What they thought and did about race forms what we think and do about race. So if my book was to have any effect on our future, it would have to look carefully at our past. There has been a great deal written about race in America. The mainstream tendency in writing about race has been to consider it as something that divides Americans. But it seemed to me that the patterns of racial division have been consistent enough over the centuries that it must be possible to turn the subject inside-out.
Race is a great American story.
The ways in which races have developed here, over the centuries, is very distinctly American. The story of race and the story of freedom come together in the paradox of racial separatism. Races in America have consistently tried to separate from each other in the name of freedom, freedom to be themselves, freedom from oppression, freedom to escape the legacies of slavery and conquest. In the end, races in America have sought to be separate from each other in order to be free from race, that is, free from being determined by their race. And there is a kind of comic futility in such efforts, because we are all stuck here on the same continent and we will never escape from each other or from the shared past that has made us Americans.