Eddie Glaude: Don't Let MAGA Own America's 250th Anniversary

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Hello, welcome to the board podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'd like to welcome back to the show. Professor of African American Studies at Princeton. He's also an author, public intellectual and contributor to MSNow.

His latest book is out today. It's America, USA, how race, shadows, the nations and adversaries. It's Eddie God. How are you doing, man?

It's good to lay eyes on you.

It's good to stop day. So I'm happy. I'm excited.

“All right. Well, thank you for fitness in.”

You've got to see down in person in New Orleans. You know, we've got to do a Mississippi trip together. One of these days. That would be wonderful. One of these days.

Take you over to the Gulf Coast. Yeah. The other side. I want to do it with you. All right.

Well, obviously we're going to get into a book. And there's a lot of relevant issues. As it relates to voting rights act, et cetera. Well, what's happening in our politics. But before we do that is when it hit on a couple of news items.

The latest in Iran. Boy, it seems like it's a long way from 95% of the way to a deal to 100% given what we saw last night. U.S. forces carried out attacks on multiple Iranian targets in the Persian Gulf. U.S. set com called themselves defense strikes.

The targets included missile launch sites that Iranian boats that were apparently attempting to place mines in the state of Hormuz. That's a little concerning. Iran won this morning or respond to last night's attacks. Trump says the ceasefire is still on.

Markos is the deal is closed the next couple days. Man, seems like they put the car before the horse for a little bit on this one. That's an understatement. We are in the midst of what it seems to me an escalating quagmire. With this war of choice, I don't know what the offer amp is.

Tam, to be honest with you. And what we get over and over again are these kind of promises. Trump is the kind of carnival barker of our times. Letting us know that this is about to happen or this will happen. It doesn't happen.

And it just seems that I don't know how we get out of this. And at the same time that this is going on Netanyahu and Israel has decided that it's going to escalate. It's a salt on Lebanon and Hezbollah. We've already seen over 3,100 people killed over there over 9,000 people injured. So these are two sides of this war that don't seem to be in conversation with each other.

So we just need to buckle up. And because there's no ending, it seems to be clear in sight to me at least. The new I told a hominepadestatement that's relating to Israel saying the Jewish state will not exist in 15 years last night.

This goes to the choice of getting into this and to creating this in the first place.

And like thinking this is going to be easy thinking you're going to be able to paper over these like really deep riffs in the region. Just with some reality TV glitz and glamour.

“And I think that it's clear that Trump wants some kind of deal because he doesn't want to be in an escalated war.”

Like he thought he was going to be able to have this be quick. And so at some level maybe there's some temporary reprieve. But as you point out, it's like, you know, the incentive structures all over the place go against that. Right, incentive structure in Israel, incentive structure in Iran. Like the fact that they're allegedly putting minds in the straight last night.

What's the incentive structure for the, you know, ships that are supposed to be going through the straight. They've got to be concerned the insurance companies that pay like all this stuff is a lot more complicated. It makes me think about at a buddy that's working on the Obama Iran nuclear deal. And I just the amount of work in meticulousness and expertise that went into all that putting things you could say about it. That we're not perfect, right?

But you know, I do think in this era where a lot of people, you know, look down and brush aside that, you know, expertise, meticulousness, like we're seeing why it's needed. So I absolutely absolutely, you know, and, and their erosion of trust in this whole process. I mean, Iran is, you know, to be clear is rightly suspicious. They've been bomb twice, right?

Sometimes in the midst of, of, of, of negotiations, the, the implication for the global economy. It hasn't quite touched us beyond high gas prices. But if this continues to go on, we're going to be seeing short shortages, just as Asia is seeing shortages right now. And it's going to impact us across the board from plastics to fertilizers to food. We've already seen the impacts of those on our wallets and, you know, households having to make determinations and decisions.

I mean, how many war games have been played out around the state of Amu's that they just got a dismiss expertise?

And then, you know, I have to say this ten because, you know, I'm on the bulwark podcast. Okay. The fact that Netanyahu's talking point has become our own.

“Remember that daily show skit about how, how many decades Netanyahu has been talking about nuclear, the nuclear threat.”

