From this point forward the narrative builds up momentum and leads inevitably to a great showdown between the defector Neil and his family and the white supremacist ruling class of Grand Republic. The novel's denouement is revolutionary, featuring a convergence of all of the major social forces and constituencies of Grand Republic, a gun battle, and a totally open-ended conclusion. The white supremacists have come to forcibly evict the Kingsbloods from their home, led by representatives of big business, the church, and the military. But converging on the scene also is a group of white liberals who seek negotiations and a rapprochement-"twenty years too late," in the words of the narrator (318). Inside the Kingsblood residence are several of the African American leaders mentioned by Aldwick, and another defector, Jos. L. Smith, owner of a small bookstore and a descendant of Gerrit Smith, the radical abolitionist. The bullets soon fly, and Neil answers them with expert target shooting, taking down the white supremacist leaders one by one with shots to their knees and thighs. The Grand Republic police arrive and seize Neil and the African American leaders who came to defend his home from the white lynch mob. But the police refuse to arrest Neil's wife Vestal, which brings on the novel's denouement. "'Oh, you'll take me!'" answers back Vestal, as she brings "the butt of her automatic down on the detective's head" (320). In fact, Vestal has the last word: "'Neil! Listen! Listen to Josephus Smith bawling out the policemen. There must be lots of good white men, aren't there?'" (321).

Shortly after the publication of Kingsblood Royal, a group of white supremacists sent a letter to J. Edgar Hoover encouraging the FBI to seize all copies of the book and declare Lewis's novel an act of sedition (Lingeman, 513). Hoover demurred, yet the perception of the novel as "seditious" is perhaps the most precise interpretation of it. Ebony quickly awarded Kingsblood Royal its annual prize for work that promotes interracial cooperation, and the NAACP endorsed it enthusiastically (Schorer, 760). The reading public bought 1.5 million copies. And white supremacy wanted it banned and Lewis arrested.

Today white supremacy is calling whiteness studies "despicable" and "closed-minded," as might be expected. Today's Hoover, the academic David Horowitz, wants it stopped on the grounds that it "attacks white people as evil" (Washington Post, 6/22/03). But like the tremendous popularity of Kingsblood Royal in the postwar period, whiteness studies today continues to gain force despite the attacks on Affirmative Action and the attempt by U.S. elites to re-segregate U.S. society. The questions raised by Lewis's novel, as well as Melville's novella, are consequently of great significance. What is "whiteness"? Where did it come from? Who invented it? How was it imposed? How does it function in terms of social control? And what can we do to abolish it?

The danger of conceiving "whiteness" as a social construct without a corresponding concept of how to overthrow the "white race" is straightforward: we could end up playing in the dark, and as a result miss the opportunity to embark on a different journey-the path to defection from it. For as Toni Morrison shows in all her work, there is no such thing as a safe life. Better to make the risk of being alive count historically. Better to make history than to keep interpreting other people's interpretations of it. And better to take those risks out in the open, clear of white identity's somnambulant fog, free of its narrow, overcrowded corral.

References

Allen, Theodore W. The Invention of the White Race, vol. I: Racial Oppression and Social Control. London & New York: Verso, 1994.

___. The Invention of the White Race, vol. II: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America. London & New York: Verso, 1997.

Arvin, Newton. Herman Melville. New York: William Sloane, 1950.

Baldwin, James. "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy." Nobody Knows My Name. New York: Dial Press: 216-41.

Hughes, Langston. "The Fall of Berlin." Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender, ed.Christopher C. De Santis. Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995:135-7.

James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins. 2^nd ed. New York: Vintage, 1963.

James, Darius. "Pale Face, Red Neck: A Conversation with Jim Goad." Transition, no. 73 (1998): 208-217.

Lewis, Sinclair. Kingsblood Royal. New York: Modern Library Paperback ed., 2001.

Lingeman, Richard. Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street. New York: Random House, 2002.

Lukács, Georg. The Theory of the Novel. Trans. Anna Bostock. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971.

Melville, Herman. "Benito Cereno." The Piazza Tales. New York: New American Library, 1961: 141-223.

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York:Vintage, 1993.

Schorer, Mark. Sinclair Lewis: An American Life. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961.

Stoler, Ann Laurie. Race and Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.