Eddie S. Glaude Jr.Besprekingen

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
(Print: 6/30/2020; Crown; 272 pages; 9780525575320)
Audio: 8/5/2020; Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group; duration: 7:49:14; 9780593167151
(Feature Film: No).

SUMMARY/EVALUATION:
I’m pretty sure I selected this book because it was one of Goodreads’ best of 2020 in the Non-Fiction category.
It’s philosophical, biographical (James Baldwin) and autobiographical (Eddie Glaude). His primary focus is the life and philosophy of James Baldwin. He uses various episodes from Baldwins life and writings as launchpads to expound. It’s an in-depth look at how the political leaders through the 60’s to the present have affected the lives of African Americans.

AUTHOR & NARRATOR:
Eddie S. Glaude (1968). According to Wikipedia, Glaude “is an American academic. He is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where he is also the Chair of the Center for African American Studies and the Chair of the Department of African American Studies.[1] He is the author of the 2020 book Begin Again, about James Baldwin and the history of American politics.”

GENRE:
Philosophy, Politics, Biography, Auto Biography, James Baldwin

SUBJECTS:
History 1960’s, New York, The South, Black Panthers, Black Power, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From the Introduction
"Reading Jimmy, then, requires much more than an encounter with one's pain. It is a demanding practice: tracing his references (understanding his invocation of Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Marcel Proust, the blues, etc.), feeling his language (how he sits with the King James Bible, finds resources in Shakespeare, and revels in Black English), and tracking his insights across a wide array of work. Close to seven thousand pages of work. Since that fateful day in graduate school when I finally decided to 'sit with him,' I have been an ardent reader of James Baldwin. What I have learned over these three decades is that Baldwin's way of translating what he saw and making it real for others still has something to say to us. His understanding of America and his particular insights about its contradictions and failures endure and offer ways of seeing the country afresh."

RATING: I give this 3 stars. It is well written and insightful.

Glaude is strongest when adapting and applying the words of Baldwin to our times--especially comparing the similarities of the Trump era and the Age of Reagan for example. His notes at the end thanking his students for being open with their anxieties about the times show that he's a keen listener. He's also amazing at taking not just quotes from Baldwin, but the life of the man, his trauma, and his personality, and talking about what we can learn from it. The section at the end, where he looks for Baldwin's grave, makes me think that Eddie could do a remarkable piece of journalism if he wanted. It only loses steam as even with the wealth of research he did (from films, interviews, other books, etc.), at times the book ventures a bit too heavily into guessing about Baldwin's inner thoughts. But that's a minor criticism. This is worth reading.

A profound introduction to the genius of James Baldwin.½

Professor Glaude has written a remarkable book connecting James Baldwin's thoughts & words to our current situation. He is very insightful. This is a great book.

read with "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates

A brilliant and challenging work that shows us we have so far to go. Primarily, this work was helpful in realizing how many false victories we think we have along the lines of race and how a real conversation needs to be had in so many areas. Highly, highly recommended.

Author Eddie S Glaude Jr eloquently describes his respect for James Baldwin throughout the pages of this book. In it, he reminds readers that Baldwin "always believed we could be better than what we are." He also reminds us that Baldwin had to fight for that insight. Baldwin was not a man who was afraid. He was someone who ran toward the trouble because he knew that facing our fears was the only possible path to salvation. "If you're scared to death, you walk toward it." Author Glaude does well to remind us readers that Badlwin's words still ring true today.

One of the hardest books I have ever read. I lived through the times but as a white person was thoughtlessly ignorant -- even when I worked for 40 years in an integrated school system.

Outstanding book about the life of writer James Baldwin and the history of racial predjudice in this country.

Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs, said, "In this powerful and elegant book on James Baldwin, Eddie Glaude weaves together a biography, a meditation, a literary analysis and a moral essay on America. Like Baldwin's own essays and books, it is at times both loving and angry, challenging and uplifting, and always beautiful. Both Baldwin and this book speak directly to today."

28. Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude jr.
reader: Eddie S. Glaude jr.
published: 2020
format: 7:44 audible audiobook, 272 pages in hardcover
acquired: June 11
listened: Jun 14-28
rating: 4
about the author: born in 1968 in Moss Point, Mississippi. Currently Department Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton.

While in the midst of really nice reading streak, this was my commute audio and it fit right in. Glaude reads it himself. He's measured and passionate and reads it perfectly and he creates a nice space to think about James Baldwin.

