Ep. 54 – Begin Again – James Baldwin’s American Ruins and Our Own: A Conversation with Dr. Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

[0:00:07 Peniel] Welcome to race and democracy. A podcast on the intersection between race, democracy, public policy, social justice and citizenship. Uh huh. We’re very pleased on today’s show to have with us a friend and a towering intellectual. Eddie S. Glaude Jr. Who is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American studies at Princeton University. The author of many books. But he is the author, most recently of The New York Times. Bestselling Begin Again, James Baldwin’s America, and it’s Urgent Lessons for our own. So Dr Eddie S. Glaude Jr. Professor, Big time intellectual. Welcome to race and Democracy,

[0:00:54 Eddie] man. It’s my pleasure to be with you. This is amazing. How are you doing? Congratulations on your extraordinary book as well.

[0:01:01 Peniel] No, thank you. I have to say, this is one of the best books I’ve ever read. And I think that it’s such an extraordinary time for all of us in 2020. It feels like you wrote this book this year. Even even as I know this because of the press process, you did not, but I want us to get into it. This is a book that talks about James Baldwin and how we can look at this moment of racial and political and moral reckoning. It talks about trumpism. It talks about BLM. But at the heart of the book is really, I think, a very hopeful book. But a book that really asks and request of all of us to face what you call the lie about America, American democracy, about race. And so I want I want us to start there in terms of begin again. What is this lie?

[0:01:52 Eddie] Well, first of all, thank you for such kind words about the book. That’s high praise, especially from someone like yourself, until I want to just begin by insisting that the through line of American history is what I call the value gap and the value gap is this belief that white people matter more than others, right, and that belief shapes our dispositions. It informs our public and social arrangements are political and economic realities and the lie are those stories we tell to protect it. Baldwin wrote an essay in 1964 entitled White Problem and I’m paraphrasing here. But he says, you know the country was founded on a fatal flaw that these Christian who sought to create this Democratic Republic as it were, also decided to hold chattel. And they said that these men and women were not human beings. Because if they weren’t human beings, Baldwin suggests, then no crime would have been committed. And then this is the line for Neil, he says. That lie is the basis of our current troubles. Our present problems that lie is the basis of our present problems. So the lie is the story we tell about black capacity of our passions, who we are, the stories we tell to justify the dehumanization of black folk. It’s the stories we tell about America as the shining city on the hill about you know, the lies we tell about what we’ve done with regards to black folk and and brown folk across the globe, the lie about us being the shining city on the Hill, Redeemer nation, an example of democracy achieved. And so in some ways, to echo Baldwin’s language. The lie is, in fact, the way in which we protect our innocents as a nation, and I want to

[0:03:36 Peniel] read you some of your own writings in that first chapter, the lie you say, the stories we often tell ourselves of the civil rights movement and racial progress in this country. With Rosa Parks is courage. Dr. King’s moral vision and the unreasonable venom of black power, culminating in the election of Barack Obama are all too often lies. This’ll is really striking, and I think our listeners would like to know. What do you mean by that? Especially when it comes to civil rights. When it comes to what you say about black power when it comes to Obama, why are those so often lies?

[0:04:12 Eddie] You know, I think black power. It constitutes the repressed of contemporary American politics. We’re responding to it over and over and over again. And we like to tell this story as if black power is wholly separate, holy separate from the civil rights movement, as if the actors in the civil rights movement were not. In some ways, they did not become proponents of black power. Think of think of someone like crematoria, Stokely Carmichael, someone you know a lot about right. He was one of the most skilled organizes in the civil rights movement, and he said in his autobiography is, you know that he never broke nonviolent discipline except for one time for 11 time. And that’s when police attacked Dr King, right? And so we tend to read Even. It goes so far that even when John Lewis was being put in the ground, buried Bill Clinton thought it necessary to say that the movement lost its way when it followed Stokely. Yes, right. And so I think it’s important for us not to think of these two moments as entirely separate because they’re not some of the same actor. Some of those same students Baldwin’s was speaking to a 1963 Howard Nag students right who were so central to sneak, ended up being proponents of black power. Right? And so part of what I’m trying to suggest is that this neat story, you know, I have a dream fits within a certain kind of sanitized understanding of American history in the mid 20th century, And we have to tell that story in that way so we don’t have to deal with the betrayal that’s at the heart of the black power moment, the black power movement itself. So that’s what I mean.

[0:05:55 Peniel] And you say here you have a great quote from Jimmy telling students in 1963 I will never betray you talked to us about what was Jimmy Baldwin’s relationship with the black power movement? I think one of most fascinating parts of the book, especially the books First half of Black Powers throughout You start with Jimmy and Stokely Carmichael on the fact that in a lot of ways, I agree with, you know, name in the Street is Baldwin’s masterpiece and I Love the Fire next time. But I’ve taught no name in the street. I’ve read that over and over again. You also push back against the idea that somehow the Fire next time is Baldwin’s masterpiece, and he’s in decline by no name in the street to the rest of his life. Because he becomes, too. He becomes less objective about the so called race problem, the Negro problem. So I want you to talk about one. What is his relationship with black power and how he continues to defend Carmichael? The London Times won’t publish it. The New York Times won’t publish it, but he’s the stalwart defender of Angela Davis. I mean, he never, ever, ever gives in, so talk to us about that and about. You do such a nice job with no name in the street. I feel that we’re I mean, I think, to tell everybody one of the best parts of this book begin again. It feels like we’re in a conversation. It feels like we’re overhearing you and Baldwin. But at times it feels like we’re in a conversation with you, and I think it’s so so well done.

