Culture: The point of the “skin of blackness” is to make the Lamanites “loathsome” to the Nephites, “thy people.” This repugnance will even extend to the Lamanites’ spouses. Thus, there is not only a geographic division between the brothers and their descendants, but a moral and religious chasm as well. Interesting and importantly for the discussion of whether such a curse included a change of pigmentation, it was a curse that made the Lamanites only conditionally “loathsome.” They could remove their loathsomeness if “they shall repent of their iniquities.” There is no intent for a permanent distinction between the two peoples. If the Lamanites become righteous, they change from loathsome to delightsome. (See 3 Nephi 2:14–15 where Lamanites joined with Nephites and “their skin became white like unto the Nephites.)
Three points become important. Marriage laws prohibited culturally defined incest and encouraged a preference for marrying inside the tribe. (See commentary accompanying 2 Nephi 5:21.) The “pure” Nephite and Lamanite Old World peoples had to have been relatively few and sufficiently interrelated as to fall under (or very near to) the incest ban. Looking beyond the “pure” Old World Israelites would necessarily mean intermarriage with the natives of the New World, a practice that was discouraged under the Mosaic law but not entirely prohibited. The logic of the situation suggests that the pressure would encourage such intermarriages rather than attempting to maintain a “pure” line.
Second, the prohibition of intermarriage with the Lamanites follows the long Israelite tradition of prohibiting marriage with a particular people. The Lamanites probably posed the same potential disruption of the Nephite religious tradition as the Canaanites posed to the Israelite religious tradition. Those Canaanites had a religion similar to that of the Israelites, but it was not the same. (See1 Nephi, Part 1: Context, Chapter 1, “The Historical Setting of 1 Nephi.”) It is probable that this near similarity made the Canaanites particularly dangerous as marriage partners because of the risk of idolatry. The Lamanites would have been a similar-yet-different group who were “dangerous” for the same reasons.
Third, the prohibition against marriage with the Lamanites comes within Nephi’s lifetime—the first generation. At this point it is certainly directed at the specific descendants of Laman and Lemuel. When “Lamanite” became a more generic term, akin to “gentile,” the prohibition probably was relaxed, particularly when Lamanites converted and “became” Nephites. It may have been a specific commandment that referred to tribal Lamanites as opposed to the more generic Lamanite-as-Gentile.
History: The curse of the original Lamanites is extended to “the seed of him that mixeth with their seed; for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing” (v. 23). It is quite possible that the use of Lamanite as a categorical description of all non-Nephites (as in Jacob 1:14) stems from this generic inclusion of all who mixed with the seed of Laman and Lemuel in the cursing and therefore the conceptual category of the Lamanites as a whole. If “others” had joined with the Lamanites in the same way they did with the Nephites (and they surely did), then those “others” would become Lamanites (and cursed) just as the “others” who joined with the Nephites became part of Israel. (See commentary accompanying 2 Nephi 6:13.)