Summary

Repenting of Whiteness: The Plague of White Innocence – The author, still referring to the reader by the term “beloved,” uses the example of a troubled white student in one of his seminars, confessing his guilt about being white, as the foundations of an exploration of white innocence – that is, the belief in the whiteness-defined history, culture, and dreams of America. “You often deem black dissent as disloyalty to America,” the author writes, “But that black dissent may yet redeem a white innocence that threatens the nation’s moral and patriotic health” (96). The author goes on to suggest how difficult it is, at times, to have the sorts of conversations about whiteness that need to be had, but because he is a pastor, he finds himself able to frame those conversations (many of which result in highly publicized conflict) within the context of...