Summary

Pages 5 through 9 – As he begins his address to his son, the author describes how an interviewer (whose race is not identified) once asked him why white success in America was / is defined by violence. The author lists the various sorts of violence that non-whites have endured in America as the result of white culture and society striving to achieve dominance and control over non-white bodies. He goes on to suggest that this is partly because “America believes itself exceptional”; that America, as a society, is willfully blind to its race-defined shortcomings; and that America, again as a society, operates on the premise that issues of race are inherent and inevitable in human experience. He follows this contention with a list of various acts of violence perpetrated on black people throughout history; a reference to how police departments across America have been given the...