It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted. —WALT WHITMAN, Democratic Vistas (1871) To be an Afro-American, or an American black, is to be in the situation, intolerably exaggerated, of all those who have ever found themselves part of a civilization which they could in no wise honorably defend—which they were compelled, indeed, endlessly to attack and condemn—and who yet spoke out of the most passionate love, hoping to make the kingdom new, to make it honorable and worthy of life. —JAMES BALDWIN, No Name in the Street (1972) A decade ago I wrote Race Matters in order to spark a candid public conversation about America’s most explosive issue and most difficult dilemma: the ways in which the vicious legacy of white supremacy contributes to the arrested development of American democracy. This book—the sequel to Race Matters—will look unflinchingly at the waning of democratic energies and practices in our present age of the American empire.
