“America is in trouble, and a lot of that trouble—perhaps most of it—has to do with race. Everywhere we turn, there is discord and division, death and destruction. When we survey the land, we see a country full of suffering that we cannot fully understand, and a history that we can no longer deny. Slavery casts a long shadow across our lives. The spoils we reaped from forcing people to work without wages and treating them with grievous inhumanity continue to haunt us in a racial gulf that seems impossible to overcome.”

Dyson states his thesis: America’s central problem is racism. Racism continues to generate violence, unrest, and conflict within American society and is the cause of frustration and despair among citizens. This passage underscores the historical dimensions of racism. Racist practices derive from the foundations of America and the history of slavery. The legacy of enforced labor and the dehumanization of Black people created a racial chasm that continues to impact America.

“But such love and hope can only come about if we first confront the poisonous history that has almost unmade our nation and undone our social compact.”

Dyson argues that America’s only solution for a hopeful future is to confront its racist history. To understand the reality of American history is to understand the history of African Americans. Black history reveals America’s national myths of freedom and equality, drawing attention to the oppression and injustice toward Black people. Racism remains a force of division in American society. Equality can only be achieved by acknowledging the persistence of racism.

“You don’t get whiteness from your genes. It is a social inheritance that is passed on to you as a member of a particular group. And it’s killing us, and, quiet as it’s kept, it’s killing you too.”

The passage introduces Whiteness as a Racist Social Construct. Whiteness is a construct that serves an ideological narrative, one that attaches privilege to white people. Dyson explains that whiteness is an artifice, a fabrication that upholds white supremacy and white privilege.