[0:07:18 Eddie] Well, thank you so much, man. You know, one of the most powerful experiences I had writing the book was interviewing Angela Davis, and I interviewed her in that in Princeton. And she mentioned she said something to me that I will never forget. She said, I don’t know what would have happened to me if Jimmy hadn’t written that letter. They could have thrown away the key. And, you know, whenever she talked about Baldwin, her eyes danced. But let me let me answer the question. I think Baldwin’s relation to black power is complicated. He understood it, that is, he understood what he saw in the eyes of those young folk who experienced raw terror in the South to echo cometary. He understood that these were the Children of the nation. Those these were the consequences. These young folks who embraced black power black people who expressed their anger and rage, was they were, in fact a result of the country’s ongoing betrayal. So the first thing he would not do is allow the country to demonize them. Right to say that they were the problem. No, no, no, no, no. You have to look yourself squarely in the face. You created the conditions for these. What do you mean? We can’t defend ourselves? What do you mean? We can’t put forward a complex vision of what it means to be a self determining people. Right. So Baldwin is engaged in this ongoing conversation over the content of black power. And as you know, Black power is a very complex political moment. It’s not any one thing, right? And I’ve been using this language to help people understand the black lives, matter, movement. The black lives. Matter isn’t one thing. It’s a sentiment. It’s a sensibility. It’s an orientation. And the way to read it might be to read it like black power right on. And of course, it is hard to do because black power again is the repressed right. But at the same time that Baldwin is understands because he, you know, as crematory said, he never betrayed us. He understands. He defends, and Baldwin knew the cost of that defense. He knew what it would mean for him personally. There’s a reason why he never won the Nobel Prize for literature. But even as he is defending as he’s giving an account of why these young folks are embracing blackness, right, why we have to embrace the very thing that has been used to denigrate and dehumanize us? What is he saying about We have to go through this period in order to get beyond it? He’s also kind of warning us not to fall into the trap. So he’s very suspicious of what he called that mystical black bullshit. That’s his life, right? So he’s very, very suspicious off us, getting trapped in the very categories that deny the humanity of others. So when he resigns from the Liberator, for example, along with Isaac Davis and others over the issue of anti Semitism, he says, we have to be better than them. And then he says, I’m a paraphrasing him here. I want us to do something unprecedented, create itself without the need for enemies. I love that line. That’s really important to understand that he he’s not an ideologue. That’s just not in his personality. He’s not going to be beholden to any ideological current that defines black power, but he understands it. He understands the fullness of it. He understands why the young people that he organized within 63 the young people he was working within core, why they started saying Black Power. He understood it. In that interview in Esquire in 1968 they asked him as folk were burning down streets. I said, What did you get? What would you say to the folks who are burning down cities? He says. I tell them not. I wouldn’t tell them not to defend themselves. Mhm. I wouldn’t tell them not to embrace X, Y Z said. And if it comes to the point, I remember this line, he says. If it comes to the point where you have to blow his brains out and it may come to that, only thing I would say is Don’t hate. This is Jimmy In the heat of the moment, right? He gives us this really interesting moment. And, of course, his heart was broken. By ELDRIDGE CLEAVER. Eldridge Cleaver’s critique of his masculinity and his sexuality and the like was devastating for Baldwin, but because of that promise, he never betrayed them. Now this takes me to the second part of the question. Pernille around no name in the street, no name in the street Anchors begin again. I remember when I first started when I wrote the first four chapters of the book I gave them to Michael Thelwell, who’s a professor at emeritus professor of African American studies. Todo a su You know, Professor Elwell is an exacting critic, right? So and we’ll say whatever is on his mind. And I gave him the first four chapters. I drove up to Amherst and I walked into the house and he says, Glad I thought you in that Jamaican pat in Jamaican patois. What? I thought you were intelligent. This makes no damn sense. And I said, You know, I’m trying to do something with that echoes the form of no name, he says. You’re sticking to close to it. And finally, when I finally figured out the form, he got it right and one of the beautiful things about no name in the Street is no name. In the Street is the first book published after the assassination of Dr King, Right? Of course, you get the conversation with Margaret Mead and Rap on race and and Nikki Giovanni and the like, and then a few fugitive journalistic pieces. But no name in the street is the book that emerges out of the chaos out of the attempted suicide out of the collapse. And it’s a book at the level of form that’s trying to capture wound and trauma and also to narrate a history. But it narrates a history in a fragmented way because of the trauma, and it does something that very similar parallels with the fire. Next time, remember in the fire. Next time Jimmy tries to render the Nation of Islam intelligible to the reader and Jimmy and no name in the street right engages in an account of Black of the Black Panther Party, right, not so much to make it intelligible, but to understand it, but to give it space to breathe so that we can understand the importance of of this moment of the embrace eso It’s a book that anchors begin again. It’s a book that that I’m trying to, um, I’m in conversation with from the first page to the last page of Begin Again. So like you, I think it’s it’s most important piece of nonfiction.

