Before reading some of the book, I read the Preface and the title chapters throughout, and figured out even on a surface level why many people have considered Genovese's work to be controversial.
I found it odd that Genovese spends much of the Preface apologizing for his book's apparent tone as being apologetic towards planters and the South. Although Genovese points out several times that his work is in fact NOT being apologetic and denounces slavery as a criminal institution, why spend so much of the preface / introduction in defending the book? I feel like this approach is troubling, because it seems to be making the assumption, even before being read, that there is controversy regarding the book.
And although at this point I had not read his arguments for his position that planters and slaves held mutual cultural influence with one another, I find it hard to believe. I also don't see how the Southern white "planter" population was a "hyphenated minority along with Afro-Americans" as Woodward states in the lines that Genovese quotes in the preface. I understand that the Southern whites were a cultural minority compared with Northern whites during the time of slavery, but I just don't see why Genovese wants to try to make such a close connection between these two very different groups of people.
I think that I needed to read further to see what Genovese means in tying these two cultural groups together, but I think its difficult to try to connect two different cultural groups with such distinctive cultural backgrounds, and I am curious to see how Genovese reconciles African-American cultural traditions with Southern white cultural traditions.
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