One of the most profound truths of the people nation is the entrenched racism and white supremacy that continues to inform the politics of daily life. Indeed, in response to the civil rights struggle to end racism, he wrote The Hidden Wound. Writing The Hidden Wound was a way for Berry to take part in the civil rights struggle by both offering a more complex understanding of social relationships between black and white people formed even in the midst of intense racial apartheid. In The Hidden Wound he presented a critical reading of the way in which whiteness constructed as an identity rooted in domination the need for an exploited and oppressed other served to distort reality for whites and blacks alike. In The Hidden Wound Berry certainly shows both a keen awareness and a profound respect for the humanizing culture black folks created in the midst of adversity.