Damned Whiteness: How White Christian Allies Failed the Black Freedom Movement
By David M. Evans
The University of North Carolina Press, 302 pages
Published October 28, 2025
What do esteemed Christian leaders Dorothy Day (founder of the Catholic Worker movement), Clarence Jordan (The Cottonpatch Gospel), and Ralph Templin (the Harlem Ashram) have in common? A focus on White allyship rooted in virtue signaling rather than Black liberation rooted in Christian solidarity. That is the claim of Damned Whiteness, a timely critique of the ineffective witness of White Christian allies during the Black Freedom Movements of 1933-1969.
With clear-eyed reflection in well-researched prose, Professor David F. Evans argues that each figure’s pursuit of interracialism, “which proposed that interracial relationships should provide the primary mission and vision for eradicating racial enmity” instead of working toward Black empowerment through “economic upward mobility, civil rights, and racial justice” ultimately failed to move either the church or society in meaningful ways. By expecting Black people to live in voluntary poverty, excusing bigoted behavior from White community members, and centering White narratives and spaces in their movements, these leaders undermined Black liberation and reinforced White power dynamics.
Furthermore, by refusing to use force to resist authority to bring about change in the name of non-resistance (and refusing to resist any authority for any reason, even when authority was unjustly exercised), Day and Jordan were complicit in maintaining the status quo that led to continued economic disparity, legal discrimination, and violence against their Black colleagues. Articulating disappointment with racial segregation while taking limited political action paid lip service to the Black Freedom Movement; it did not contribute to Black liberation. Only Templin eventually realized that his assimilationist mindset was undermining the Christian goal of kingdom justice. Through highlighting Templin’s participation in Black spaces, including an all-Black conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the NAACP, Evans sets Templin up as the model to whom readers are to aspire in their work and witness, those who (quoting activist Alicia Garza) “are actively fighting against the system of white supremacy and in particular the benefits they receive from it.”
Black freedom requires co-conspirators; it requires just action, not just advocacy.
Evans has penned a challenging, academic text that can feel slow in parts, and offers little in the way of practical application, yet is still well worth reading — particularly for those keen to avoid past mistakes and to move beyond allyship (which Evans argues is no longer a worthy title for those seeking tangible change). Black freedom requires co-conspirators; it requires just action, not just advocacy.
As a White pastor in a Southern church, I don’t know if my congregants would resonate with the conclusions of Damned Whiteness, but they would benefit from its content. White Christians must ask difficult questions about our relationship with Christian charity, White imperialism, and the distance we too often maintain from centers of Black life. This does not mean partnering with Black churches or attempting to make presumptive reparations that are unwanted; often, it means instead “going into [our] own communities – which is where the racism exists – and work[ing] to get rid of it.” Damned Whiteness is a great place to start these conversations, but it must not be where they end. Black liberation, not interracial harmony, must be the clear and explicit goal of all would-be co-conspirators if we ever hope to avoid the past failings of our predecessors. We must never again privilege “racial reconciliation over revolutionary action.”
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