The Black Menaces take on Brigham Young University

“It's just really hard to understand that people you attend school with and go to church with do not understand things that are important to my existence.”

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, from Kate Lindsay and Nick Catucci.🧩

Recently, if my TikTok FYP isn’t showing a video from The Black Menaces, it’s a video inspired by them. —Kate

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Brigham Young University now has its own side of TikTok. Founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young, the school is sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aka the Mormon Church. The church is conservative in its views on sex and gender, and has fraught history with race. Now, a group of BYU students called The Black Menaces is challenging many of its assumptions in viral TikTok videos. 

BYU senior Rachel Weaver, junior Kennethia Dorsey, junior Kylee Shepherd, sophomore Sebastian Stewart-Johnson, and senior Nate Byrd met through the school’s Black Student Union, and formed The Black Menaces as a way to respond to remarks made by BYU professor Brad Wilcox. Last year, the high-level Latter-day Saint leader flippantly addressed criticism of the fact that Black members of the church were not allowed into the priesthood until 1978, saying, “Maybe instead of asking why the Blacks had to wait until 1978 to get the priesthood, we should be asking why did the whites and other races have to wait until 1829.”

Wilcox later apologized, and BYU condemned his words, reiterating a commitment “to root out racism in our institutions.” 

In true TikTok fashion, The Black Menaces’ first post was a live reaction video to Wilcox’s comments, followed by videos reading out racist statements from other Church leaders. At the same time, the Menaces also began approaching students on campus with questions meant to confront some of the Church’s other outdated norms. They asked students about their support for the Black Lives Matter movement and solicited their thoughts on feminism, and asked Black students about their BYU dating experiences.

The group has over 625,000 followers on TikTok, and also shares content on Instagram, YouTube, and Patreon. Their videos receive millions of views, and have even inspired their own memes on the app. In this interview for paid subscribers, I sat down with Rachel and Nate over Zoom to chat about the group’s impact on TikTok, how the school is responding to their popularity, and what the Black Menaces hope to change on BYU’s campus.