For all his anger, Baldwin‘s [The Fire Next Time] has an optimism his later, more realistic works, don‘t…especially after he saw Reagan elected in 1979 and understood what it meant. And that‘s covered here. Gaude applies Baldwin to our times and it works both as an ode to one of my favorite humans ever and a passionate pointed analysis of where we are and what Trump meant and our role within (even us horrified by trump and his white-privilege base). This, altogether, is kinda wonderful.

On a personal side note, I read through James Baldwin's works in 2019, but I stopped at the end of that year and never read his later essays and novels from the late 1970's and 1980's. Glaude focuses mainly the works I hadn't read, going into a little detail in them - the novel [Just Above My Head] (1979) and the essay collection [The Price of the Ticket] which covers everything through 1985. (I might have all the essays, not sure). So...I have new motivation to get back to Baldwin and read these later works.

2021
https://www.librarything.com/topic/330945#7547106

The lie on which America is founded: white supremacy (to justify slavery and protect the innocence of white people). White America has chosen the lie over shared humanity every time, so far. How Baldwin thought about the "after times" (the betrayal of the Civil Rights Movement/the rise of Reaganism) and some rumination on what that may offer us today (the Obama presidency, BLM, Trumpism).

This is a very relevant and timely revisit to the work and life of James Baldwin.

Among its intentions is to look at how Baldwin's views shifted across time, especially pre and post the deaths of Martin Luther King jnr, Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. Glaude felt that many read his shift as being more clear cut than he has come to feel. Baldwin's belief that a multiracial America was always possible, and if only white Americans could let go of their value lie, that white lives are more important than black lives, a democratic, multiracial America could evolve.

There had been at least two era's when the change had a possibility of happening, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights era (interesting both era's are described as 'civil') and never did.

After the deaths of his friends, and many others, he seems to believe that it is less the responsibility of black people to show whites the way, or to humour them. There was more anger in him, which showed in both his writing, and his interviews.

The title of the book comes from one of Baldwin's essays, inspired by a biblical quote, that one needed to go back to the beginning and understand and interrogate one's life's actions with truth and bravery, in order to progress forward. So for change to happen white Americans have to be honest with themselves about the big value lie, for true change to occur, and maybe black Americans have to be themselves, rather than always having to see or pre-empt the gaze of white people.

Ultimately, i don't believe he ever lost his belief in that democratic, multiracial America, but how to achieve it changed over time, perhaps as he saw it slipping further and further away. He never lost his belief in the need for love to be at the root of change though.

As the subtitle suggests, the author offers this work as a tool to step forward with. Is America at another crucial tipping point where it could become its best self, not least at a time where, for a while, it has been at it's worst?

The book has a very thorough resource at the back, of the works Glaude used, where and how. Something I love in areas of interest.

I got about half way through this 200 page book and had to admit that it was giving me very little sense of who Baldwin was. There were some interesting historical anecdotes, but they were note bound together by a compelling narrative. The brightest points were Jimmy's own writing, and I decided I'd be better off going to the source and reading his essays from the LOA collection I recently got.

I was going to give this a four star. Well written, learned a lot of new things, concise and to the point. But then I got to the chapter on Islam and there is only a very brief and watered down mention of Malcolm X criticisms of Elijah Muhammad and no mention at all of how he was likely killed by NOI thugs.

One might argue that the author just didn’t have time to go into this, Yet in the very same chapter he writes multiple paragraphs criticizing Wallace Muhammad (Elijah’s son), who pushed the organization in a direction closer to mainstream Islam (thereby, the author claims, neutralizing it’s nationalist ideology). He also spends no time discussing Malcom X move towards authentic Islam while remaining a black nationalist.

For those interested, Malcom X called out Elijah Muhammad as a racist thug who built an exploitive cult to enrich himself and rape women. Leaving this out is particularly egregious in light of the slavish accolades given to Elijah Muhammad’s self appointed successor, Farrakhan, who unlike Malcolm X & Wallace Muhammad, continues to propagate Elijah’s racist, fraudulent cult.

At the center of every galaxy there is a black hole, destroying everything that happens by. For Eddie Glaude, at the center of the mythical America is “the lie” and it taints everyone and everything about the place. In Begin Again, he explores the lie through the thoughts of author James Baldwin, as keen an observer and interpreter of what amounts to the lie as anyone ever has been.

