By: Vincent L. Hall
Texas Metro News
https://texasmetronews.com
I do not love America, and never have, especially now.”
America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, a new book from Princeton historian Eddie Glaude.
Democracy Now. If you still haven’t ventured toward this hallowed hall of journalism, you miss a lot of real news. Amy Goodman, a seasoned investigative journalist, brings facts and receipts to every 59-minute podcast, which features her patented cadence and charisma!
That feces from Fox News, the sensationalized silliness from CNN, and the mundane musings from MSNOW are entertaining to say the least. But if you want the gritty, galvanized truth about what’s really going on in the world, check out Democracy Now.
When her Tuesday guest lineup was announced, and it featured Professor Eddie Glaude and his musings on the 250th anniversary of this nation, it was a wrap for me. I tuned in and turned up! Here is how Princeton introduces the man who is arguably their most noted during this era.
“One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Dr. Eddie S. Glaude Jr., is a passionate educator, author, political commentator, and public intellectual who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience.
His writings, including “America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, ”Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul,” “In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America,” and the New York Times bestseller “Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own,” take an exhaustive look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States, and the challenges we face as a democracy.”
America USA was front and center today, and although there were crucial lessons embedded in this interview, one utterance caught my eye: the “Third Eye!” Dr. Glaude said that White people in America want to “be White without judgment! Oooowwweeee! That was way too hot for prime time TV. This is the kind of stuff you will only hear on Democracy Now and the like.
“There’s an assault on the very story we tell about Reconstruction, the very story we tell about the aftermath of the Civil War that produced the Civil War Amendments, 13th, 14th and 15th.
And we’re in a second lost cause. It’s an epistemic assault. What do I mean by that? That’s an old professor phrase, right? Or word.
An epistemic assault. It’s an assault on what we know and how we know, what we see and how we see, because at the end of the day, Amy, Donald Trump and his supporters, they want to be white without judgment.
They want to be white without judgment. And if that’s true, if I’m right in that description, that means that history — right? — is a battleground, because history, of course, holds them to account.”
White without judgment for those of you who go underwater trying to fathom what the brilliant intellectual just said can be broadened. What Glaude meant is that some Whites, not all, but some, want all of the privilege, pride and profit that come with being associated with their whiteness, but don’t care to admit that their forefathers raped, plundered and pillaged every other race in the construct of their Whiteness.
They want to celebrate their founders and presidents without admitting that they were dreadful slaveholders.
“A lot of these universities, Amy, are using Trumpism as a cover to roll back things that they wanted to roll back. They’re capitulating. You know, they’re the great — I call it, in the book, the great capitulation.
It’s an echo of what Frederick Douglass saw when he saw the American Missionary Association suddenly finding itself in cahoots with those who were former slaveholders. He called them “the apostles of forgetfulness.”
Douglass, like Glaude, is right. Historical forgetfulness has to be the testament if you want to be White without judgment! And that’s probably why Glaude can’t bring himself to call what he has for America, love!
A long-time Texas Metro News columnist, Dallas native Vincent L. Hall is an author, writer, award-winning writer, and a lifelong Drapetomaniac.
