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

by Jemar Tisby

The refusal to act in the midst of injustice is itself an act of injustice.

racism as prejudice plus power. It is not only personal bigotry toward someone of a different race that constitutes racism; rather, racism includes the imposition of bigoted ideas on groups of people.

Wells, along with others such as Frederick Douglass, wrote a protest pamphlet entitled “The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition.” In a portion written by Douglass, he aimed to “explain the grounds of the prejudice, hate and contempt in which [black people] are still held. . . . So when it is asked why we are excluded from the World’s Columbian Exposition, the answer is Slavery.”

the church’s complicity with racism was not just a southern problem but an American one.

“constructed their racial notions on the twin pillars of black inferiority and white paternalism, pillars that were common beliefs among whites in general.”19

But no amount of courage abroad could eliminate antiblack racism at home.

“Racism was never just a southern problem.”58