Darron T. Smith

DARRON SMITH {[email protected]} is an instructor of sociology at the University of Memphis. He has written for various media outlets and has appeared in ESPN’s Outside the Lines. Smith is also featured in the CBS Sports documentary, The Black 14: Wyoming Football 1969. His research and scholarship include: Mormon studies, health care inequities, race relations, sports, and transracial adoption. He is the co-editor of Black and Mormon (2004), White Parents Black Children: Experiencing Transracial Adoption (2011), and the author of When Race, Religion & Sports Collide: Black Athletes at BYU and Beyond, released in 2016 by Rowman & Littlefield Press.

The Mask We Must Wear in a Racist Society: Reflections of Black Suffering in the LDS Church Through Art

Articles/Essays – Volume 54, No. 1

I reflect upon a work of art by Marlena Wilding, a Black female artist with ties to Utah and Mormonism.[1] Her artwork is a stark representation of the complex nature of living while Black in…

Negotiating Black Self-Hate within the LDS Church

Articles/Essays – Volume 51, No. 3

Dialogue 51.3 (Fall 2018): 29–44
Smith considers “why would any self-aware Black person find Mormonism the least bit appealing given its ignoble history of racial exclusion and marginalization?”