Now, that's become our talking point. And it seems to me that the last few months or the last year or so has made it such that Iran is positioned in a way that almost thinks that it has to have a nuclear weapon in order to prevent attacks. So I don't know how we get out of this to be honest with you. It's the last safe harbor talking point, honestly, is where they've come to on the nuclear because they failed across every other goal. So, okay, we'll continue to monitor that. I think give us a little bit of a palate cleanser before we get into the racial history of America.

That's okay. Thank you. Do you see the New York Times story on the Trump cabinet meeting? It's like, this is a little on the news boost for us before I get into the deal. The New York Times did an analysis of all of the cabinet meetings. So this happened in Trump two point now.

Here's what they found. On average, one of every six sentences, either flattered Mr. Trump,

or criticized Biden or Obama as compared to Trump, he's described frequently of the course of those meetings as the only person who can do various and historic things, including Save America. So I thought it was a precursor to your book talking at the history of America. What does it say that we have this like Kim Jong-un asked reality TV show star sitting around a cabinet meeting, having a bunch of, well, now that all the women are going, now having a bunch of men tell him he's the only one that can save America.

Hey, yeah, this sausage fest of videocrity as it were. And these are the folk who are talking about merit, these are the folk who are beaten us over the heads about about excellence and talent and you know, earning one's way. You know, look, we have been faced with an all-out assault on the very idea of governance that's been bound up with the kind of cult of personality. You know, you think about Steve Bannon, Tim talking about deconstructing the administrative state.

Well, you deconstruct the administrative state around this cult of personality. And then you get the debacle and Iran, you get all the stuff, the grift, all the stuff that we're witnessing in real time and one wonders. One wonders, honestly, how we're going to get on the other side of this. But the idea that folk have to say all of this stuff just to appease this band's ego, right? Just make sure you just say, oh my god, are these people that small, that insecure that they need this, are that he's that small and that insecure that he needs this kind of worship day in and day out.

Yeah. That was a pallet cleanser. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know you shouldn't flatter me when you came on the podcast, so that's okay. That's all right.

We may be over the course of time or back to think. We'll see who's the one that gets the flatter. All right, everybody, you're trying to stay sane while prices are going up everywhere at the gas pump of the grocery store and our level democracy is being ripped apart at the seams.

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I want to just talk about the book first before.

And kind of set the precursor of everything that you wrote about since, you know, goes back through the history of America's anniversaries. And I kind of let that lead us to, you know, the challenges that we have today. So obviously it's book day. So I assume that unless some of the listeners got, you know, good reads.

And what they call those tapes that you used to go, you used to go out. You know, you know, you like a boon leg. Yeah, big leg. Thank you. God.

Thank you a boon leg. Unless you got a boot leg copy. They haven't read it. I have. So give them a little, give them the elevator pitch of that.

Sure.

“You know, I think at every milestone anniversary,”

whether it's centennial or the 150th or the buy centennial or now. The country has to tell a story about itself. And it has to tell a story about its founding. Each of these milestone anniversaries.

How do we tell a story about who we are as Americans with the reality of race pressing in upon us?

“So the centennials 1876 reconstruction is collapsing.”

The sesquist centennial of 150th. This is the decade of the clan, right? This is the period in which the clan has, has an outsized influence on our, on our politics. In 1976, this is Vietnam. This is Watergate.

This is Black Power. This is the, the women's movement, right? The country seems to be at its throat, at each other's throat. And then now here we are in 2026, where you hear the language of blood and soil from the likes of, of JD events and others. And Trump has melve has kind of kind of combined the celebration of the country with the celebration of himself and.

And so I wanted to tell a story about this, right? That that at the heart of these celebrations is the contradiction. Right? That the country's, the country's divided soul is on full view. That the double consciousness that has often been attributed to black folk.

That we see ourselves through the eyes of those who despise us is actually a consequence of the double consciousness at the heart of the nation. That is to say America imagines itself at once, Tim, as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic. And, and because you can't hold those two things together without contradiction, it deposits a kind of madness at the heart of the country that generates these cycles that we see in a telescope way. During these anniversaries and so here we are just, we're barreling towards July 4th.

I think it's going to be a shit show. The story that folk are going to tell is going to be a story that demands that people that look like me. That we are putting our place that we play minor bit parts in the history of the country. And I wanted to write a book that would answer back, that would speak back. Yeah, I thought that the 1876 that 100 year anniversary section was so interesting.

