Democracy in Black Quotes

“James Baldwin’s words haunt: “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” Are we a nation of monsters?”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“We like to keep separate the evils of our national past from the sacredness of our ideals. That separation allows us to maintain a pristine idea of America despite all of the ugly things we have done. Americans can celebrate the founding fathers even when we hear John Adams declare to King George, “We will not be your negroes” or learn that Thomas Jefferson wasn’t so consistent in his defense of freedom. We keep treating America like we have a great blueprint and we’ve just strayed from it. But the fact is that we’ve built the country true. Black folk were never meant to be full-fledged participants in this society. The ideas of freedom and equality, of liberty and citizenship did not apply to us, precisely because we were black. Hell, the ability to vote for the majority of black people wasn’t guaranteed until 1965. The value gap limited explicitly the scope and range of democratic life in this country. So when folks claim that American democracy stands apart from white supremacy, they are either lying or they have simply stuck their head in the sand.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“Correction of past wrongdoings, like ending slavery and dismantling legal segregation, confirmed the rightness of our ideals. Nothing fundamental about those ideals needed to change. We simply had to be better people. I want no part of that story. It blinds us to how the value gap has been so fundamental to who we are as a nation. Over and over again, we have confronted the overriding belief, held by our government and exhibited in our daily lives, in white supremacy. The story blinds most white Americans to the harsh reality of this country.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“We have to become better people by fundamentally transforming the conditions of our living together. This will require setting aside our comforting illusions.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“The task at hand is not about securing the goodness of the American Idea or about perfecting the union. It is about according dignity and standing to all Americans no matter the color of their skin.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“Thus, white fear can be understood as something anticipatory, a fear just waiting to be expressed. It isn’t based in any actual threat of harm. Instead, the idea of black violence or crime does all the work. The mere possibility of danger is enough to motivate us to act as if we are in immediate danger.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“We must remove our mask to call attention to white advantage. That may help us understand one another a bit better. It may bridge divides, disrupt assumptions and stereotypes that block empathy and get in the way of serious efforts to achieve our country. As it stands, we don’t really talk frankly about race. And too many people are too damn scared to say so.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“Most white Americans today tend to see poverty in individual instead of systemic terms, having much to do with our national commitment to individualism. But African Americans know that whatever the system is, it is rigged in the favor of white people. It’s not just about”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“Some might say what I’m recommending amounts to electoral nihilism. We would end up giving the presidency over to Republicans and their extremist base. The Supreme Court would turn Red for the next thirty years. We would see the undoing of the health care law and the further erosion of the social safety net. And the country would be left in the hands of libertarians and corporatists, a remarkably high price to pay for all Americans. But these same people who shout gloom and doom fail to advocate for dramatic change to take back the country from these folks. This is the scare tactic that clouds our imaginations: that no matter the circumstances, choosing the lesser of two evils is always better. By this logic, we are imprisoned in a political cage—to accept matters as they are. I refuse to do so, because the political terrain as it is currently laid out has left black and other vulnerable communities throughout this country in shambles. I want to choose another path. I want to remake American democracy, because whatever this is, it ain’t democracy.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“I am suggesting a seismic shift in black politics. Obviously, we can’t stand idly by as Democrats take our votes for granted and cave to forces that devastate our communities. Nor can extremists on the right and those who enable them expect us to sit back as they trade in racist nonsense, continue to legislate for the 1 percent, and undo the modest gains we’ve made in this country. What has become crystal clear over these past few years, at least to me, is that business as usual isn’t sufficient; that the typical black characters on the national scene have to be called out for what they have failed to do and say in the face of what has happened and is happening in black America.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“What we put in and leave out of our stories tells us something about who we are.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“shows how what I call the value gap (the belief that white people are valued more than others) and racial habits (the things we do, without thinking, that sustain the value gap) undergird racial inequality, and how white and black fears block the way to racial justice in this country.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“We need to do something that bold. Something that will upset the entire game. In 2016, we should call for an “electoral blank-out.” We vote in the national election for the presidency of the United States, but we leave the ballot blank or write in “none of the above.” This isn’t your standard call for a third-party candidate or an independent black political thrust. Nor is it a rejection of our sacred duty to vote. Exercising the franchise is sacred. Actually, I want black people to turn out for the election in record numbers without Obama on the ticket, but give our attention to other issues on the ballot. We should vote in congressional, state, and local elections.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“John Dewey, the American philosopher, understood this: The very idea of democracy, the meaning of democracy, must be continually explored afresh; it has to be constantly discovered and rediscovered, remade and reorganized; while the political and economic and social institutions in which it is embodied have to be remade and reorganized to meet the changes that are going on in the development of new needs on the part of human beings and new resources for satisfying these needs.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“The growing menace in our country tonight, to personal safety, to life, to limb and property, in homes, in churches, on the playgrounds, and places of business, particularly in our great cities, is the mounting concern, or should be, of every thoughtful citizen in the United States. Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign aggression is the most elementary and fundamental purpose of any government, and a government that cannot fulfill that purpose is one that cannot long command the loyalty of its citizens.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“assumptions about the value of white people and black people that”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul