Orderite

In his admirable monograph, Leonard J. Arrington has given a new slant to this experiment. Here are the facts and figures, the letters, the problems, the attitudes of both the Orderites and their neighbors.

Although certain residents of the United Order towns were active in the cooperative movement, control was decidedly in the hands of the larger and somewhat more affluent Eastern Arizona Stake. Numerical and economic matters doubtlessly curtailed the participation of the "Orderites," but a more important determinant was the fact that they entertained strong doubts as to the religious and social soundness of such conventional methods. Lot Smith's reaction was characteristic. "Debt ...

As used here, Orderites are viewed as those (1) whose group is currently in power in the United States; (2) who directly have a strong vested interest in keeping their group in power; and (3) who currently have the right, responsibility and resources to keep their group in power. [...] Rather unabashedly arrogant, understandably so given the success of most of their ventures, the Orderites seem to make it a plus to have the status of being White and not on welfare — at least not the stigmatized version. On the other hand, these Orderites seldom miss an opportunity to magnify caricatures of African Americans either in featured crime (males) or welfare (females) media series.

The separation created a situation where “the orderites would have their dances in one building, and the outsiders would have their dances in another hall.”