Beginning in the early 1990s a new voice began to be heard in America – the voice of white nationalism. Energetic, articulate, and skilled in the use of the Internet, the carriers of this new voice now pose the most serious ideological challenge to the ideal of an integrated and racially pluralist America since the passing of the Jim Crow order in response to the great civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. Although the white nationalist movement is in an early growth stage, and its existence is not even known by some, there is reason to believe that in the decades ahead its influence will expand well beyond its current scope. If the experience of other multiracial, multiethnic societies around the world has taught us anything, it is that nationalist passions, whether ethnic, linguistic, or territorial, are a volatile and often irrational affair whose capacity for disrupting settled habits and long-term political compromises can hardly be overstated. With the passing of the Cold War and the bilateral global power alignment, issues of group consciousness and ethnic identity politics seem to have taken on a new salience and vitality in many places with consequences that may be only dimly foreseen. We believe that the time has come for mainstream political and religious leaders in America to take the threat posed by white nationalism more seriously and to address some of the underlying issues and conditions that are contributing to its growth.

The ten interviews included in the present volume grew out of a much larger project on the possibility of racial polarization in America undertaken by one of us, Carol M. Swain. Russ Nieli served as the chief interviewer.