'We're witnessing the end of the America that made our lives possible': author Eddie Glaude on US's 250th birthday
By: Adria R Walker (the Guardian)
These are the academic attitudes that are dismantling the American experiment from the inside out. It is the Declaration of Independence; not the Declaration of Freedom. The 250th birthday of that Declaration is not and never has been about freedom.
A woke lie is still just a lie.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
June 24, 2026 -- "The mere presence of Black people at the Fourth of July celebrations, acting as if freedom belonged to them, exposed the lie at the heart of this ritual of remembrance by the nation: ours was not a nation committed to liberty and equality." So goes the second chapter of the author Eddie S Glaude Jr's latest book America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation's Anniversaries.
The Princeton University professor's new text illustrates how political turmoil has historically reached a boiling point around celebrations of the nation's founding on the Fourth of July. The text is especially relevant now as the United States approaches its 250th birthday. Throughout the book, Glaude argues that since the very beginning, Black Americans have played a vital role in establishing this country. Their presence is a constant reminder that the mythological America - one of a white republic - does not exist. Celebrations of the nation's founding, he says, reinforce myth-making at the expense of the truth. They're treated as sacrosanct events, thus justifying the sanitization of the nation's brutal history.
Against today's backdrop, the 250th celebrations come with the normalizing of white supremacist rhetoric, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and the threatening of birthright citizenship.
The Guardian spoke with Glaude about his book and how it explains America's current political moment. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
You juxtapose past racist violence against Black people with current-day violence against them. What do you make of the cyclical nature of race relations in this country, in which progress is typically marred by these attacks?
I think it's rooted in the chapter "Freedom is the white man's gift", which flows out of the divided soul of the nation. I make a claim that America suffers from a kind of double consciousness, that it imagines itself as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic. And you can't hold those two claims together without contradiction or depositing a kind of madness at the heart of the country. Freedom is seen as the possession of a particular group of folk who can give it and take it away. And so when we find ourselves in these moments where we want to live up to our ideals and address racial injustice, we typically do so in a sentimentalized way: "What can we do for you?"
But that charity runs dry, such as at the end of Reconstruction, where people said: "We are done with the issue of slavery, but we don't want Black folk to have full citizenship rights." Folks who were anti-slavery suddenly were deeply suspicious about extending the franchise to Black people. Or we have these other moments where folks are asking the question, "What else do you want? We've given you so much. Show some gratitude." We find ourselves in these cycles of sentimentality and white rage, as Carol Anderson talks about. So we find ourselves, over and over again, in these moments of backlash and then a desire for absolution.
To that point, with so many of these anniversaries, there seems to be a racial flashpoint. What do you think of 250 years coinciding with the gutting of the Voting Rights Act?
Six years ago, folks were saying that we were experiencing a racial reckoning after we witnessed the murder of George Floyd, and people risked their lives to protest as Covid-19 raged. In a blink of an eye, we've witnessed a simultaneous attack on two major pieces of legislation: the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Both of them fundamentally changed the trajectory of the nation. They opened up the doors for a genuinely multiracial democracy by changing the national quotas around who can immigrate here, in effect overturning the Nationality and Immigration Act of 1924, which was basically written by the Klan. The Voting Rights Act expanded Black political power and our participation in the political process. What we're experiencing in this moment is a wholesale attack on that vision of the country.
Much has been made of the Trump administration's whitewashing of the country's history ahead of the 250th anniversary. But you point out that that's par for the course, highlighting the 1876 anniversary and the 1926 anniversary as other times when Americans decided to whitewash history to preserve a specific idea of Americanness. What can people do to push back on the distortion of history?
"Disremembering" is so important, right? That's Toni Morrison's language, this active forgetting that echoes "dismembering". There's a violence that attends this.
In 1876, after the carnage of the civil war, over 600,000 people dead on land and sea, President [Ulysses S] Grant and others focused on talking about the business acumen of the country, its technological fortitude, its innovation. Black folks are effectively disappearing because our presence reveals the lie of that narrative.
