Reeve argues that restrictions developed unevenly under Brigham Young and hardened as Latter-day Saints, themselves racialized by outsiders, sought the privileges and respectability of whiteness at Black members’ expense. He interprets their eventual removal as a return to earlier racial openness and distinguishes God permitting human error from God initiating the restrictions.
- W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (Oxford University Press, 2015).
- W. Paul Reeve, “Race, the Priesthood, and Temples,” A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine & Church History (2016): 159–178.
Within this context, the Church moved unevenly across the course of the nineteenth century toward whiteness