White Too Long

What is the real racial problem? A half century ago, politicians spoke of the “Negro problem.” Today, social scientists tell us that the idea of race is socially constructed—without necessarily explaining why and how it came to be. In his book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, Robert P. Jones explains that it is not enough to know that race is socially constructed; what we must understand is that it is whiteness that is socially constructed—so that everything defined otherwise has come to orbit around that center. Inspired by James Baldwin, Jones identifies whiteness as the real racial problem, maintaining that our society has been “white too long.”

Jones defines whiteness as neither mere skin tone nor the attitudes and actions of obvious bigots. Rather, following the example of Eddie Glaude, Jr., when Jones speaks of “white supremacy” and “whiteness,” he is referring to a value system around which all of society has been structured. Jones contends that by attributing white supremacy only to extremist individuals, we fail to see the way that its values have been “baked into” our social structure. Jones’ project is to show how the Christian church in the United States has functioned as the “baker” that created and maintains a society that values whiteness above all else. As he puts it:

White Christian churches have not just been complacent; they have not only been complicit; rather, as the dominant cultural power in America, they have been responsible for constructing and sustaining a project to protect white supremacy and resist black equality. This project has framed the entire American story. (6)

In building this argument, Jones weaves together three main strands of material. As the CEO and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), Jones draws upon statistical attitudinal surveys of Americans. He also includes rich historical background regarding denominations, churches, individuals, and movements. Finally, he draws upon his own personal upbringing and observations—often done retrospectively, sharing confessionally with the reader what he failed to notice in his own social and religious context until more recently. Though he keeps the book very reader-friendly, scholars will appreciate the extensive footnotes, bibliography, and appendices.

While much of his focus is on his own context as a member of the Southern Baptist Convention—a denomination founded on the idea that slavery was compatible with the Gospel—Jones’ historical and survey data demonstrate that white supremacy is not and was not limited to a single denomination, religious movement, or geographical location.

Jones demonstrates how intertwined the church was with other political and cultural movements and events during the latter years of slavery, secession and war, Reconstruction and “Redemption,” and the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras. Examples of this include Atlanta worshippers heading straight from Sunday services to a much-anticipated lynching (with no opposition by the clergy to the mob violence), the assassination of Medgar Evers when he tried to lead a group of African Americans to integrate a white church, and the financial support provided by churches in the legal battle to maintain racially restrictive neighborhoods.

Jones points to the theological beliefs that were preached during these eras to support slavery and segregation, noting that by the late 20^th century, such preaching no longer had to be so explicitly racist. Rather, it merely had to “constrict . . . the moral vision” of white Americans so that they failed to see race as an ongoing problem (75). Yet, as his own research shows, white Christian Americans score consistently higher on racist beliefs, as compared to Black Christians and white religiously unaffiliated Americans. Frequency of church attendance was actually found to increase the correlation of these racist beliefs among white Christian Americans.

Drawing upon a study by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Jones notes that the white evangelical cultural toolkit contains three theological emphases that contribute to their inability to recognize and confront structural racism:

Spelled out, free will individualism means that, for white evangelicals, “individuals exist independent of structures and institutions, have free will, and are individually accountable for their own actions.” Relationalism means that white evangelicals tend to see the root of all problems in poor relationships between individuals rather than in unfair laws or institutional behavior. Finally, antistructuralism denotes the deep suspicion with which white evangelicals view institutional explanations for social problems, principally because they believe invoking social structure shifts the blame from where it belongs: with sinful individuals. (97-98)

Jones concludes the book by giving examples of churches and other institutions that are beginning to do the work of racial reconciliation. He calls white Christian Americans to “reckon” with the white supremacy that has so long been a part of the church, explaining that reckoning means both to tell the truth and to settle accounts.

Scholarship has increasingly addressed the relationship between Christianity and white supremacy. Books like The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy among others, are complementary in that they cover similar subjects—albeit with different methods and perspectives. This book would be good reading in both university and seminary courses, as well as in church study groups.

V. Jacquette Rhoades, Ashland University

V. Jacquette Rhoades

Date Of Review:

June 27, 2023