The ^AReligion of Whiteness: How Racism Distorts Christian Faith

by Michael O. Emerson

All of this adds up to what we can call white supremacy, the social system that functions to move symbolic and material resources from people of color to whites. It includes beliefs—whether implicit or explicit—that whites are better, superior, purer, more moral, more righteous, harder-working, more intelligent, more capable, and better leaders (or the converse, that others have less because they don’t work as hard, are not as dedicated, have poor morals, and related explanations). It also means that whites have superior access to material goods such as jobs, health care, housing, and neighborhood amenities. We hear such talk in our surveys all the time. We have inequality, our white respondents tell us, because some groups don’t work hard enough, and white people do work hard. We have inequality because some groups are not dedicated to achieving, and white people are. We have inequality because some groups have faulty cultural practices and lack role models, whereas white people have cultural practices that lead to success and support each other by modeling that success, where success is defined as educational, economic, and material achievement. The ROW believes whiteness to be natural, normative—God’s ordained order. This tree of belief has strong historical and theological roots in the Enlightenment and the Western world itself.