The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

by Jemar Tisby

In the book Up South, Matthew Countryman writes, “Racism was never just a southern problem.”58 Racism stretched far beyond the states of the former Confederacy, affecting every region of the country. Though it would be far simpler to relegate racism to a single region such as the South as the historic site of slavery and the Confederacy, this is simply not possible. The South has often been used as the foil for the rest of America. People in other parts of the country could always look below the Mason-Dixon Line and say, “Those are the real racists.” Yet the very conspicuousness of white supremacy in the South has made it easier for racism in other parts of the country to exist in open obscurity. Christians of the North have often been characterized as abolitionists, integrationists, and open-minded citizens who want all people to have a chance at equality. Christians of the South, on the other hand, have been portrayed as uniformly racist, segregationist, and antidemocratic. The truth is far more complicated. In reality, most of the black people who left the South encountered similar patterns of race-based discrimination wherever they went. Although they may not have faced the same closed system of white supremacy that permeated the South, they still contended with segregation and put up with daily assaults on their dignity, and the church contributed to this. Compromised Christianity transcends regions. Bigotry obeys no boundaries. This is why Christians in every part of...