[0:13:43 Peniel] I want to talk about blackness because there’s a point where you do push back against some kind of mystical black Bs. But you’re not pushing back against BLM and black feminists. Intersectionality. But you’re saying that there’s a point where we’re going tohave thio. Move beyond this, these these categories in terms of to build that new, that new Jerusalem. I want you to talk talk about that because I think it’s a section in the book that’s really important. But I think it could be easily misconstrued in a way, even as you you push back against the idea that, um, you know, white CIS gender males calling everybody else identity politics when they practiced and innovated the first white supremacist identity politics. So I want you to talk about that because I think even when I teach this book, I think there’s gonna be some pushback because it’s I think it’s elegantly done. But I want you to talk about that,

[0:14:38 Eddie] Yeah, you know. So I think it’s it’s it’s really important for us to understand on, you know, this is one of those kind of moments of continuity between fire next time and no name. You know, Baldwin thinks of color, the necessity of embracing color right on the part of black folk as, ah consequence of a society that’s organized in such a way where it distributes advantage and disadvantage along the lines of color. So it makes sense that we embrace it and Baldwin say, and for the fact that in the name of the street, he says, and the fact that we would finally take up blackness on and give it positive meaning means that we are actually rejecting, uh or, uh, rejecting what the world is saying about us, we’re finally disagreeing with the way in which were being talked about. And we’re breaking free off white supremacist, uh, rendering of who we are in our value on DSO. Baldwin understands it as a kind of practical political matter. It’s a political reality, and it has moral implications. But when we begin to fix ourselves when we begin to say this is essentially who we are Then, Baldwin says, We sprung the trap. We’re right back where we started. We’re just We’re just flipping scripts, right? And so part of I think part of the challenge is that when when we look for that as I I use this, I think I use this, um, this metaphor when we’re when we stick our heads in the sand searching for that essential green. We’re not looking at anything else. We’re not seeing anything else. And part of part of the work is to is to destabilize thes categories, to free us up to be the fullest human beings possible. But this is not about some sentimentalized notion of universality, right? That’s not what he’s talking about. Are colorblind this No, no, no, no, right. He’s just trying to get us to understand what it would mean what it might mean to fixate on the notion of blackness as the ground off all of what we are and who we are. A to that point, Then you’re trapped just like like the folks were trying to resist.

[0:17:09 Peniel] Now you also get into how he moves beyond setting white folks free. There’s a great um, there’s a great paragraph in the chapter, The Dangerous Road on page 83. You say all of this hard work, almost Sisyphean labor in a country so wedded to its legends and so in need of its illusions. Black folk have sacrificed generations trying to fight it all. And here here we are in the second decade of the 20th 21st century, which Charlottesville and so much more in our rear view mirror and in front of us still fighting for an understanding of American history that will finally set white folk free. So this is sort sort of my prefaced question before getting into trumpism for getting into the now and connecting it with Jimmy. But what do you mean by that in terms of set white folk free? And what, Jimmy sort of his evolution. One. What does that concept mean? Setting white folk free? And Jimmy Baldwin has a great quote saying we were the only ones who knew the white folks, meaning the enslaved. Those of us who were enslaved were the ones Not, not only does Jimmy say we’re the only ones who knew them were the only ones who cared for them. I want you to unpack that because I thought all of that is extraordinary and its layers upon layers upon layers,

[0:18:26 Eddie] you know? And what’s so funny is that you know that I had a moment on MSNBC that went viral with Nicole Wallace and and that paragraph I had just written and I was channeling it in that in that in that viral video with Nicole Wallace actually use the language of, you know, you know, setting setting what, You know, a history that would set white folks free, right? Um, but, you know, I think what I’m trying to suggest here is that, you know, um, we have to bear the burden of this nonsense, but it makes them monstrous, right? They are caught there, captured and now in in in the fire. Next time, Baldwin is very clear. Um, that, um we have to love them in orderto in order to help them see themselves differently. And you might read that as you know, a moral claim. Or you might read it as a practical claim. Like we can’t you know, this is in the letter to my nephew, right? We will continue to have to bear this nonsense, bear the burden of this world until we help them see themselves. Otherwise, so that could be seen as a moral claim or practical claim. But by the by no name in the street, as Michael Fell will help me see his we changed. And so that latter part right, we’re not the problem. They are. But we don’t need to spend our energy, our finite energy, trying to convince him to be. Otherwise, we need to just simply joined with, like minded others to build a new Jerusalem where thes views have no quarter to breathe. But what Baldwin is saying is that you know, for folk, you know, think about the ending of no name in the street, right? I’m gonna put off my show. There’s a line at the end of no name in the street, you know, there’s so dope, he says. Whoever is part of whatever civilization helplessly loves some aspect of it, and some of the people in it person does not lightly elect to oppose his society. One would much rather be at home among one’s compatriots than be mocked and detested by them and There is a level on which the mockery of the people, even their hatred, is moving because it is so blind. Namely, it is terrible toe watch. People cling to their captivity and insist on their own destruction. I think black people have always felt this about America and Americans and have always seen spinning above the thoughtless American head, the shape of the wrath to come. That’s how it ends the book or he turns to the epilogue. So this idea of freeing white folks from a history from from you know from this history is to get them to shake loose from this idea that they ought to be valued more than others. Thio get them to shake loose from the myths and illusions that justify a world. The district distributes advantage and disadvantage along the lines of whose value and whose devalued who’s regarded as something as somebody and whose disregarded right as nobody. Right? So I think Baldwin is trying to say what what must it take for you to encounter reality right? Because this innocents reveals a depth of in maturity and adolescence that leads you to to stay in, never never land