Just think about the backdrop of 1876: you have the Colfax massacre in Louisiana. You have Vicksburg, Mississippi. You have Hamburg, South Carolina. There is literally a political coup going on in some parts of the occupied south.
What has to happen here in order to protect the innocence of the country? Black folks have to be disappeared. We have to be made to play minor bit parts in the story. This is one way that I'm trying to parse [James] Baldwin's sentence in The Fire Next Time. He says the innocence constitutes the crime. It's a way of preserving American innocence by redacting the historical record.
Do you think it's possible for Americans to be anything other than, as Frederick Douglass said, "destitute of political memory"?
I think so. I don't want to say we're fated to be this, that the country can never change. I'm attached to people on the ground, and I have a fundamental faith in the fact that people can be otherwise. It's not my place to throw away people. If we grow up finally as a nation, if we don't remain in this perpetual state of adolescence where we can look at our past and honestly see it for what it is, maybe we can discover who we really are as Americans. That's what I'm calling for at the end of the book. I don't put forward any policy agendas. I don't want to participate in the ongoing ritual of behaving like we're actually trying.
I simply say it's clear. We have to make a choice. Either we're going to be a white republic, or we're going to be a beacon of freedom. We can't be both. That requires of us a kind of tragic sense, a blue-soaked sensibility torecognize and acknowledge the horrors and the joys, the triumphs and the defeats that make us who we are as Americans.
Where do you think the country is headed, given this volleying back and forth - yet another anniversary, yet more tragedy?
Right now, we're on the precipice. I don't know who we're going to be on the other side of this. [Donald] Trump and Maga are literally destroying the foundations of our democracy right in front of us. We're witnessing the end of the America that made our lives possible. It's going to take generations to get back on our feet. It's a dark hour. But, you know, midnight is the beginning of a new day. It's the darkest of hours, but it's also the beginning of a new period, a new day. We have an opportunity, if we are mature enough as a people, to actually try to build a country in the aftermath of the ruins left behind by Trump and his people.
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The British treatment of the rebellious colonists was as harsh as any slave ever experienced. The colonists were killed, lynched, tortured, flogged, chained, and raped. But those rebellious colonists did not have the luxury of a government, courts, or Constitution to protect them. Do not gloss over the fact that the birth of our nation was as brutal as slavery ever was.
The rebellion did succeed in freeing the colonists from chains of British nobility. But freedom did not create a rule of law, principles of government, or a nation. The true American Revolution did not begin until General George Washington resigned his commission and went home. King George III would not be replaced by a new king. Washington's resignation forced the rebels to become self-governing. The rebels chose to become an independent people constrained by common consent to a rule of law and bedrock principles of a government and society; forging a nation from their newly obtained independence.
These academic charlatans don't want people to understand the real brutality and sacrifices involved in founding the United States. They are merely carney barkers attracting an audience to a freak show of Black disadvantage. These academicians have built their careers on convincing the Black population that the white race owes them something; usually money. But even in the age of slavery money could only buy freedom, not independence. So, what will all this woke crap really accomplish?
I don't believe 'academia' does, it attempts at least to give the most accurate account of history, warts and all.
Being 'woke' is simply being aware of injustice. Is the 'injustice' here not real? Did these things not happen? Where is the lie? Perhaps what certain people who become aware of injustice do with that knowledge can be ignorant, unnecessary or hypocritical, but I fail to see the 'lie' in becoming aware of injustice.
If you mean that some become aware of injustice but, in others opinion, don't have the full picture or context so they may be drawing incomplete or ignorant conclusions, then I agree, of course that happens. But I think that happens A LOT more to those who reject and ridicule education which are often those who don't like to hear the uncomfortable truths about their heritage or their ancestors. Those who refuse to learn from history are destined to repeat it, and no group hates learning more than rightwing conservative Christians who think they know everything already.
I think the ones who didn't "want people to understand the real brutality and sacrifices involved in founding the United States" have been those whitewashing the brutal treatment of the slaves and minorities throughout the last 250 years. We have plenty of books and historians who have written about all the amazing feats of our founders and a plethora of the notable white Christians in American history. But now, as we hear more of the not so sparkling history, some people get all bitter and angry and say they don't want to hear about it and they don't want to focus on America's warts. Well sorry, fuck those losers, if they can't handle the truth about how we got here then they're worthless to look to for ideas for a prosperous American future.