“I think a couple of things you're talking about.”

I mean, one was Frederick Douglass was talking about this, you know, feeling that at the 100 year anniversary like white America and the north and south would kind of come back together and find a kind of common truth.

Which is the end of doing by basically gutting reconstruction.

Just as a little kind of interesting history now because I didn't, I didn't realize this because I don't know about you. Sometimes it feels like the cowboys and Indians are like on a different historical timeline than the rest of America. I don't know, give my brain it's hard to sometimes to like put that all together. But custers, last year it's happening during the 100 year anniversary of the country. So anyway, talk a little bit more about that anniversary.

Yeah, I mean, you know, you got over 600,000 people have been killed on land and sea as a result of the carnage of the Civil War. You get radical reconstruction after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson just wants to bring this out and without any consequence.

“Congress takes over, you get radical reconstruction between 1866 and 1876, right?”

And what you see is this kind of big, this pushback in interesting sorts of ways. And the pushback is taking place in the south, even as your union soldiers are occupying this out and wins. But you see Democrats and we got to be clear, this is not the same Democratic party of today. But you see Democrats in so many ways organizing through violence, as well as coercion, as well as law, trying to seize power in southern states. With co-fax and Louisiana, you get vix bird in Mississippi, violent overthrows, the Mississippi plan, right?

Lays out a blueprint of how the south will return to power, how southern plantation on this wood.

So 1876 is the first time we're going to tell a story about the nation in the aftermath of a of the war that almost destroyed the nation.

And this is also a during the period of the gilded age, right? So the country, and so what they're going to do is they're going to engage in this massive act of forgetting. Frederick Douglass calls it calls these folks the apostles are forgetfulness. They're going to erase what happened and what drove or caused the civil war. They're going to talk about America's ingenuity, its economic power, it finally is on its own, it's not beholden to Europe in any longer. But at the heart of it, though, is this violence that's happening across the south, as reconstruction collapses.

Frederick Douglass is perhaps the most famous black man he is the most famous black person in the country, the most photograph black person in the country. He's scheduled to be on the dais with President Grant. He tries to get in a Philadelphia police officer says no, you're not on the dais. He shows him is ticket. He says there's no way this inwork can be on the dais. If it wasn't for a politician who a white politician who saw him, Douglass would never have been admitted to the exposition. Wow. And then he was just he had to sit on stage silent. They would not allow him to speak, right? So 1876 is this extraordinary moment of forgetfulness in a way, shadowed by violence and the collapse of reconstruction.

And that whiteness can then overcome regional differences. And we see that evidence itself more clearly in the turn of the century and the first two decades as they're grab as we grapple with the designation with European immigration and with Jim Crow and the violence around it. Right, you fast forward to 1926. There's the strike in the times review of your book. This is the striking boat at you included as well of the club clerks clan marching in front of the capital. Like 1926, whatever that's called 150th anniversary. And there's always fun words like sesquintennial or something that's something like that. And you have that in the moment that and and kind of in the spirit of, you know, nothing is new, you know, everything this new is old and brought back. You also have this push for Nordic, you know, immigration and making American Nordic during that time of the 1926.

So it just talked about that anniversary as well. Yeah, you know, we we usually talk about the decade of the 20s is, you know, the jazz age. This is the period of the Charleston in the like right, but it's really the decade of the clan 1915, the clan is reborn. It has outside power, it claims, you know, hundreds of thousands of members on its roles.

“It's most important piece of legislation that it's sponsored, John's representative Johnson was a member of the clan who helped pass along with Senator Reeve from Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania by the way, had over 250,000 clan members.”

They help pass the immigration act, immigration and nationality act of 1924, which established the kind of immigration regime that many of the folk today want to return to.

They want to return to a piece of legislation that was basically written by the clan.

In 1925, 26, the clan marches, you know, in DC, you've seen rows of rows, thousands, mostly from the north, right, and the Midwest, thousands of clan members in their sheets and hoods. They were initially approved to hold their annual convention, what they call the clan vacation. They were initially approved. That's really what it was called, the clan vacation. The clan vacation. It was initially approved because the 150th anniversary was held in Philly, just like the, the Centennial. So you have the exposition, they were approved to have the annual convention at the exposition in Philadelphia. So the country was going to celebrate its flag and burn across at the same time.