[0:21:50 Peniel] and that never, never land is really trumpism, and I want to talk about that. And, Trumpism, you really talk about really all of our complicity in this, But you say how, Eddie, you you were surprised that Trump won that that you, at the time you wrote something with Frederick Harris, you were giving people options in terms of 2016 people who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton. Um, let’s talk about trumpism and where we’re at now, we’re speaking after the Briana Taylor grand jury non indictment one officer, Uh uh just charged with endangering basically white folks in the building where Briana Taylor was was murdered in Louisville. We’re seeing protests all around the country. One of the reasons this book is so timely is that not only is it this great analysis of Baldwin in the history behind that, but then it connects really in very over ways. Biographical ways. You talk about yourself wrestling with this moment and wrestling with hopelessness and looking to renew your faith within the ruins and the wreckage of both Baldwin’s time and our own. So, um, let’s discuss Trump. And this moment, that’s even bigger than Trump. But The lies continue apace, brother. The lies about democracy. The lies about the devaluing of black humanity, the violence that is coming from the state and also coming from media and coming from longstanding institutions that are crumbling right before our very eyes. Thesis such a time. So let’s talk about you know what? How e marries

[0:23:39 Eddie] whiskey to talk about this part of e. I think I think it Z you know, I mean, and one of the one of the interesting aspect, you know, vanilla as a historian, you know? You see it, you see the reassertion of the law. You know, the 17 76 commission, right? This idea of his this idea of American history as as as pristine valley, you know, frontier, right? You see, all of the old tropes, you know, being trotted out in order to hold off. Um, this imagining of America differently, Right? So it’s at the at its root is panic, right? The adulation. What? You know, that’s the line coming from the board from Baldwin’s essay in 1962. As much truth as one could bear. He said the adulation has at its root panic, right. And that’s what we’re seeing. But Donald Trump is just the latest iteration of the American fantasy, right that this is a white nation in the vein of Old Europe. He is an avatar for white grievance and white fear and white resentment. We know why he’s in office, just like Jimmy said. He knew why they elected Ronald Reagan. They went. They reach for a Hollywood fantasy and so did we, right? So did the country. So that these white folks, you know, and so what Trump represents is this kind of nostalgic longing for for innocents that supposedly has been lost. And the innocents has been lost precisely because we have let the barbarians in the, you know, in the gates, you know, through the gates as it were. And so he is this reassertion of, you know, the greatness of America as it were. We know all of that is a bunch of bs, you know. And so part of what we have to do is to kind of not exceptional eyes. Donald Trump is what I argue and begin again is not to see him as some as uniquely singular, because that’s that kind of melodramatic approach, right? that is we need are obvious villains and are our heroes back in in Baldwin’s day, he would invoke Cowboys and Indians. We need to just invoke Marvel heroes, right? They had their Cowboys. We have our our Avengers, right? And so that’s that kind of melodrama allows us to displace our own complicity onto him. And we can begin to think that the only thing we need to do is get rid of Donald Trump and we’re all right. And that’s not true. Or we tell a story of Donald Trump that only runs through the racist demagogues that we could easily dismiss. Right? So let’s tell. The story of Donald Trump is coming through Pat Buchanan and George Wallace and strong Thurman as if that element of the Republican Party It’s separate from Reagan. Right? And you know, I say this in the book, and I and you know, as one of the key voices in black power studies, I’m sure you you agree, is that Ronald Reagan was as notorious as George Wallace, Absolutely. And for these, for these folks to claim him as the Redeemer in chief was a backhand to black folks face. We knew what he meant. And so and Baldwin says clearly in the last interview with Quincy Troupe, he says he was there. I knew. I know why they elected this adolescent. All right? Who was damn damn near 80 right? So part of our part of the work I’m trying to do in thinking about our current moment is to see how this betrayal in our moment stands. Uh, how it stands in relation to previous betrayals, right? It zits, similarities and its differences And what is required of us in this moment, if we’re going to finally give birth to a new America to a different America, I’m not sure. But, you know, does that does I get at what we were talking about? What? You Yeah,

[0:27:28 Peniel] I wanna I’m going to get to Reagan. But I want to stay where we’re at you. You write in the introduction. The willingness of so many of our fellows to toss aside any semblance of commitment to democracy to embrace cruel and hateful policies exposes the idea of America as an outright lie. And that reminds me of Malcolm X and I’ve just finished the work on Malcolm X, but my own work on race and democracy to and obviously your democracy and black. Um, where where does that leave us? You know, I want I want you. Really? For those of us who really believe in democracy, we believe in racial justice. We believe in black lives. Where does that leave? Where does that leave us? In this contemporary moment?

