Book Reflections: The Color Of Compromise

By Marla

The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby

Handwriting experts say that people who press really hard when they write could be angry or stressed. That would explain why all the underlines, notes, and angry faces I scrawled in The Color of Compromise are so deep I can feel them on the other side of every page.

I also wrote “Dad” at least a dozen times. 

My dad is 69, I’m 44, and he is truly the best dad a girl could ask for. He always has been. He’s also a very conservative evangelical white Christian who can’t always see the insidiousness of white supremacy and racism. 

So was I until a few years ago. (Well, I’m still white.) 

My dad loves me very much. And I’ve made him very uncomfortable lately. You name an argument, and we probably had it in the summer of 2018 when our family visited from Cambodia. New Earth creation theology, gay marriage, personal salvation, hell, the patriarchy, and, yes, racism. 

My faith shifting away from conservatism—and having my eyes opened to racism in America—happened simultaneously. Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012 was the catalyst that kicked it all into high gear. (That journey is a whole ‘nother post—or book.)

I come from a long line of “respectable racists” (on both sides), as in they are “very lovely Christian people” who don’t see a problem with believing/saying racist things. Several family members and I are estranged over it. One of my favorite people on earth disowned me. But my dad has stuck with me, searching for common ground. 

The Color of Compromise was written specifically for (me and) my dad. My good, kind, loving, Christian, doesn’t-mean-to-be-racist dad. My dad who was born on Ronald Reagan’s birthday. (I grew up thinking Reagan hung the moon.) My dad who religiously followed Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. (As a little kid, I met Jerry after a service at Thomas Road Baptist Church and shook his hand.) My dad who loves American history, especially the Civil War. (I grew up visiting Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia and believing Robert E. Lee was one of the greatest heroes of all time.) 

Jemar exposes the racist truth about each of these “godly” men in this book. 

The Color of Compromise was written for my dad who was a young teen in Ohio during the Civil Rights Movement, but I’ve never heard him mention it a single time. My dad, whose nieces and nephews attended Bob Jones, the most racist university in the modern era. My dad, who believes the Republican party is the “Christian party” because Democrats are “for abortion.” My dad, who believes FOX News is the only unbiased news network. My dad, who loves God with his whole heart and wants to please him, but doesn’t see racial justice issues as central to the gospel.

I would give my right arm to get this book into the hands of every white American conservative evangelical Christian. What sucks is that they’re the least likely group of people to actually read it. 

But: I have hope. As I’ve started speaking up against racism, yes, I’ve lost friends and family. But I’ve also gained a growing group of friends whose eyes and hearts are being opened as well. People are listening, people are reading. I get to hear real-life stories of folks (many of them white evangelical Christians) whose hearts have been changed as the scales have come off their eyes. Just like mine.

And my dad? He gives me hope too. Listening to my side, opening his mind bit by bit, acknowledging that we both want to live a life pleasing to God and learning more about my changing views on so many issues. 

And, for the record, I’m fine with us finding “common ground” in many areas, but I’m not fine with common ground, “middle” ground, when it comes to white supremacy and racism. There is no middle ground here. There is racism and there is anti-racism. Period. Passivity/apathy/ignorance all go in the racism column.

I don’t just want my dad to read The Color of Compromise. I want EVERY WHITE AMERICAN CHRISTIAN to read it. They (we) need to. Why? Because, when you grow up learning a whitewashed version of American history (and we all did), you can’t make sense of people talking about racism today. But, when you go back and learn the TRUTH, then you see how it’s all connected and has never, ever, ever stopped. And you realized EVERYTHING in this country is built on it and depends on it. All of us, but especially we white people, desperately need a history lesson. Lots of them. And Jemar’s unique take on this truth of history is that he comes at it from a Christian point of view. He’s focusing directly on the American church and its complicity in racism and white supremacy. 

I would love for my dad to read a book called Stamped from the Beginning, the most exhaustive, brilliant book on racism I’ve ever read. But the author is a humanist. No matter how much irrefutable truth he shares, many Christians are only going to listen to other Christians. Enter Jemar. I believe God has set him in place for such a time as this. I read The Color of Compromise, and his powerful words of truth filled me with a righteous anger over the atrocities committed against Black people in America across the centuries in God’s name. And I felt hope and joy and exhilaration as he laid out his plan for Freedom Schools and new seminaries and reparations and pilgrimages and tearing down monuments and making Juneteenth a national holiday. 

This is our chance. To make wrongs right, to be seekers and doers of justice, to actually become true followers of Christ.

I’ve committed my life to opening the eyes—and changing the hearts—of my fellow white Americans. And I’m ready to tear the systems of oppression down, following the lead of Black women and men like Jemar and Drew, Lisa and Brenda, Brittany and Bree, Bryan and Bernice, Ally and Austin, Deborah and Delaine, and so so so many others.

I have so much to learn. So much to do. So much to make right..

White people have been telling Black people to wait for a “more convenient season” way before Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote those words to white moderates from a Birmingham Jail in 1963, and they haven’t stopped saying it since.

There will never, ever be a more convenient season to eradicate racism and white supremacy. 

The time is NOW.

And it starts with learning the TRUTH.