The white community is defined only by its unblackness. I agree with Genovese that we face a crisis today which makes the old left-right spectrum irrelevant.
Racism is both the original sin and the fatal flaw of the republic.
I believe it must be our number one priority. But, to do their part, blacks will need the kind of internal spiritual renewal that both Rivers and Cornel West call for, and it is the responsibility of whites to make sure they get all the resources, material and spiritual, they need to do it. This will take lots of money and imagination. Yet all the chapters are window-dressing in light of the central essay and theme of the book. Genovese's interpretation of the slave South provides a holistic approach to the history of Southern slave society.