Professor Eddie Glaude
The
“Democracy in Black” Interview
with
Kam Williams
Glaude
Matters!
Eddie
S. Glaude, Jr. is the William S. Tod Professor of Religion and
African-American Studies and the chair of the Department of
African-American Studies at Princeton University. He is the recipient
of numerous fellowships and awards, including the 2002 Modern
Language Association William Sanders Scarborough Prize for his book,
Exodus!
Professor
Glaude is on the editorial board of the Journal of the American
Academy of Religion, African-American National Biography and
Contemporary Pragmatism. Professor Glaude's work also includes
African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology (2004), co-edited
with Dr. Cornel West.
Here,
he talks about his new book, Democracy in Black: How Race Still
Enslaves the American Soul.
Kam
Williams: Hi
Professor Glaude, thanks for the time. I really appreciate it.
Eddie
Glaude:
I
really appreciate you.
KW:
What inspired you to write Democracy in Black?
EG:
Two
things. All of this talk about economic recovery, when all of the
data suggests that African-Americans were still wallowing in what I
call "The Great Black Depression." What does it mean to
talk about recovery when white wealth is 13 times that of black
wealth, and 38% of our children are in poverty? And that led me to
the idea of the "value gap," a belief that underneath all
this white people are valued more than others. And that belief
animates our social practices and informs our political arrangements
and economic realities. The second motivation was the death of
Trayvon Martin and, of course, Mike Brown. Trying to come to terms
with all this senseless death, I felt like I needed to intervene in
this moment.
KW:
But
haven't African-Americans made significant progress since the civil
Rights Movement?
EG:
Of
course there's been progress. But what hasn't changed is the belief
that white people matter more than others. And as long as that
informs and shapes how this society is organized, the outcomes will
be the same, no matter what the inputs are. So, part of what the book
attempts to do is lay bare that reality, and how that has happened
even with a black man in the White House.
KW:
You
come down pretty hard on Obama.
EG:
The
book isn't just about him. But the reality is that, over the last 8
years, we're not doing well by every statistical measure. The level
of unemployment in the black community is still at a crisis level.
Many of us have been kind of taken with protecting the President from
the vitriol coming from the right. What we haven't seen at
appropriate levels are folks crying from the rooftops that our
communities are in crisis, that we are witness a devastation, whether
it's schools closings, flatlining wages, the jobs crisis, long-term
unemployment and, of course, mass incarceration. Black Lives Matter
has pushed him to address that. so, the second part of the book is
really about our complicity. What we've seen over the decades since
the assassination of Dr. King, is a narrowing of black political
life. All of this has happened on the watch of black liberals. I'm
not saying we need to embrace black conservatism; I'm just arguing
for a much more robust form of black politics.
KW:
It's
amazing how Obama got a pass from the black community, his most loyal
constituency, despite not attending to its agenda.
EG:
You can
see how over the course of these past 8 years there's been an
insistence on a kind of discipline vis-a-vis President Obama.
However, this isn't about Obama bashing, but about the narrowing of
African-American politics. It's the traditional black liberals versus
the post-racial black liberals, and in between the black poor is
languishing in opportunity deserts and falling farther and farther
behind. So, the book is really a challenge to the black political
class, because they've failed us over the past few decades.
KW:
So,
what's the solution?
EG:
We need
a revolution of value. We need to change our view of government by
changing our demands of government. We need to change our view of
black people which means we need to change the view of white people.
And we can't be greedy, selfish and narcissistic. We can't live in a
world where 62 people own more than 3.5 billion people. That's sick.
That's evil. A revolution of value requires a strategy for the
streets, a strategy for the court room and a strategy for the ballot
box. We have to do something dramatic to break loose of the
stranglehold of the current political landscape.
KW:
Blacks
certainly haven't been rewarded for loyalty to the Democrat Party.
EG:
For
decades, political scientists have talked about the black community
as a kind of captured electorate that the Democrats herd us to the
polls every 2 or 4 years, as if we're cattle chewing cud. And then
they have no reason to deliver on policy, because we have no place
else to go. Whatever this is, this ain't democracy.
KW:
Well,
the book is certainly incendiary and thought-provoking.
EG:
It's a
provocation to get us to have a conversation. If I've achieved that,
then I've done exactly what I set out to do when I sat down to write
the book.
KW:
Thanks
for kickstarting an overdue political conversation, Eddie.
EG:
You got
it, Kam. Thanks so much.
To
order a copy of Democracy in Black, visit:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0804137412/ref%3dnosim/thslfofire-20
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