[0:28:13 Eddie] Well, um, on one read, it leaves us, leaves us between a rock and a hard place. But we’ve been there before, right? Um but it also leaves us with with the challenge to name our opponents. Honestly, you know, I think we’re facing the new redeemers. That’s who these people are, right? And if we begin to describe them as persons who are not committed to democracy, who are, in fact using the democratic process to actually undermine it, Um then we can begin to mobilize, I think, in a way that that and and respond in a way that that is at scale, right? We keep we keep treating our opponents as if they’re committed to the same thing, not a ziff. They’re committed to democracy itself. They’re not. They never have been right in my view, on dso I think we find ourselves once again as we have been throughout this country’s history, trying in some ways to give voice to a vision of democracy that is really and genuine, that is not haunted by white supremacy and distorted by white the tenets of white supremacy. And in some ways I want to paraphrase something that the great theologian Howard Thurman said about Christianity. Howard Thurman said This about Christianity, said the slave dared to redeem the religion profaned in her midst. The history of black folk is daring to redeem. Uh, democracy, that is, that has been and continues to be profaned, uh, in our midst. We’ve been doing it since they brought us here. Um um Thio, Echo, Malcolm in a certain sort of way. Um, and I think this is where we are, right? We gotta Neymar opponents. But we also got to recognize we’ve been we’ve been here before. We’ve been between rocks and hard places for a while in this place.

[0:30:22 Peniel] I want to talk about Jimmy Baldwin’s ruins in our own. I think one of most striking parts of begin again is the way in which you track Baldwin in the 19 seventies and the 19 eighties up until his death, and I read Baldwin from reading Begin again as really this kind of profit. Who’s talking about Reaganism, who’s speaking truth to power, who is connecting what you call the after times, and we can talk about that from Walt Whitman. He’s connecting his after times to Reaganism and white supremacy and the brutal killing and murdering in the racist policies that have really turned back that hopeful moment, that generational opportunity that was represented by snick in the sit ins in the march on Washington in the early 19 sixties. So I want to talk about that because I think and I love the fact that you you get into that documentary with David Baldwin and The Price of the Ticket and even even and I think one of your endnotes you talk about the interview with Ben Chavis. That isn’t and I know Ben Chavis, Wilmington tend. That isn’t really broadcast but the rage. And I want us to talk about that. You know, Jimmy Baldwin and Rage. I mean, Jimmy Baldwin was angry, angry at his stepfather, angry about racism. He was angry, and the way in which he channels that anger, that fury. You know, there’s a quote where you say he’s talking about being in Selma and he says, You know, we want to kill these people who these blue helmeted troops who are holding back our humanity, who think of us as nothing, uh, were scared at first. But the fear turns to rage, and the rage turns to anger and

[0:32:10 Eddie] fury. Yeah, Murderous rage. Yeah. I mean, I think you know the big thing. You know, The central thing about Jimmy, though, is that he’s constantly worried about the rage, mixing with despair, which leads to hatred. And there’s nothing useful about hatred. Involved wins corpus, right? Hatred is corrosive of the soul. Hatred can actually turned us into the very monsters that were resisting. So but But rage is productive, as I say in the book Rage Lights to kill me, right? So you can’t you know. And this is why people, I think in the past created this hard division between early Baldwin and late Baldwin because they didn’t want to deal with the anger. They didn’t want to deal with the rage. And, you know, I tend to read, you know, the way in which I when I teach my when I teach Baldwin’s nonfiction I said, I say I put it this way. You know, fire Next time is the prophecy. No name in the street is the reckoning. Now we have to track that what happened? And this is why I think I heard it through. The grapevine is so important as a documentary. He returns to the South. He retraces his steps right, and it has this late seventies early. You know, early 80 kind of feel in terms of the color and the film and the like. But what he’s doing, he’s he’s retracing his steps and he’s walking through the ruins were returning thio folk that he has been embattled with who stood on the front line that he stood on the front lines next to to see Jerome Smith right in New Orleans. Jerome Smith, of course, from the Freedom Rides and and that meeting with Robert Kennedy and the light right? Or, you know, to see him talking with with folks in Birmingham and and the like, so in in Selma and the like So I mean this is this is, you know, Fred Shuttlesworth and those folks, right? So I think by him retracing his steps. He’s trying, as he says at the very beginning of that documentary he’s trying to give an account for those didn’t make it, but also for those who did but who survived, broken right? And so there is this sense, man, where he’s trying to bear witness to the consequences of the betrayal right to the consequences of the betrayal. And that’s that’s that’s hard to swallow. Panel in a moment. Think about this in a moment when black, middle class, they’re about to take off in a moment where that’s going to produce the Cosby Show in a moment that’s going to produce, you know, think about. I mean, I’m talking 1980 what what is the discourse of the black middle class in the 19 eighties? How are we just juxtaposing, you know, the black middle class? I go over and against the black underclass? Baldwin is still sounding notes that makes that a set uncomfortable. That’s why folks don’t want to read. In my view, you know the evidence of things not seen, you know, the evidence, evidence of things not said right Why? Because Baldwin is saying how what are we going to say? What are we gonna say about these black babies being killed in Atlanta, where these black, all these black folk, hold the reins of power, you know? And so these are the notes that he’s trying to sound, and it’s just this extraordinary moment, but I’m rambling. I’m sorry to give you back and give me back in focus that Well, you

