If sometimes racism is called a social problem, other times a disease (often, a “cancer” on the South), and still other times a “poison,” most often it has been described by those writers who have examined it in very personal terms as, simply, “sin” or “evil.” Those writers’ penchant for giving voice to a litany of their own racial sins and thoughtless acts of cruelty might be seen as evidence that they subscribed, in some measure, to that old Puritan conviction that the greatest sinner was also the best candidate for salvation.

– from the “Introduction” to But Now I See: The White Southern Racial Conversion Narrative by Fred Hobson