Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul (Crown) by Dr. Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is an insightful text that examines how Black lives continue to be rendered insignificant in an era when many thought that the election of the nation’s first Black president would signify a dramatic shift in race relations.
A well-known professor at Princeton University who is chairman of the Department of African American Studies, Glaude opens the book detailing an encounter in Ferguson, Mo., between himself, a colleague and three women from Millennial Activists United—a grassroots organization that came into existence after 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
“Something happened in Ferguson that transformed these young women and transfixed the nation,” writes Glaude. “As one of them said, ‘You just felt something different in the air.’ As if the fog was lifting a bit. I couldn’t help but think of the contrast. They came of age politically with President Barack Obama in office and now they bathed in the intense rage of Ferguson. In so many ways, these young people were unprecedented.”
Throughout much of the 288-page book, Glaude offers a sharp critique of Black and White political leadership that “sold black America the snake oil of hope and change” in the face of daunting circumstances.
Inequality and racial habits, he argues, are “part of the American Idea. They are not just a symptom of bad, racist people who fail to live up to pristine ideals. We are, in the end, what we do. And this is the society we have all made. So much so that we can have a black man in the White House and nearly one million black men and women in the Big House.”
Diverse recently caught up with Glaude—who we selected in 2008 as one of our Emerging Scholars—to talk about his new book, which is quickly becoming one of the most discussed texts both in and out of academic circles. Here is an excerpt of that conversation.
Q: What was the genesis of the book? I understand the timing, given that it examines the conditions before, during and after the Obama presidency, but how did it come about?