[0:35:39 Peniel] know, I think in terms of ruins, what I what I so enjoyed about reading the chapter ruins. And at one point on 1 72 you say we stand in the ruins is really the connection between Reagan and Trump. I think what you argue here and what I’d love to hear you discuss. Is that what we told ourselves as a nation? America, not black folks. Black folks pushed back. But as you say, some of the black elite and the petty bourgeoisie, including friends and allies that we know and we love and we honor in the academy, they acceded to a narrative that the civil rights movement had worked. It had one and those babies dying in Atlanta and those folks who are being victims of the drug war and mass incarceration. Those were individual choices that wasn’t our collective moral responsibility. Not anymore. Right? And we bought into that story and we’re not talking about in Cobra. We’re not talking about grassroots black radicals, but we know including some folks now who are radicals and revolutionaries. People were visiting the White House, if not the Reagan White House, the Clinton White House and other white houses. And so what we have to admit. And I think this is what you do here is that Baldwin stands is this towering figure who’s willing to look at that reckoning after the promise of the 19 sixties. And he’s refusing toe lie about it, which makes us all uncomfortable in that time.

[0:37:01 Eddie] Absolutely, absolutely. He sounds off key, right? He’s not. He’s not a part of the chorus, right? I mean, he’s telling the truth of these uncomfortable truths at the pitch of passion to echo Henry James, right? Uh, the role that the Ruins chapter was so important to me, right, because you know, it’s playing on You know what I experienced when I was in Saint Paul de Vence, where you know, his his beautiful home is being transformed into these luxury apartments with the panoramic view, like an archaeological site. You know, um, it echoes what David said in the price of the ticket or his last, you know, where his last words. That somewhere, someplace someone would find among the ruin in the rubble, something that may be useful, Um, And then to think about the eighties, right to think about the Reagan years. What is what? What does the ascent of Reaganism actually mean, Right? It is. It is the moment in which the nation closed the door on the possibility of the black freedom struggle in the mid 20th century closed. It’s shut. And when Baldwin, um, details that when he bears witness to the cost of that, it implicates a whole bunch of black folks, right, Because he’s still speaking the truth. Right that moment in. And I heard it through the grapevine that moment when Baldwin is in Atlanta and he’s at a Morehouse graduation. That Rosalynn Carter is speaking, you know, is a keynote speaker and and the critique that’s being brought in that moment of Jimmy Carter, who is, in my mind, one of the, you know, the first neo liberal American president somewhere. And just kind of giving voice to the fact that, you know, black folks thought Carter had betrayed us right on. Why there was a low turnout among black folk in that 80 election, you know, in the 1980 election. I mean, so he’s laying bare truth that account for our own moment, right? And this is part of what we have to do. I think when we have a historical sensibility is to kind of tell a different story that bring it, that that may bring into view a different set of considerations, right, that that may open up how we understand our current moment. So I wanted to tell the story of of Of of the Eighties and Reagan, because that moment is echoed in our own hours is in some ways, an extension of that it may be. And here we go, with perhaps a hopeful claim hours, maybe the death rattle of that

[0:39:50 Peniel] month. Well, I like that. You admit, um uh, mistaking 2016 because I concur with Baldwin. I actually voted for Hillary Clinton to buy time, and I thought that that was that was evident for me for somebody you know, I’m the son of Haitian immigrants. It was to buy time, but I had a lot of arguments, passionate debates with people. I admire love, respect, who disagreed with me. And this was on the left. They didn’t vote for the current president, but they didn’t vote for her. And I thought that morally, we were required to to buy time for what Dr King called in the Bible. Says the least of these to buy time. And I think Jimmy would have agreed.

[0:40:33 Eddie] I think so. I mean, you know, and this, I think, is I made an egregious error, and I admit it in the book, you know, and I made that error. I made that era, Um, on the basis of two things that I that I that I should have known better, right? So one thing is I overestimated white folks, you know? That’s the one thing I did I should not have done right, cause I’m thinking to myself once they nominated Donald Trump Oh, we got an opening right there. There’s no way that there’s no way they’re gonna elect this idiot, right? That’s what I’m thinking to myself, right? And he’s so obviously not qualified to be the president of the United States. So we can actually push the Democratic Party toe to break the back of Clintonism. Because, like you said earlier, right, it’s not just simply Reagan, you know, Reaganism is Clintonism that has that has wreaked havoc on our communities in so many ways. And so given what you know, the kind of muted nature of black politics over the over the eight years of Obama’s presidency, I thought we had an opening, right. I thought we had an opening and eso um And then even when I realized you know that Trump was the nominee on Guy said, Well, look, if you’re in a battleground state, you know, vote for Hillary Clinton. If you’re in a state that is clear about where it’s going, you know, vote your conscience and maybe we could have some impact on the Democratic convention that, um, I didn’t I should have known I should have. I should have known better. I should have known exactly what Baldwin said when having to choose between Carter and Reagan, right that sometimes you know you don’t have anything to vote for, But you gotta vote to buy yourself some time