Now, what's interesting in 1926, and the North American review, the grand wizard of the clan, Hiram Wesley Evans, published a piece, defending the clan's fight for Americanism.

“This is as they kind of are speaking against this, these shall we say, shithole countries from the wrong part of Europe that are sending folk over Italians, Irish, Jews and the like, they're really, really going after Catholics in this moment, right?”

And he sits there and lays out in that piece, right? How can I put this to him? It's so freaking scary because it maps on to the very ways in which MAGA talks today.

Talking about they can't teach what they want to teach in school, talking about these foreigners, polluting the country, talking about America first, all of this is evidence right in that moment.

So, 1926 is this extraordinary period, but I guess what happens also in 1926, it's also the moment in which Negro history week is founded. So black folk are speaking back trying to tell a different story in this moment of racist duration. I guess the 26 is before Lindberg, and kind of that.

“Right, but this is the stage of the father-in-law for all of these folk, yes.”

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First of all, today in the echoes of MAGA, there are just these kind of clownish almost absurdists.

Representations of the Django is on back in those celebrations as well. I don't know what could possibly stand up to the MA fight that we're going to have at the White House. And I just kind of wonder when you look at that and figure out that how, you know, an AI at E.Gloat would cover that in an update to this book 50 years from now on the, on the tries in tenial. And like whether that, how that fits in the timeline that you're writing about.

And, you know, it makes sense that you would get a caricatured version of Ronald Reagan at this stage, you know, a be-less actor to a be-less reality show first.

You know, you see the line drawn and how that then becomes an assault on the political imagination of the country where we are not capable in so many ways to be serious enough to engage in self-governance. Such that, you know, an MMA fight is held on the White House lawn or Hunger Games version of competition for high school athletes or something like that, you know. And FBI agents, we're doing it for FBI agents. Can you imagine?

“And so, you know, I think though what's really important though is in 1926 this is something Calvin Coolidge spoke at the exposition President Coolidge spoke.”

And what President Coolidge did in that moment is that he talked about the founding. As not being reducible to the American Revolution, he says we only need one Revolution. That Revolution gave voice to enduring principles, what he would say met a physical principles that weren't reducible to the country. And he says, "We don't need another Revolution, all we need to do is to remember and restore." So Calvin Coolidge is not interested in more perfect union talk.

In other words, our salvation was secured at the founding because of these principles. Naga gives that an evangelical twist. These folks are not interested in the progress of the nation or more perfect union talk. It's not about whether or not we are our multiracial democracy, whether or not we're treating black folk right, whether or not we're treating, you know, I'm an already hour minorities right?

No, they don't give a damn. Only thing they want us to do is to understand that we are already say that that's all we need to do is to remember and to remember in a way that aligns the country's purpose. With Donald Trump's ins and ins. Yeah. It's interesting to say that my producer flagged me.

We were writing this. We had a big all Stephanie and DC last week. She saw somebody in the malls. Like around the malls, somebody wearing this. America at 250 years of freedom.

Sure. You see this a lot. Right.

“And so like, I'm curious how you kind of process that, right?”

Because on the one hand, I guess you could look at it three ways. So you could look at it out of hopefulness. Like, this is freedom. We're aspiring to freedom. Like, you know, you can kind of send the way that Obama kind of talked about, you know, the founding. You can think about it like that.

You can think of it out of just a glance, right? That this didn't happen. Or you can think about it in the way that kind of you're laying out there. The coolest just laying out, right? That it's like, no, what was achieved there was was enough.

And we need to kind of return to that mindset. You know, how do you how do you navigate that? So all three versions of what you just laid out to my mind,

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“I think what's what's important though is”

there are these milestone anniversaries. What we've-- how can I put this? What we choose not to remember. Often exposes the limits of our conception of justice. What we choose to forget.

Often, right, shines a glaring light on the gaping holes in our ideas of justice. So what am I saying? And these milestone anniversaries, that's one of them happens in the midst of extraordinary kind of flaring up of the contradiction. 1876 is the collapse of freaking reconstruction.