The book is a topline history of 20th century racism, as lived through the pen of James Baldwin. Baldwin’s attitudes and positions evolved as he endured the stubbornness of white intransigence and its (at best) willful blindness to racism. Not much better were the largely ineffective solutions of black motivators, from Martin Luther King to Malcolm X to Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver (all of whom Baldwin was close to and supported). The problem refused to evolve, let alone resolve. Only the perceptions mutated. And that remains criminally insufficient, 250 years after the founding.

Glaude shows himself as an intense student of Baldwin. Nuances mere readers would never notice are magnified in Glaude’s telling and analysis. The bitterness, confusion, frustration and depression shine beyond the mere words on the page or the in the many interviews Baldwin gave (He tried to commit suicide – twice). This interpretation frames the discussion. It makes the book much more than a more-of-the-same diatribe on discrimination.

For Baldwin, the lie was the original white settlers being able to distinguish what was a man. They knew a man when they saw one. If a man wasn’t a man, there was no harm in dealing with him as subhuman, he said. That’s the story of America. Today, as Glaude explains it, blacks see themselves “in but not of, this country.” They continue to battle, because they have to.

Baldwin, of course, left. He couldn’t stand it. It clouded his intellect. He wrote in Paris and in Istanbul. When he came back, nothing had really changed, except the players. Friends like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had been murdered, and attitudes had hardly budged. He said “The horror is that America changes all the time, without ever changing at all.”

Today, the examination has become microscopic, sweeping everyone and everything in its path. For Glaude: “He (Baldwin) exposes your private lies and forces you, because of his own relentless commitment to the examined life, to confront your deepest wounds as a precondition to saying anything about the world.” That’s the level of intensity throughout the book. It is not about “saving” Trump voters, Glaude says. It’s much deeper than that and applies to everyone.

Glaude gets caught in the silliness of Confederate statuary, examining the value of various celebrities of the era and whether or not statues should be allowed outside museum displays. I for one cannot understand why there is even an argument. Normally, when someone wins a war, first thing they do is tear down the flag and then prevent hero worship of the old regime. The flag goes away forever. From all appearances in the USA, the South won the war. The proud evidence is everywhere.

There should simply be no sign of the vanquished state at all, and the federal government needs to address this absurdity, before more books get published examining the pros and cons. But I, like Glaude, digress.

America is actually more liberal than its lawmakers, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out numerous times over the decades of my life. Suddenly, and without a catalyst, the death penalty was on its way out, nationwide. Gays became tolerable, and the general will soon evolved for them to marry openly. Marijuana became acceptable almost overnight, and there is widespread feeling it should be totally decriminalized. What’s next, we should all hope, is for white supremacy to become intolerable. In the book, Glaude calls for nationwide discussion of reparations. Perhaps that level of consciousness-raising might start the ball rolling. We should give it a shot, because this can’t just keep going on forever.

This is about the 30th book on racism I have reviewed. I put their unique points in a chapter on racism in my book The Straight Dope. So this is familiar, if not fertile terrain. But Begin Again is more intense and inward-looking. As I read Glaude’s words and watched his emotions unfold, a single thought kept intruding. It is a shame that black Americans have to devote so much of their consciousness and their very lives to defining, defending and destroying the lie. What a waste. It’s a little sickening to think how much farther ahead the whole country could be if they were free to apply their intellects and talents elsewhere instead. In the meantime, Glaude, like Baldwin before him, remains optimistic for humanity to overcome stupidity.

David Wineberg

Excellent. A bit abstract at times, but Professor Glaude lays out the kind of radical change that will be required for the US to progress as a democracy.

This is a current events book and analysis on the state of "race" primarily from the 2008 financial crisis up until the aftermath of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson. His critical analysis is spot on, however, his solutions are somewhat lacking. This was an easy read and I believe a great introduction to how policies and belief systems hinder an equal society.

This is an excellent, thoughtful, well-researched look at some of the most important questions about the United States. I learned a lot from this book, and while Glaude didn't have to win me over -- I came to the book already on the same page about most of the major points -- his arguments are cogent and well-supported enough that I would give this book to a less-sympathetic family member and expect it might move them politically.

In the tradition of Cornel West's Race Matters, Eddie Glaude, Jr's Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul offers an incisive critique of contemporary American society and the ways it perpetuates injustice toward the African American community. Glaude is the William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African American Studies and chair of the Department of African American Studies.