[0:42:18 Peniel] now you right here. But sincerity can often be a mass for cruelty, especially the cruelty of conscious. To serve our to agree with me entails much more than condemning Trump. It necessitates an honest confrontation with and condemnation of one’s complicity with a way of life that insists that some people matter more than others and with a society organized to reflect that belief on, Do you talk about, you know, the Baldwin quote? The end of his quote is this. Sincerity covers and pardons all and is the very substance of the American panic. So let’s talk about that, because I think that is a good lead into the final chapter before we talk about the conclusion as well. Begin again. Um, how can we begin again? Because this idea of and you you make the argument throughout, we’ve got to both confront the lies and then gather ourselves together and collectively tell a new story a new story that doesn’t is not anti American or somehow unpatriotic, but but a story that actually confronts our shortcomings. Honestly, it confronts our victories honestly, but really eradicates the lie that is at the founding of our of our problems.

[0:43:38 Eddie] Yeah, you know, it’s gonna That’s I mean, it’s it’s a hard thing to do, right? So I’m not I’m not commending, like, you know, national self flagellation it. This is the story. Right now it’s just a matter of confronting our sins in some ways, in some ways, what I’m trying to suggest is that we need to lay down this perfectionist impulse that America is always already on the road to being a more perfect union and placed justice that we’re always we’re reaching for more just society. And if we think about justice is the guiding value, then we’re gonna tell ourselves a story about what we’ve brought, what we’ve done. The bitterness at the bottom of the cup, right, the shards of glass beneath our feet. Um, and I think that’s that’s that’s key. I don’t you know, we have to. We have to figure out how to do that. And I use the example of the 16 19 project. Um, not because I agree with all of his details. I mean, I think the 16 19 project makes us all Patriots and that’s just not true, right? I mean, it just is just too quiet about folks who just held deep suspicion about the American project and whether not black folk could flourish here. Um, eso we’re not all patriots, um, in that sense. But I think you know what the 16 19 project echoed for me. Was this this this or tried to execute? Is this this insight I gathered from from Edward Say it’s wonderful book beginnings where he says the problem of beginning is the beginning of the problem where you start where you start. So what would it mean if we started with Jamestown as opposed to Plymouth Rock as opposed to 17 76? What would it mean if we started? Not with, You know, George Washington never told a lie or look at the brilliance of his wooden teeth when those aren’t would teeth right? Eso So part of part of that involves, um, a confrontation with what Baldwin would describe Bazaar ghastly failures and and And how that story can be told in such a way that opens us up to being otherwise. Um, and maybe that takes the form meal of of you know a peace and reconciliation committee. I don’t know it it, you know. But, you know, I agree with, uh, with Bryan Stevenson. That reconciliation, truth and reconciliation is sequential. You got to tell the truth before you can reconcile. And once you reconcile, then you will begin the hard work of repair eso That’s what I’m trying to open space for. So how do we begin again? First of all, we have to tell the truth about what we’ve done. Tell the truth about who we are, as Jimmy would say, Go back and do your first works over. That’s the second chapter of revelations Verse five. Right. So if I’m gonna be a better, you know the way to put it personally if I’m gonna be a better daddy, a better father to my son, I had to go back and deal with deal with how I was treated as a child, how I was wounded and how that won’t set me in a particular direction. And I didn’t do that. So I reproduced a whole bunch of stuff that I shouldn’t have reproduced. So what does it mean to do one’s first works over to begin again? is to begin to retrace his to see where you made the mistake and then to correct and to figure out how to be differently. All right, that’s that’s what I mean. Sounds too abstract. But I try to make it somewhat concrete.

[0:47:13 Peniel] The quote from Baldwin is not. Everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost. It can only be abdicated if one refuses abdication. One begins again. Um, you movingly right about going to the the Peace and Justice Memorial, Bryan Stevenson in Alabama and, you know, seeing Confederate stuff on the way on the highways. Um, I want you to talk about that, Um, in terms of connecting that to what you say. We can’t let this current moment put a stranglehold on our imaginations about what’s possible. What do you think it’s possible for us? Um, in this current moment, because this book is actually a hopeful book. It’s just, um, the hope that is, um, searing, because it’s it’s earned through confronting. Ah, much more honest accounting and reckoning of our political moment, just through the history of Baldwin and that history of that second reconstruction. Even as we face a third reconstruction and you call for a third founding in our own time.