By the end of the 19th century, over 53,000 black people will be dead. 1926 is the decade of the clan. In the midst of that, you have the red summer of 1919. You have all sorts of violence that's happening across the south. And in the Midwest and in the Northeast, right?

So the moment in which we're trying to tell a story about our shared sense of value, there's this amazingly violent effort to discipline the royal and chaos underneath the appeal to consensus. And certain people are bearing the brunt of it. Certain people are taking it on the chin and having to bury their dead because of it. So part of what I'm trying to suggest to you.

Unlike you, remember how you framed it? You said I had a tone for my sins, right? And I tried to do right. And so they let me walk. We're in the midst of the fever dream.

The country is engaged in an all-out assault on black life. On all-out assault on the idea that we're a multi-racial democracy. What does it mean to forget in this moment? Right? It seems to me that forgetfulness makes us accomplices, right?

In the ongoing horror, right? Of those who believe that the country must be white or the country shouldn't be at all. What that looks like. You know, one thing that comes to mind is, you know, when Obama first comes in, I think it was in 2009, he goes to Egypt, you know, any travels and, you know, the, you know, Fox News,

kind of pre-insist the apology tour where he goes around the world and does, I'm curious that your memory is of that. To my memory, kind of this, right? Like a fully actualized, you know, conversation about what America is and was and should be. That it wasn't just like, you know, God damn America.

It wasn't that right. It was a speech that talked a lot about what, you know, America had offered and what the opportunity of America was but also acknowledging the flaws and the mistakes. I kind of that sit with you at the time.

Well, I would want it to be more substantive. I think Obama was doing that. And then, of course, you, you, you juxtaposed that with his drone policy. You just chose that to, to the way in which, you know, I still got the Canadian Prime Minister in my head as he's describing the world in which America is the hegemon.

And how the rules were bent to benefit us and the world had to look elsewhere. So, you know, I'm committed to a world in which everybody, no matter their birth place, no matter their color, no matter who they love or their gender or their class position, have the ability to actualize their dreams. And I don't mind symbolic gestures to that.

I want substantive policy with regards to that. So, what I'm calling for is something much more fundamental, if that makes sense. You know, the end of the book, the arc of the book is right here. Usually when we write a book like this, people want you to say, "So, what do we do? Give me a damn blueprint at it.

You just sent you the egghead in here."

And I said, well, you know, I've written two other books that, you know, because this is the third

and the trilogy that have tried to address the moment. And I said, you know, I don't want to offer a policies.

“Because that's what we do in order to make ourselves feel good.”

It's to make ourselves think that we're actually trying. Then we have to make a choice. Either going to be the knucklehead that did what you did that almost got you kicked out of school. Or you're going to be a different kind of person. Either we're going to be a beacon of freedom and we can debate that.

We can debate what that means. Or you're going to be a white republic. JD Vance wants us to be a white republic. His stuff is all blood and soil. He rejects the cradle notion of American, of American identity.

He did it on July 5th, 2025. All right. He was explicit that declaration is not enough.

It's the essential speech, actually, of the next decade, I think, honestly.

It's essential tax. Exactly. And I talked about it a lot and a couple weeks ago. And you know what, Tim? That text comes out of.

You would think it's just JD Vance. But it comes out of an intellectual subculture that is thick. That is deep. Right. It's a clear amount of institute folk is all of these trials seeing folk.

That are that are informing and shaping the way in which Vance has rendered that argument. These these nationalist conservative folk. You know, so I mean, that's a different story. But the point I'm making is that we have to make a choice. And then act accordingly.

We can't be both in otherwise we'll find ourselves in this position over and over again. And my grandchildren will end up having to deal with this just like my son is having to deal with it now.

“Now we're going to do the thing that you just said, you can't fully answer, which is what do we do?”

But in the micro, in the micro, in the micro. Right. I don't know. I've been thinking about the 250th anniversary and the 4th of July kind of a lot. But like a little bit, I have like this sense of dread about it.

Kind of in the same way that I had like that feeling around Trump's inauguration. And this time I had to work during Trump's inauguration. And I'm embedded to our our bosses at MS now for making me do bad actually. But the eight years ago when I was not gainfully employed, I just checked out. Like I just turned my phone off and I went and saw my godson and I took him to the park and whatever.

