Eddie Glaude: NYT’s 1619 Project Demonstrates the History of Racism, How We Got to Donald Trump

EXCERPT:

GLAUDE JR.: "Well, it seems to me that, you know, the distinction that Jon Meacham made earlier about America — the American story is reaching out as opposed to a closed fist, that that’s part of the story we tell ourselves, to fortify a particularly idealized version of who we are. But then when we measure that against our practices, we know that reaching out has always been aspirational in some ways, that the reality of our lives have been defined in some ways by our limitations. And what the 1619 project does, when you shift the story of America from the Plymouth — from Plymouth rock to Jamestown, the contradictions of the country come into full view. So what we see is this idea of slavery over determining the very ways in which we understand the notions of liberty and freedom and equality, and how we have been grappling with that since the founding, and how the lies that we have told ourselves, right, whether it’s the Dunning School, Reconstruction or John Burgess and how slavery was just a mistake as opposed to a systemic effort that generated and defined the country, when we tell the story really, we can understand why Atlanta traffic is the way it is. We can understand why the racial gap is the way it is. We can understand why sugar in Louisiana functions the way it functions. Right? So one of the special things about the issue, it takes immediate, today issues, concerns, and shows us the history, demonstrates the history, how we have gotten to this point. And Trump has unsettled the sentiment at the bottom of our politics. We can’t put it back."