[0:48:24 Eddie] Yeah. You know, um, it za blue soaked hope, you know? Instead, line that comes out of the voices of the passing of the firstborn. Ah, hope not. Hopeless button hopeful. You know, it’s a version of hope that echoes what Jimmy said in 1970 you know, hope is invented every day. And that’s not, you know, Panglossian optimism from voters candy that when he says hope is invented everyday those That’s the formulation about people who have to figure out how they don’t get up in the morning. How they gonna muster the energy there, toe open their eyes and roll out of the bed, Given what they have to face eso part of what I do know is that we we are we teach the Let me just say it this way. Um, we teach a generation of folk who have come up in amid catastrophe. We could call them the catastrophic generation climate change evidence in itself and, you know, super storms, you know, super floods, you know, mass school shootings, police murders, great recession, global pandemic. Uh, world economic depression. Uh, these these young folks have come of age in a moment that reveals that the country is broken. Doc, it is broken. Um, and I think that that opens up a possibility. You know, it’s almost like you know what Stuart Hall would call. You know how Stewart all put it. That conjuncture RL moment that Christ that that shows, Is that everything All the contradictions of neo liberalism or Thatcherism and Reaganism. All of those contradictions are in full view. And you combine that with the corrupt political class and you combine that with the deepening per carat E among everyday ordinary people and then ops air doing what cops do when it comes to black folk, right? It gives you this opening. And I think you have a generation of folks who know that the country is broken and they’re reaching for different kinds of languages. Some are reaching for progressive language, whatever we might mean by that. And some are reaching for old languages of authoritarianism and fascism, right? The very thing we’re seeing, we’re seeing across Europe we’re seeing across the state. So So you know, I keep telling people the Boogaloo boys or not baby boomers Dylann roof. There isn’t a baby boomer, right? These are young for those that Kyle Rittenhouse isn’t a baby boomer, right? So So you have, you know, the fallout, the consequence of the broken nous as it were, which offers an opportunity Azaz well, as peril. But again, there’s no guarantee, you know, And given our history, you know, I’m not confident we’re going to make the right choice.

[0:51:13 Peniel] My last question is how you know, after reading this book, um, I can sense, um the passion, the turmoil, the artistry that went into it. How is writing the process of writing begin again? Really changed you because obviously it’s a book Very transformative book. But for the author had to be a very, very difficult, painful book to write. How how is this process changed you and and and really in the fact that all of us who are authors you’re never quite sure how your book is gonna be received. This has been a New York Times bestseller. This is really the work. Um, that you’re gonna be known for whether you like it or not. This’ll is gonna be the work that you know when you say Eddie Cloud, you say, begin again. We’re going to teach it. You’re gonna be celebrated for this work. How is this process changed? You?

[0:52:04 Eddie] Well, you know, I barely survived writing, and I drank. I was drinking too much while I was writing it. Um, you know, cause Baldwin is, as I’ve said before, an exacting companion, You know, the messiness of the world, he argues, is a reflection of the messiness of our interior lives. So in order to say anything about that world, you have to deal with you. You have to deal with your mess. So, you know, I found myself really grappling with all of the scaffolding of my own lives, and, you know, as I as I was grappling with the vulnerable little boy that I am, suddenly the sentences started to jump on the page. I was able to take risks, you know, And I found a kind of confidence because, you know, you know, when you write about someone like Baldwin, you’re you’re afraid that he’s gonna run you over like a beer can in the street. You know, he’s just gonna run you over with sense, or you find yourself just trying to imitate him. So you know I had to keep my voice. I have to have toe. You know, um, I had to jealously guard me if that makes sense. I had the jealously guard me in that as I was writing the book. But you know what? How how have been changed until, I would say is I took a risk to be a writer, not just an academic, not just a scholar, not just a public intellectual. In my heart of hearts, I imagine myself as a writer, as an artist, as someone who wants to be a poet and writing with Jimmy gave me the freedom to take the risk, and I don’t think I’ll ever be the same again.

[0:53:44 Peniel] Yeah, that’s very well said Eloquently said. You’ve succeeded, brother. You succeed e think you were in the ranks already, But this is obviously proof positive. And so we’re really, really, uh, it’s been It’s been great to talk to you Very honored, um, that you spent some time with us. But this is a brilliant book, a beautiful book. We’ve been speaking with Eddie S. Glaude Jr. Who is the James McDonald Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University author of many, many books, including Democracy and Black. But the latest book came out earlier this year. This year of racial reckoning in 2020 it’s called Begin Again, James Baldwin’s America, and It’s Urgent Lessons for Our Own. Everyone should run, not walk, run and go out and buy this book and bring your yellow highlighter with you because there’s a lot to highlight on on really every page. There’s a lot of quotes, and not just from Baldwin, but from from from Eddie. So this is This is a This is a gift. This is a a major major book that’s gonna that’s gonna really last the test of time that’s gonna be taught and debated and talked about. But it’s a great entree for not just the history that it tells in the analysis that it brings in the passion that it distills but really a za product of interdisciplinary form. You get history, you get philosophy, you get African American studies, you get theology. Um, it is it is. It is really a masterpiece.

[0:55:20 Eddie] Thank you so much, girl. Thanks

[0:55:23 Peniel] Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode and you can check out related content on Twitter at Peniel Joseph. That’s P-e-n-i-e-l  J-o-s-e-p-h and our Web site, CSRD.LBJ.utexas.edu and the Center for Study of Race and Democracy is on Facebook as well. This podcast was recorded at the Liberal Arts Development Studio at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Thank you.