History demonstrates that racism never goes away; it just adapts.
-- Jemar Tisby (chapter 1)

Importance: While establishing the overarching thematic interests of the text, Tisby looks to historical trends to understand the evolution and pervasiveness of racism in American society. Placed in the early pages of Chapter 1, this moment establishes Tisby's structural choices in all the chapter to follow. The Color of Compromise endeavors to illustrate the veracity of this quote, by tracing systemic racism from the colonies through contemporary times.

Race is a social construct.
-- Jemar Tisby (chapter 2)

Importance: Through Tisby's depictions of Columbus's invasion of the Americas, he shows the ways in which early colonizers created division based on biological superiority or inferiority. Though Tisby says there is no basis for this system of thought, beginning with Columbus, European Christians used the Bible to support the sovereignty of whites and the dehumanization of blacks. By first asserting and proving that racism is a manmade construct, Tisby then...