And I kind of have that instinct about this time. And I guess that isn't a cousin to my other question about isn't there some value about forgetting. I guess they're not some value to that. Is that the idea? Like what is your instinct about how to handle it this year?

Like is it a moment for action or is it a moment for this two-shall pass and we'll get him back in November?

“Well, no, you know, I think it's not that because you know, we're on the precipice.”

I don't know if we're going to survive. Right. I don't know what we're going to look like on the other side of this. And so all hands are on deck. You know, and what I tell the story I tell in the book is that each of in each of these moments.

In 1976, 1926, 1976, black folk are speaking back even though they're trying to be people trying to disappear us. Right.

There's been always been an alternative celebratory calendar while the country was lying to itself about freedom.

We were celebrating the end of the transatlantic slave trade on January 1st. By the country was lying about itself on July 4th. We were celebrating July 5th. New York abolition day. Right.

This was before June 10th. We had this kind of ongoing signifying on the country. What I think we need to do come July 4th is show our asses. I mean, the full diversity of the country has to speak back to this narrowing vision of who we are.

And as a father, both of us, you're raising your baby in New Orleans of all places.

Right. That diversity is in our language. It's in our taste buds. It's in our food. It makes us, it makes America swing.

Right. It's what makes us distinctive.

“And I think in response to, you know, what Trump and Mago will try to represent as the country.”

We need to speak back at the highest volume with the diversity of the nation.

Right. Right. We need to speak back at the highest volume with the diversity of the nation. And we need to speak back at the highest volume with the diversity of the nation. And we need to speak back at the highest volume with the diversity of the nation.

And we need to speak back at the highest volume with the diversity of the nation. And we need to speak back at the highest volume with the diversity of the nation.

And we need to speak back at the highest volume with the diversity of the nation.

And we need to speak back at the highest volume with the diversity of the nation. And we need to speak back at the highest volume with the diversity of the nation. And we need to speak back at the highest volume with the diversity of the nation. And we need to speak back at the highest volume with the diversity of the nation. And we need to speak back at the highest volume with the diversity of the nation.

And we need to speak back at the highest volume with the diversity of the nation. And we need to speak back at the highest volume with the diversity of the nation. And we need to speak back at the highest volume with the diversity of the nation. And they were pissed. The state is 38.5% black 40% black. And they were pissed. And so you had this energy of celebration.

It wasn't a kind of nostalgia for the Mississippi movement of the mid-20th century. It was really a sense of, this is where we are really, this is where we're doing, this is what we're doing. And then it was organizing and mobilizing. So there was this conversation that was being had in the midst of it. Okay, they want to redraw the maps in light of a set of assumptions about turnout.

This is the numbers. So they were said, I remember hearing their Johnson, based on the presidency of NAACP, he said, this is a math problem.

“Right. So what do we need to do? How many do we need to get registered to vote?”

And per each county and each county, what should be our turnout numbers to just simply undermine the assumptions of their redrawing? And so I kept hearing in my head something I had said before, you know, they thought we turned out for Obama, which transformed the map. Just wait to they see us turn out for us. And what I saw in the churches and what I saw across, because it was a rainy day on a Wednesday. And it was about 5,000 people right in the convention center. And so I was I came away on fire right hopeful because the organizing was just beginning.

And if there's any state in the south that you can wake in the beast, it would be a state where the population is 40% blood. I mean, that there's got colon who's running for US Senate. It's a little kind of under it's it's for good reason it's under notice because it's Mississippi after all. But I guess I'm going to give you the optimistic and then hear my concerns. Like the optimistic cases that that turnout combined with like some level of backlash, you know, combined with potentially depressed mega base, which is unhappy about the war and happy about costs.

You can imagine a path, you know, for a surprises and in the showing up part, you know, even putting a scare into them. There's in Mississippi, there's some value too. So I don't know, anyway, was was was Scott there and like was the focus there about Mississippi itself or was this kind of a this is a staging ground for maybe more fertile turf other places. It was both and yeah, Mississippi we came you know because it's the metaphor for the country is you know what happens in Mississippi, of course, plays itself out across the south.

Remember in the context of the collapse of reconstruction is the Mississippi plan that provided the blueprint for the rest of the south to do what it did in order to to engage in redemption.

