"America, U.S.A.": Eddie Glaude on the 250th Anniv., Race & "Madness at the Heart of the Country"

The nation's history is marked by a fundamental contradiction between its ideals of freedom and its reality as a white republic, a 'divided soul' that generates 'madness' and is consistently evident during its milestone anniversaries (e.g., 1876, 1926, 1976, 2026).

Glaude states the comma in 'America, USA' represents the split between America as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic, depositing 'a kind of madness at the heart of the country that we experience in these cycles repeatedly over and over again.'

Current efforts to suppress historical narratives, such as the removal of slavery exhibits from national sites and attacks on critical race theory, constitute an 'epistemic assault' akin to the post-Civil War 'Lost Cause.' This aims to create a version of history where white Americans can be 'white without judgment.'

Referring to the removal of the President's House slavery exhibit, Glaude states, 'We're in a second lost cause. It's an epistemic assault... It's an assault on what we know and how we know, what we see and how we see because at the end of the day, Amy, Donald Trump and his supporters, they want to be white without judgment.'

Black communities have historically established their own dates of freedom commemoration (e.g., January 1st, 1808 for abolition of transatlantic slave trade; August 1st, 1834 for West Indian Emancipation Day; July 5th for New York Abolition Day; Juneteenth) to offer counter-narratives to the nation's often hypocritical self-image of freedom.

Glaude details how these dates served as 'black commemorations of freedom' with 'preaching sermons, picnics, prayers to give a counter story to freedom. Over and against the nation that supposedly imagines itself as the harbinger of freedom for the world.'

The story of Moses Gordon, a man freed and then re-enslaved due to laws like the Fugitive Slave Clause, illustrates 'freedom snatching.' This reflects the belief among white Americans that they are the 'owners, the possessors of freedom to give and to take away.'

Glaude recounts Moses Gordon's story: freed, then captured and sold back into slavery, eventually committing suicide rather than returning. He explains, 'because in this country, because of that divided soul... white Americans finesse the division... by believing that they are the owners, the possessors of freedom to give and to take away.'

Current immigration policies and rhetoric (e.g., Stephen Miller's statements, attacks on birthright citizenship and TPS) are driven by a white nationalist agenda, directly mirroring the nativism and restrictive immigration quotas of the 1920s, which aimed to maintain a 'white republic.'

Glaude asserts, 'Stephen Miller is a racist. He's a white nationalist. White nationalists have seized the federal government. Great replacement theory... motivates this immigration policy.' He connects this to the 1920s, when the KKK's seminal legislation was the 1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, which 'laid clear the quotas, keeping the country white.'