True, and deplorable. "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28). It seems the LDS church was rather late in getting the memo.
Still... that was 42 years ago. It seems a bit of a stretch to say that that's why there are so few blacks in Utah today. (And even pre-1978, you could live in Utah without being LDS.)
> Combined with governmental policies like redlining of majority black neighborhoods, I think it's fair to say that the lack of diversity in Utah isn't the natural state of affairs
Redlining is also deplorable. But did it happen in Utah? I ask because I'm not sure Utah has any majority-black neighborhoods.
And even then, for there to be redlining, the blacks have to already be here. If they came here, they couldn't buy a home because of redlining? As opposed to anywhere else, where they... also couldn't buy a home because of redlining? Or is the claim that Utah had redlining later than everywhere else?
I don't see the logic for your redlining claim to have any relevance to the question of why Utah is not diverse.
Does it? Because to me it doesn't seem like much of a stretch at all to suspect that being entirely unwelcoming to black people would discourage black people from moving there (and encourage black people already there to leave at the earliest opportunity).
There were Black people in Utah before the LDS church. There were Black slaves owned by members of the LDS church until slavery was made illegal, and there are and were Black Mormons since the time of Brigham Young. Per the below link, there might have been more that came or stayed on in Utah, if the area had been more welcoming, but discrimination in housing, work opportunity, and arguably in the LDS faith had an impact.
As best I can tell, Utah never had a particularly big Black population, and many many racist policies kept it that way. I suppose you could argue that that's natural, but I don't see it.
Redlining Maps: https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining
Utah and African Americans (1994) https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/a/African_Amer...
100 Year History of Racist Housing Policy: https://www.shareable.net/timeline-of-100-years-of-racist-ho...