“So so I think Scott understands, right, the numbers game remember S we didn't lose by much. Everybody's talking about Texas flipping. Yeah, but in that environment, that's mostly also.”

Exactly. So we're in a press. So given the numbers and given the number of folk that you can turn out who are white liberal, you know, and the like and it's suppressed vote on the other side, you can have there's a chance here. But I think what's important though is that folk weren't just simply focused on electoral politics. They understood it as as a critical component, but they were talking about it in a much more expansive way.

That's one part of the cynical. Here's another element of it. And I try to be precise when I'm talking about this because obviously black voters voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats and you know, Trump won a majority of white America like that. Like that. So granted, but across every demographic group, like we saw the same trend, right, which is people that have higher education attainment, people that have higher trust, people that are reading the news, like, Convlated disproportionately better with them, right, and that was true among black Americans to right and particularly black men and what you saw on 2024 was a lot of particularly younger black men that aren't as engaged with everything that's happening that may and probably still aren't like just to be honest like probably start familiar with the details of the collay case, or not listening to podcasts, right, like to work in the living their lives, they're not, you know, whatever.

“And there was like an appeal to what Trump was offering on an economic level, and I think a feeling of disconnect from a democratic elite that was, you know, serving the interests of what up with coastal, you know, leads or college education elites.”

And I get excited about this, like, this engagement and that day of action, and what you were talking about when Justin was talking about, I get excited about it, but like there's this little thing in the back of my head, which is like, are they engaging still the same people, you know, that are that care about the news and are passionate about this and maybe they're more engaged now, but like how do you reach that next layer of black and brown folks that like that don't feel like they've really felt fully connected with, you know,

the anti-truck movement, the democratic party, whatever you want to call it, pro-democracy movement.

That's the million dollar question or in this kind, in this kind of text, the billion dollar question, right? So one of the things I saw on Wednesday is a cross generational cross section of folks.

That's one point I was taking a podcast with Angela Rye and Andrew Gillum and Bitty Thompson at folk and in the middle of it, it was interrupted by the junk folk with bull horns coming in, it was there were all young. And it changed the energy of of the room almost immediately and they had just been marching in the streets and so they they seem to be engaged, right, in a very interesting way. You know, folk weren't talking about, you know, just simply salvaging the seats of the CBC or keeping district to intact, right?

They were talking about power and policy that could address specifically the circumstances of black Mississippi.

“And I thought that was really important because I think you're right, the democratic messaging, whatever you think of the autopsy report.”

For the democratic party in the shit show that that has been what we do know is that there has been a disconnect between the symbolic gestures and the policies that could actually impact working people and working poor people. And in Mississippi, those two things, you know, index black folk in a very clear way.

And so there, there are folks who are who are really, really at least from what I saw and and the energy I saw are really kind of looking to push.

The political entities in a direction that could actually address their lives, they're not looking to the democratic party for salvation. They just know they got to get the fastest out of office, but they're not in doing that, they're not looking to the democratic party as the salvation, but they know that they're going to vote for, but they're not looking for that to be the panacea for the problems they face.

“Do you think that that notion is sunk in like when you were there with the many tons in the world?”

I suppose I worry that the democratic establishment kind of feels like, hey, all we got to do is register more black voters and turn out more voters and that will work out for us. And like we learned in 24 that isn't like right quite true. Yeah. Yeah. When you talk about persuasion, a lot of times people are talking about my people, you know, the moderate Republicans and the suburbs independent.

Hey, there's some persuasion that needs to be done. You know, within the black, when with an every community, but in particular, we saw in 2024 within the black community, we want black men and the government that work kind of drawn a greater percentages towards Trump. Do they get that, do you think? Some days they sound like some of them did other days, it sounds like they're just they're just following the same same blueprint. I mean, you know, you and I know that American politics will not change until there's a massive shift in the political consulting class.

And particularly with regards to black voters, right?

Yeah.

“So I think you're absolutely right that there has to be a different kind of messaging.”

It has to be a messaging that kind of bridges, AOC kind of stuff with a traditional kind of attentiveness to the realities of race and how race. Over determines those working class issues in interesting sorts of ways you're going to have to appeal to young folk in a very different way. But you know, you think about Kamala Harris's campaign or even Clinton Hillary Clinton's campaign. They think that they can just try to out a whole bunch of celebrities. And that will be enough to turn black folk out.