Weaving his own story and experience throughout his analysis, Glaude begins by recounting his time in Ferguson during the non-indictment of Darren Wilson. He describes, also, how the sub-prime lending of the nineties, had a particularly devastating effect on African American people. Gaulde concludes that the violence against the Black community, the lack of economic aide for African Americans, and discriminatory voter identification legislation are evidence of the on-going white supremacy of our country. By this he doesn't mean abject racists in white sheets burning crosses but a value gap where "no matter what our stated principles or how much progress we think we've made, white people are valued more than others in this country, and that fact continues to shape the life chances of million of Americans. The value gap is in our national DNA" (31).

Glaude argues that this value gap is maintained by racial habits of all of us. For example, there is still discrimination against African Americans in the workforce when assumptions are made about an applicants qualifications are made on the basis of race. The exact same resumé with the name LeKeisha on it, or the name Lisa are viewed differently(58). [I worked with a community development organization in the Overtown neighborhood of Miami, and had African American friends who struggled to find jobs based on being from that zip code]. But even if there was no active discrimination against African Americans they still would not be afforded the same opportunity. Careers and job opportunities often come through our networks and Black Americans do not move in the same social circles as White Americans. Glaude observes, " Seventy-five percent of white Americans report that their social networks are entirely white" (58). This is one example but American racial habits are pervasive:

We are all shaped by racial habits in some way or another. They are as natural to America as apple pie and fireworks on the Forth of July, and come to us as easily as the words we've learned since we were on our mother's knee. In this sense, racial habits are our inheritance: they contain history of white supremacy that has shaped and continues to shape this country. There are millions of accumulated decisions that make inequality an inextricable part of what it means to be American. If we are to undo them (at least some of them), something dramatic must happen. (64).

Another evidence of white supremacy is the presence of white fear. Glaude shares how he, as a well dressed, educated Princeton professor being seen as a threat by a Princeton collegue's wife in the university parking lot. He shares another tale of discrimination from his son. But his evidence for white fear isn't just anecdotal. He cites news stories, articles, and studies about how white Americans (and even African Americans) view black people as a threat. This is evidenced by the sixty percent of working-class white Americans that "believe discrimination against whites is a worse problem than discrimination against blacks"(87)! Also by the way politicians on both sides of the aisle, including President Obama, invoke the idea of black criminality in their rhetoric(89-90).

Glaude examines the way in which politicians and leaders invoke the civil rights story and the narrative of racial progress as a way to excuse themselves from making systemic changes that promote justice and true democracy. Martin Luther King's legacy is co-opted as an example of equality and shared opportunity and an example of the American dream. However:

It is always a particular version of Dr. King--the King of the March on Washington who dreamed, not the radical King who marched with garbage workers or understood the connection between the evils of poverty, racism and militarism or called attention to the fact of "two Americas." This whitewashed King often gets in the way of frank and fearless discussions of black suffering, because his words , in the hands of far too many, are used to hide racial habits and sustain the value gap. (96)

On this score, Glaude criticizes both republicans and democrats saving some of his ire for Barak Obama's betrayal of Black liberalism (see chapter seven).

While the facts of race relations in this country are pretty grim, Glaude closes his book on a more hopeful note. He calls for 'a revolution of value' which would change how we view government, change how we view black people and change how we view what matters, ultimately, as Americans (184). Government ought to be concerned with the public good and the care for the vulnerable (185-97), African Americans need to be seen and valued ever bit as much as White Americans are (198-202), and we need to subvert the dominant narrative of American exceptionalism:

We have to tell better stories about what truly matters to us. The kind of stories we tell reflect the kind of people--the kind of nation--we aspire to be. Bad stories, like bad habits, typically correlate with bad people. So better stories are needed to change the country. Americans have to challenge directly the idea that we are "the shining city on the hill" or "the Redemeer Nation." We have to release democracy from the burden of American exceptionalism. To do this, we have to tell stories of those who put forward a more expansive conception of American democracy. (203).

One sign of hope that Glaude names comes from his observation of the Black Lives Matter movement. The charismatic civil rights leader is a relic of a bygone era. The new movement "insists on the capacities and responsibilities of everyday ordinary black people and urges them to reach for a higher self even in opportunity deserts. Those deserts are fertile ground to be politically creative" (227).



Glaude's book reads like a manifesto for the Black community: naming the issues that national leaders fail to name, or even address and then providing an alternative vision: honest racial talk, a valuing of Black America and renewal of habits. However, there is a lot to consider here for White Americans as well. Privilege and the value gap enacted and maintained by racial habits, betrays democracy. Glaude's book invites me to self-examination. America is not a post-racial society (whatever that term means). Racial oppression, opportunity deserts and discrimination persists despite what we may believe about ourselves. This is the sort of book that helps us imagine a different reality, but one that requires some big changes. Democracy in Black is well worth reading as it helps us to understand the Black experience and what that says about our national identity. I give this four stars.