It's about not repeating history. It's about recognizing racial hatred, prejudice and stereotypes are toxic. And of course that goes both ways, so along with accepting the truth about the history of race in America should be the stories of the white Americans who have tirelessly fought for equal rights alongside their fellow black Americans. At least half of our nation stood up against slavery, the Union fought and won to eliminate such a brutal tradition. The many dedicated Christian abolitionists who worked the underground railroad before the civil war. The founders who may not have had the leverage to rid our nation of slavery from the start, but as was pointed out at the time, they felt "that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with".
While I disagree with many of the loudest voices on the left demanding things like reparations or the tearing down monuments to important American historical figures who may have owned slaves but did not fight to keep people enslaved, I at least recognize where they're coming from.
Learning and teaching the unvarnished American history instead of the whitewashed version white conservative Christians have been teaching is not "lying". The liars are those who intentionally leave out their ancestor's role in defending slavery as well as their continued reverence for the confederacy. It would be like someone defending a 15 ft bronze statue memorial of Jeffrey Epstein at a city's local playground because he once donated some money to the city and was a local philanthropist. Most people would object because he also raped kids. Similarly, some claim to revere the confederacy because of their fierce independence and fight for States rights. But they also fought to keep owning people like cattle.
So, is it "woke" to decide not to erect a monument to Jeffery Epstein, or perhaps remove one that had already been erected once we all found out he was a pedophile? It is based on being 'aware' of his crimes and without being educated, you'll never be aware of anything. Is ignorance bliss? Perhaps, but it's a question I'll thankfully never be able to answer.
Then why do academicians perpetuate the lie that the United States was founded on slavery?
I disagree. 'Woke' is being aware of grievance. And the grievances multiply as more become woke.
Injustices happened to all sorts of people. Look at the injustices inflicted by the Tories. Look at the injustices toward the Tories. That's absent history, not unvarnished history.
But the ones who have been Blackwashing the American Revolution are the ones perpetuating the grievances of a legacy of slavery. The slaves are all dead. The injustices have been acknowledged and addressed. Only the grievances remain.
Is reenacting history not the same as repeating that history? Doesn't reenacting the life of a slave in a plantation culture perpetuate and breath new life into that history? We don't reenact gassing Jews and cremating their remains to teach about the Holocaust. There aren't Jews reenacting living in concentration camps.
What is the whitewashed version of white conservative Christian? You see, the real unvarnished history is that abolition was led by white conservative Christians. The election of Abraham Lincoln imposed the church onto government. Abolition was a Christian movement justified by the teachings of Christ. Christians forced an end to chattel slavery in the United States.
What does that have to do with anything?
I agree, but does that mean we should just ignore injustice when we see it or ignore the history of something created by it?
Well, those slaves are dead. Sadly, there are roughly 40 million humans currently trapped in slavery while there were about 13 million trafficked during the 400 years of trans-Atlantic slave trade.
I think that is debatable as much of that history has been whitewashed for a very long time by people who felt the truth was uncomfortable and it didn't make them feel as good about themselves as telling themselves lies would.
Well, that's a load of horse shit right there. To claim that both the emotional and financial legacy of slavery and segregation don't exist is just another slap in the face of black Americans who have been living in a country that is supposed to be their but still often treats them as an assumed threat or liability. The default has long been shoplifting police, both literally and metaphorically, following them around the store of America because the color of their skin makes them automatically suspect and assumed that they might try and 'steal' something from 'white conservative Christians' America, as if America doesn't also belong to them. So, while grievance does remain, so does that actual racism, the white supremacists just got a little better at hiding it, though now with Trump providing them plenty of shade they've stopped bothering with pretense and just gone back to being open piece of shit bigots.
