There is an interview with Eddie S. Glaude Jr. that I keep thinking about.

The interview, conducted by Geoff Bennett, aired on 15 June on PBS News Hour. Glaude is the author of the book America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries.

The conversation began with Bennett asking, “This book, you open it with a striking line. You write: ‘I do not love America and never have, especially now.’ Why did you choose to begin there? What are you asking readers to reconsider about their relationship to this country?”

Glaude responded by making three points.

First, there is his rejection of the idolatry of the “nation state,” which he views as “abstract” and “morally dubious.” The second point is to “differentiate myself from James Baldwin. I’m starting from a different place. Baldwin begins with his love of country and says, from there, I can criticize the country perpetually. I want to begin with wound, which takes us to the third — the interior experience.”  The “interior experience ” is the reality of racism.

Prejudice, discrimination, and racism are issues we would prefer to avoid discussing in this country. We believe that we are all equal before the law. We have our freedom and opportunities. If you think you are discriminated against, well, get over it. Such an attitude ignores the reality that racism, discrimination, and prejudice are diseases of the soul.

I write as a white man. But what I have witnessed and experienced causes me to question the validity of what I refer to as the “White Man’s Perspective.” I am unashamed of my European, Dutch, and English heritage. One branch of my family settled along New York’s Hudson River in 1630. Another branch arrived before 1725. The last branch arrived from the Netherlands in 1919. Though we are of fairly humble economic status—farmers, shopkeepers, processing and manufacturing, military service, medical professions, among other occupations—we have benefited from our lives in this country.

My own doubts about our national values began in the 1960s with the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and grew to include the women’s movement, the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment, Watergate, and the LGBT movement.  I have not agreed with all the demands and methodology of the activists, but I have supported their goals. Nor did I accept the government’s lies and manipulation.

While listening to Glaude, I thought about my daughter-in-law, a professional and accomplished Black woman, and her experiences of racism. My Japanese relatives have also been subject to overt racism. My experiences with Latino migrant and warehouse workers, as well as my deeply rooted friendships with Black, Latino, Chinese, Korean, Indian, and Jewish people of both genders have enriched my life.

While a student at a Christian seminary, I was mockingly called “Rabbi” by some of the students for my approach to the biblical texts. When teaching, I have been disparaged, and that is putting it mildly, for being either too Catholic, too Protestant, or too Jewish—for the latter, I have received the harshest criticism and verbal abuse.  I have been harangued, denounced, and my life threatened for my activities and theological and political positions. This is a very short list of what I have witnessed and experienced.  My experiences pale in comparison to those of Glaude, my daughter-in-law, and others. Their interior wounds are deep.

This week, July 1 through 3, marks the 163rd anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Vicksburg, Mississippi, surrendered to the Union Army as Robert E. Lee’s army retreated from Pennsylvania to Virginia on the nation’s Independence Day. Four months after the Battle of Gettysburg. Abraham Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery. His words are among the most noble spoken by a president of this country. Lincoln ended his remarks with the words:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

On this Fourth of July, I find myself not celebrating our national Independence, but questioning our national values. How am I to interpret the Declaration of Independence upon which our laws and national institutions rest? How am I to understand Lincoln’s words, “government of the people, by the people, for the people?”  

I ask these questions because of the self-aggrandizing vision of those with wealth and power, and many who seek to govern. Their grasp for power undermines and denies both the intent of the Founders and the people’s grievances. We are denied our right to express our will. Our rights to protect both our property and aspirations are obstructed and obscured.

The failure to represent the people is not limited to the Federal government. It exists in the state, county, and local governments. For example, in Michigan, a Los Alamos data center is being constructed in conjunction with the University of Michigan. State and local zoning laws were quietly changed to accommodate the construction. This, despite significant concerns and opposition raised regarding environmental and electrical grid impacts. The Los Alamos National Laboratory confirms that the University of Michigan Data Center will be used for nuclear weapons research. The site is to be next to a residential neighborhood.

The Department of Justice and the judiciary also fail citizens. Two examples will suffice.

In April, the NAACP filed a lawsuit against xAI and its subsidiary, MZX Tech, which set up dozens of methane-gas turbines to power its data center in Southaven, Mississippi, without air permits. The turbines emit toxic pollutants in violation of the Clean Air Act. As reported in The Guardian, “The Department of Justice will not sit idly by while private organizations use environmental laws to undermine our national security,” said Adam Gustafson, a deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. The DOJ is now attempting to have the NAACP case dismissed.

This past week, Maricela Rueda was sentenced to 70 years for her role in protesting at an ICE facility nearly one year ago. Autumn Hill, Zachary Evetts, Meagan Morris, Savanna Batten, and Elizabeth Soto were all sentenced to 50 years. Daniel Sanchez Estrada was sentenced to 30 years. Benjamin Song was sentenced to 100 years for the attempted murder of a police officer. I do not agree with their methods of protest. Compared to the court imposed penalties on the January 6 defendants, these sentences are nothing short of vindictive prosecution.

Of another case involving prosecutorial misconduct, New York Times columnist David French, a conservative, writes, “For every high-profile case that goes to the Supreme Court, there are dozens of other, smaller cases in federal courts across the country in which the Trump administration lies, bends the rules, slanders innocent citizens and otherwise abuses the legal system to persecute its political opponents.”

The political scientists Professor Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, a professor of government, remind us in their book How Democracies Die, that an aspiring despot succeeds when we are induced to consent and support their agenda without deliberation or debate. A minority rule of the majority by intimidation and threats is no different than the injustice of a majority rule of a minority by the same means. Our exclusion of others, based on race, creed, gender, and religion, is a denial of their humanity and human rights.

America, the concept of united states, of a unified people “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This is a beautiful ideal. America is a tenuous experiment founded on noble ideals that give us a common purpose of rights. Can we, for all our flaws as a people, continue to meet the challenge of those ideals?

Image:

Photograph by Ryan Wallace on Unsplash