For Religion Dispatches, Joanna Brooks critiques Andrew Sullivan’s analysis of segregation and racism in Mormonism. Brooks believes the Mormon reluctance to publicly denounce the religion’s previous priesthood ban of African-Americans to be “a historically-rooted guardedness against criticism by non-Mormon outsiders.” Brooks applies a similar perspective to Romney: “Romney’s attitudes on the priesthood ban are reflective of Romney’s own deeply embedded sense of loyalty to hierarchy and identification with institutional power.”