White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

by Daniel Hill

hypersegregation of the white American church, a term Emerson and his colleagues coined when researching racial segregation in cities. They measured each city based on a range from zero (complete racial integration) to one (complete racial segregation). If a city measured 0.90 or higher, 90 percent of one group would have to switch neighborhoods to achieve integration; in that case, the city was hypersegregated. A score that high indicated a city’s racial makeup. As Emerson said, “Values this high could usually only be achieved through laws, discriminatory lending and real estate procedures, threats, and other racially unequal practices.”1 It was sad but not surprising to see that a number of cities in America approached the value of 0.90. I was vaguely familiar with the racial history of our country, so it seemed plausible that certain cities still reflected the effects of unjust laws, procedures, and practices. What I didn’t expect, though, was that this level of racial segregation reached beyond just cities; it was present in the American church as well. Emerson and team applied the same research criteria when studying congregations and discovered that conservative Protestantism exceeded these values of 0.90. This seemed statistically impossible, which led Emerson to suggest, “Even if someone were in control of all conservative Protestantism and had the power and will to consciously assign whites and nonwhites to separate congregations across the nation, obtaining a val...