And it's just not true or you just say people died for the vote. And that's enough to turn them out. That's just not true. We saw with Hillary Clinton's campaign to go back to 2016 is that the numbers just simply returned to 2004. She was expecting to get the historic turnout of the Obama years.

And the, it is just reverted back to normal.

You know, so the short answer to him is that yeah. I don't even like to see people try things totally different and throw things off the wall. I just think it's so crazy how conventional they're thinking. It's like Barack Hussein Obama and Donald Trump are allowed to turn presidents. And for some reason, everybody still is stuck in this very conventional mindset.

And I'm here saying, and I'm, I took to Van Lathen last week out in LA. And he's great. And his politics are also very AOCish broadly speaking. I'm sure they have different says, right. But he also is like very acknowledging of, you know, he's from Louisiana, he's from Baton Rouge.

“He's like, you know, they're elements of the community that is conservative, right?”

Or that is out of to out of step with, you know, maybe what like in a leat, you know,

Ivy League college progressive would want. And there needs to be like some kind of combination of these sorts of things. Like where you have this AOCish talk to working class concerns, but also. You know, it's a really different type of messaging on on social concerns. And different types of language, you know, then what you might see from the list with Warren platform.

Like it's caught people are complicated. We are complicated. You're absolutely right. You know, what we say are progressive issues. The folk don't want to go broke because they're sick. No.

That folk want to work 40 hours a week and be able to put a roof over the head, put food on the table. Yeah. Right. That they want to be able to send their kids to affordable, affordable schools and the like to. So that they can have a better life than them. The stuff that we think as think of as far right.

Right. And you know, there was a whole few research that a point. As said, if you control for race, black folk is as conservative as Mormons. Yeah. But that conservatism, because I'm conservative in a certain way. I got a T.S. Eliot streak in me.

Right. But it doesn't map on to political ideological behavior. Right. But it's just certain ways in which I was raised. I'm raised Catholic on the coast of Mississippi.

Damn. Right. So so part of what I think if you know, you can't use no labels because, you know, you know, how that goes. Yeah. But part of what you're suggesting to me, right, is that, you know, people are complicated that they one day they sound. Like, you know, conservative for public and the next day they sound like a progressive Democrat. Because what they're trying to do is to live the best lives that they can for the people they love.

Period. I don't end with Baldwin because I'm with him. I'm with him on that. There's this fear of Baldwin is when he wrote this letter to Faulkner.

“Remember that one that I really liked, like the American Southwest should read that.”

There's this quote in your book that is kind of an echo of the same message that he was offering in that and I want to read it. To be an American black is to be in the situation and tolerably exaggerated of all those who have ever found themselves part of a civilization, which they could in no ways honorably defend, which they were compelled indeed to endlessly attack and condemn. And who yet spoke out of the most passionate love hoping to make the kingdom new to make it honorable and worthy of life.

Yeah. Yeah. Democracy at its best. Democracy at its best is a disinterested form of love. You don't have to be a member of my family.

You don't have to be a member of someone that I love deeply. It's just I won't good for you. Right. So I want to take love of country out of the abstract and bring it down to the ground. I love the folk here, the folk who make this place possible. And it seems to me, in this moment, we have to dare to imagine the country a new based upon that love.

And I got to something from my student when my Baldwin seminar, she says, Maybe it's not hope that we need. Maybe what we need to do is just simply tell the truth.

And maybe that will open the door for a new way of us being together.

I really like that. So we'll just leave it there.

“Eddie, glad I appreciate you very much, man.”

It's good to see you.

America, USA, how raised shadows and nations and adversaries is out today.

Go get it. Good luck on the book, Troy. We'll see you soon, man. Thank you, man.

I appreciate you so much.

I love that holler. All right. That's my guy.

“Everybody, we'll be back tomorrow at the other edition of the show. We'll see y'all then, peace.”

The board podcast is brought to you. Thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper. Associate producer Ansley Skipper and with video editing by Katie Lutz. An audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. I'm Elizabeth Doreca from Chicago, Illinois.

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