Glaude, with Baldwin as his guide, claimed, “Liberation from the languages and categories that box us in requires that we tap the source of it all, free ourselves of the lie, and start the whole damn thing over.” In an interview with BBC, Director of African American Studies at the College of Charleston Kameelah Martin stated, “There is no part of American history or American economic history that isn’t touched by slave labor.” Remember slavery, Lynchings, Jim Crow, segregated schools and restaurants? Maybe those things aren’t oppression? Forgive us Lord. Shocking! Only 48% of white Christians believe that blacks have been ‘historically’ oppressed in the US. Without the subjugation of the Black race, the US would not have become what it is today. The race problem was not simply a flaw it was a calculated strategy that made our nation’s success possible. The truth is, we are not and never have been a great nation. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.” Time and time again, this country has demonstrated a stubborn commitment to a storyline of a great nation with a race problem that good people fought against and successfully overcame. Glaude references Baldwin from his last novel, Just Above My Head: “Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated.

Rethinking America’s Pastīefore we start over, we must own the past. It allowed him to see these challenging times both for what they were and for what could come of them if we were willing to start over. Glaude shared that Baldwin’s “delicate balance between rage and love” provided him with perspective.

This lie provides cover for a “value gap” that threatens our future and our collective soul. This refusal, Glaude contended, allows for the advancement of a lie regarding what this nation is and what it stands for to continue. His dismay stems from America’s refusal to come to grips with a racist past that has perhaps defined what the country is today more than any other identifiable feature. I became curious after listening to interviews in which Professor Glaude shared his disillusionment with the United States. The author compelled me, a white man with ancestral heritage I didn’t earn, to learn more about a lie that our nation has protected for centuries. Recently, I asked some close friends to join me in a book study of the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Professor Eddie Glaude Jr.

Glaude begin again