Clarify The Choices Before Us: Eddie Glaude, Jr.
I don't remember when I first came across Eddie Glaude, Jr. I just remember thinking: pay attention to him.
I paid attention last year when he published a beautiful, poignant book about James Baldwin, making it utterly relevant to this particular moment in our country's history. Here's a quote from Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own.
"Baldwin's writing does not bear witness to the glory of America. It reveals the country's sins and the illusion of innocence that blinds us to the reality of others.
Baldwin's vision requires a confrontation with our history (with slavery, Jim Crow segregation, with whiteness) to overcome its hold on us. Not to posit the greatness of America, but to establish the ground upon which to imagine the country anew."
Recently, to my delight, Eddie Glaude made a podcast. History is Us is a 6-part series that "uses history to clarify the choices before us". He shows the inevitability of racism, given the historical progression of choices in the past. Yet he also taught me about how knowing this history can help me know what I don't know about myself in the present.
Sept. 2022
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