Note: I received this book from Crown Publishers through the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review.

Title: Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul
Author: Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
Publisher: Broadway Books
Reviewed By: Arlena Dean
Rating: Four
Review:

"Democracy in Black: How Race Stills Enslaves the American Soul" by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.

My Thoughts...

What a read that Dr. Glaude gives the reader some interesting perceptions of 'why the 2008 recession disproportionately' did impact black people and so much more. Yes, this is a book about race. Now, I will say I had to sit back and think about that and as I did I believe I was able to understand some of this author's thought pattern. As he continues on in the read Dr. Glaude talks about the value gap which to me is very true but yes there are many people who feel that are more valued than black people. Why is that one may say? Well, if one really thinks about it and just how some things have gone on in today's world...well I will say the writing is definitely there on the wall for anyone to see. I liked how this author Dr. Glaude didn't pull any punches on stated it like it is..with letting all know that 'anyone is fair game for criticism, not just the conservatives'...which as one knows how our President Obama received some of the worst of it all and even though when he left office he still gets it. Now, why is that?

Now, I will say some of Dr. Glaude's ideas I was not in agreement with but again I could also understand why he might want to take that route...'electoral black-out?' I did feel by reading "Democracy in Black"I was able to get some other knowledge that could help me in having a better conversations in the future about our race. I also did find this novel 'interesting, eye opener on several discussions relating to African-Americans racial discrimination' that is so prevalent in the United States of American. The question that I am left with is how will these problems be fixed? We talk and talk but when will one go deep into all the basics of the problems that are presented in the book and be able to move from theory to action? This will have to be well done before anything is truly solved.

So, if you would like to read about the political and economic insights of the lives of African-Americans you may certainly find this novel of great interest. No, it may not be a comfortable read however who ever you are I believe its a good read where it will leave you with thoughts long after the read as you are left to take a good look at the history of this country and see some of the wrongs that have been ignored far too long.

An excellent treatise on how racism has historically impacted and continues to impact life in the United States. I have done a lot of reading around this subject and this book still had new information and a fresh perspective for me. My only fear is that half the country doesn't really care to learn about this history and how it affects our country today.

I learned a lot of how today's economic policies effect our country's black population. Beyond that, as I read i became more and more depressed. And the feeling of guilt was very heavy. Guilt for being white. It has been a while since reading yet I still have these feelings. Are we really that horrible?½

"Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul", Eddie S. Glaude Jr.'s well argued critique of systemic racism in contemporary American society, is an important book in our age of Black Lives Matter and San Francisco 49ers' quarterback Colin Kaepernick's powerful protest of Francis Scott Key's "Star-Spangled Banner." Glaude uses his own personal history - a black man in the United States, as a lens with which to view historical injustices, contemporary violence, racism against blacks and other people of color, and provide a viewpoint to create change. Glaude finds that the United States was founded with and continues to prop up a “value gap.” This structural embrace of white, wealthy, males over everyone else, that the US inherited from a 17th century class based British system, still distorts our social and political process in the 21st century. Glaude asks, "Where do we go from here?" Potential solutions are suggested, but the questions remain. For Glaude - the final un-enslavement of the American soul rests upon all of our shoulders. A challenging and important read.

In Democracy in Black, Glaude discusses in detail how and why the 2008 recession disproportionately impacted black people. He also writes about the value gap – the fact that white people are valued more than black people. His analysis is hard to dispute. Glaude doesn’t pull any punches. Anyone is fair game for criticism, not just conservatives. In fact, President Obama receives some of his harshest.

I’m always looking for more articulate ways to explain systematic and institutional racism to people and this book gave me some great ideas of how to do so. I thought this line was particularly good:

“Somehow people absurdly believe – and they have done so for most of our history – that black social misery is the result of hundreds of thousands of unrelated bad individual decisions by black people all across this country.”

The major thing I didn’t agree with was him calling for black people to participate in an “electoral black-out” in 2016. I’m not sure black people voting none of the above would accomplish what he wants it to and for the 2016 election, it’s a really bad idea for obvious reasons.

Even though I read a lot about race, I felt like this book expanded my knowledge even more and will help me have better conversations with people about race in the future.