Darron Smith

Smith was born in Nashville, Tennessee, but his formative years were split between Los Angeles and Nashville. As a child, he followed the Baptist faith along with his family. As a teenager, however, Smith began to question his faith. When he was 15, he met a black member of the LDS Church who briefly introduced him to Mormonism. A short time later, Smith had an unrelated encounter when two Mormon missionaries came to the Smith residence and further broadened his understanding of the religion. He felt that his questions about religion were better answered through Mormonism. Smith converted from the Baptist faith to Mormonism in 1981. He later went on to serve a mission for the LDS Church in Lansing, Michigan.^[4]

After graduating from Antioch High School in Nashville, he began his collegiate studies at the LDS Church-owned BYU-Idaho (formerly known as Ricks College). During his time at Ricks, Smith served one year in the regular Army, training as an Army photographer. He later transferred his undergraduate training to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City where he completed his bachelor's degree in Behavioral Science and Health in 1994.^[4]

Smith completed the physician assistant training program from the University of Utah School of Medicine in 1996.^[4] In the late 1990s, he started teaching college students. While continuing to practice as a certified PA, Smith taught courses at universities in and around the Salt Lake valley, including Brigham Young University, Utah Valley University and the University of Utah. It was while working as a PA student at the BYU Sports Medicine facility in Provo, Utah, that he enrolled in the Masters of Educational Leadership at the BYU. He completed his M.Ed. in 2000.^[5] Two years later, he enrolled in the University of Utah's Education, Culture, and Society doctoral program. Smith continued to teach at BYU until 2006, when his contract was not renewed allegedly over his manuscript, Black and Mormon.^[5][6]

In May 2010, Smith received his Ph.D. from University of Utah. The winter, he joined the faculty at Wichita State University as an assistant professor in the Physician Assistant Program. He left Wichita State University in mid 2012 and pursued his work on When Race, Religion and Sport Collide. By April 2013, he relocated to Memphis, Tennessee to join the staff at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center as an assistant professor and later taught in the Department of Sociology at the University of Memphis.^[5]Smith is currently teaching at the University of Washington in the Department of Family Medicine where he teaches future generations of healthcare providers.

Smith's research focus includes issues of social inequality, stress, racism, discrimination, income inequality, disparities in higher education and health-related inequalities that African Americans endure. He studies and writes about the emotional toll of being a racialized minority in a white supremacist nation and the impact it has on physical and mental well-being. This work also focuses on psychedelic assisted facilitation for BIPOC suffering from race-based trauma and stress. His articles have been featured in numerous academic journals. Additionally, his work has appeared in Adoption Today, Religion Dispatches, Deadspin,^[7] and Your Black World, and he also published op-ed pieces in The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.^[8] He is a regular blogger for Huffington Post,^[9] where he uses social media as a platform to advocate for social change. He has written widely from urban street culture to pop culture. Smith's most successful post explored the appropriation of black music by Justin Bieber's rise to stardom.^[10] Smith has also written about the Ferguson Riots, which began shortly after the death of Michael Brown that sparked a national outcry against police brutality against young unarmed black men and woman.^[11]