place where they feel such children would stick out like a sore thumb.

This reminds me of the stupidest reasoning for not living in a predominantly non-white area I ever heard. From a guy who would complain about what he felt was racist policies he encountered on his mission to slow down the baptism of black people no less. I on the other hand am more divided about quick baptism policies. You have to have a ward ready and willing to provide retention work. I see this in Southfield, with cases of working on Family History with recent converts. 

However when you view a requirement of 2 times attending Church before baptism as racist maybe you are missing the point. True, we do not want to follow the Jews and create requirements meant to stop conversion. However The current policy at least in the Detroit Mission of coming to Church 3 times, not even required to be on consecutive Sundays, seems a mostly reasonable policy, as long as not taken too extreme either way. What I mean by that is I would not think we would have a minimum number of minutes at Church required, and although the person having gone to all three meetings all three times would be ideal, I would think consideration of circumstances would be good. On the other hand, people should not be pressured into baptism who have not come to fully embrace the gospel, but of course they do not need an absolute understanding. I think here in Michigan we have generally found a happy medium. 

Retention rates are not as high as I wish, but I am not convinced the number of people who are remain active would increase with more stringent baptism requirements. 

Anyway, the person I was mentioning basically said he didn't want his daughter having black and hispanic youths going after her when she was in high school because she was the only white girl around. This fear of being different keeps our school system and our residential areas far too segregated.