Reenacting is not the same as repeating, that's ludicrous. If that were true ever depiction of rape and murder in a movie should be considered as evil and criminal as the offense they were imitating. As for the slave plantations where they do some reenactments, I see nothing wrong with that. And if a group of Jews wanted to go to Auschwitz and sit in the gas chambers and wear the clothes of their ancestors who had to suffer those things, I would completely understand and not think in any way they were "repeating" the history of the gas chambers. Bringing exposure to those crimes does not repeat them. Perhaps in the minds of some old still in hiding Nazi's those recreations would be painful, putting more light on what they did, but why the fuck should I care about how some fucking piece of shit Nazi feels? Likewise, why should I give a fuck about how some white supremacist feelings might get hurt by some Americans going to plantations to reenact living in a slave huts?
That parts not left out, like I pointed out there was half of America who rightly fought to end slavery, clearly the vast majority of the Union were white Christians. And yes, many of the abolitionists also considered themselves conservative Christians, but so did those who fought to protect slavery. Just as in the war for independence, both sides were made up almost entirely of white Christians.
That's just silly.
And the Confederacy also defended their right to own slaves using the bible.
Still the same kind of racist religious bigotry bullshit coming from the South today, claiming the 'North' aka the liberals and progressives are now " run by infidels and fanatics under a godless government" which is why they elected Trump to burn down what they saw as a sort of liberal Babylon that is again, protecting the minorities from them which they feel is a violation of white conservative Christians rights to fuck over whoever they want.
When we talk about race here, and people deny racism, I have occasionally asked them to point out a single decade in the history of this country where there was not widespread racism. In 250 years there have been 25 decades. No one has even bothered trying to name one.
Things have gotten better in the past few decades but there is still widespread racism. Eddie Glaude isnt wrong, but he paints too bleak a picture.
The biggest internal mistake this country ever made was letting "Jim Crow" and bald racism fester for 100 years after emancipation. That century of very little progress was far too long , and has left problems that linger to today.
They know the racism is still there, but they believe the stereotypes they grew up steeped in are valid. And because they see them as valid, they don't really see the expression of that racism as a problem. To them it's just another 'uncomfortable truth' of which the most they should be accused of is being too 'honest'. They see the real problem as the ridicule or 'cancelation' of the racists where they cast themselves as helpless innocent victims.
Eddie Glaude is a regular guest on MSNOW. Unfortunately he often over emphasizes race while giving his analyses.
Black students who are treated differently and graded differently are bound to feel this way. Eddie, permanently, cannot just disappear like a white person into a crowd.
It is also true of women of any race, the more successful they are, the more suspicious the men are and sooner or later the slurs start, no matter what.
The white race does owe them something- universal respect as equal human beings. That is not a constant feature of American society.
Being created equal does not mean men remain equal after their creation. Equality is not an inheritance, it is an endowment. As such, equality requires continuous effort and self discipline to maintain. Everyone, regardless of race, creed, or legacy, can forsake their equality by abandoning the rule of law and bedrock governing principles to engage in a shakedown of society based on permanent grievance.
I dont get your point in this context.
Woke garbage?
Equality is Utopia.
Just about anyone who isn't a white christian male in this country has a legitimate grievance.
Last night at Trumps rally supposedly celebrating the 250th, a couple interesting omissions by speakers occurred. Sean Duffy , Sec. of Transportation, gushed over Trump and declared him the greatest president since George Washington. In other words, he skipped over Abraham Lincoln, widely considered to be America's greatest president. Just as curious, in his own speech Trump lauded a fairly long list of the high points of America, from the colonial times until today. He did not mention the freeing of the slaves and the end of slavery and the saving of the union in that list.
These things are not accidental.
duffy is a politician praising the leader of his party. That's he biased is to be expected.
"Academic" historians ranked Biden #14. Imagine how corrupt and bias our educational system is if supposed independent scholars would publicly claim something like that. Gaslighting isn't a strong enough term.
If he went to the effort to rank Trump at all you would think he would put him behind Abraham Lincoln (he put him behind Washington).
Trump and his people go out of their way to hide the mere existence of slavery and racism. If you dont know that you dont know much.
He a politician. A good rule is not to take their partisan opinions seriously.
It should bother you when academic historians start gaslighting you.