"Much is changed since childhood, but I still nurture scraps from my past and my early psychotherapy sessions reveal how deep my attachments are to my 'pedigree.' That loyalty to an identity which is imposed on me at birth takes its last gasp with the publication of 'Debt, Investment, Slaves….' My new book gets good reviews though one reviewer notices that I am much too sympathetic to the planter class. With irony I tell myself; how can it be otherwise? They are the people to whom I belong. All of my ancestors are slaveholders. Later I come to accept that the stain of moral turpitude they carry with them to their graves is also a part of that inheritance. Among the whites in my community, being descended from antebellum slaveholders confers status. Ancestors who are among the officers of the Confederate army embellish that legacy."