Eddie Glaude on the tension at the center of America's milestone birthdays

Eddie Glaude explores the fundamental contradiction at America’s core, grounded in its struggle between a self-image as both a beacon of liberty and a white republic. This internal tension is mirrored in the concept of "double consciousness," first articulated by W.E.B. Du Bois in 1903.

Nation Holds Conflicting Self-Images Creating Inner Turmoil

Double Consciousness: Black Americans' Self-Perception Through Oppressors' Eyes, Reflecting America's Divided Soul

Du Bois’s notion of double consciousness describes how Black Americans must see themselves through the eyes of those who despise them. Glaude argues that this dynamic stems directly from the United States’ own divided soul: a nation struggling to reconcile its simultaneous identities as a symbol of freedom and as a society rooted in white supremacy.

Country's Self-Image: Liberty Beacon & White Supremacy Paradox

America presents itself to the world as both a champion of liberty and as a white republic. Glaude asserts that holding these conflicting ideals produces an ineradicable contradiction, “a kind of madness at the heart of the nation,” making it impossible for Americans to maintain a consistent self-image without internal turmoil.

Contradiction Emerges In Milestone Celebrations as Americans Construct Identity Narratives

Glaude explains that this contradiction becomes especially apparent during milestone anniversaries, when Americans collectively reflect on the nation’s history and craft narratives to define themselves. At these moments, the tension between the story of freedom and the legacy of racial hierarchy bubbles to the surface.

Founders Weaponized Freedom While Enslaving, Revealing Amer ...

Eddie Glaude and Scott Tong discuss how, during significant national anniversaries, the United States has often witnessed an intensification of anti-Black violence, consolidation of Jim Crow laws, and ascendance of white supremacist movements.

1876 Centennial Marked Diminished White Political Will, Leading To Reconstruction's Violent End and Jim Crow's Rise

Reconstruction's Unpopularity by Mid-1870s due to Perceived Federal Overreach

By 1876, the nation had grown weary of Reconstruction. Eddie Glaude notes that critics widely claimed it constituted federal overreach, spurring an all-out assault on the aims and ends of radical Reconstruction. By the mid-1870s, such resistance had rendered Reconstruction increasingly unpopular among white Americans.

Post-Civil War Reconciliation Led To Dismantling Black Gains, Douglass Warned

Frederick Douglass, in 1875, reflected on the period by saying that Black people gained freedom because of divisions among white men, and questioned what would happen now that those divisions had healed. Glaude explains that with the reconciliation of white Americans, there followed an era in which the Black advancements achieved during Reconstruction were systematically dismantled. Douglass referred to the architects of these setbacks as “the apostles of forgetfulness,” highlighting the nation’s eagerness to erase the memory of Black progress and civil rights.

"Reconstruction's Destruction: Epistemic Violence and 'Lost Cause' Mythology"

This process coincided with the rise of “Lost Cause” mythology and the deliberate misremembering of the Civil War, further fueling the epistemic violence that paved the way for Jim Crow. As the country celebrated its centennial in 1876, these forces coalesced to erase gains made by Black Americans, end Reconstruction violently, and consolidate white supremacy.

1926 Sesquicentennial: Amid Resurgence of White Supremacy and Racialized Immigration Policies

Klan's 1915 Rebirth Led To Political Clout By 1920s, With Members in Congress and Senate Shaping Laws

By the 1920s, white supremacist ideologies surged anew as the Ku Klux Klan experienced a powerful rebirth in 1915. The Klan amassed significant political influence, with its members serving in Congress and the Senate by the 1920s and actively shaping national policy.

Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 Set Quotas to Restrict Non-northern European Immigration, Drafted by Klan Members

This power is exemplified by the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924, which established strict quotas to restrict immigration from Southern, Eastern, and Central Europe. Glaude points out that the law was essential ...

Black Americans' Freedom Milestones Commemorative Calendar

Eddie Glaude explains that alongside national holidays such as July 4th, Black Americans have developed their own commemorative calendar focused on freedom milestones. July 5th, known as New York Abolition Day, marked the end of slavery in New York State in 1827 and was celebrated among Black Americans in a manner similar to how Juneteenth is observed today. In addition to July 5th, Black communities observed other important dates: August 1st, commemorating West Indian emancipation in 1834, and Juneteenth, which marks the end of slavery in Texas. This evolving calendar allowed Black Americans to place primary emphasis on their own journey toward emancipation and liberty, distinct from the nation’s founding narrative.

The choice to commemorate July 5th, rather than July 4th, was deliberate. It offered a critique of the July 4th mythology that celebrated American freedom while many Black people remained enslaved. These alternative holidays created a collective memory rooted in Black liberation and resistance rather than national exceptionalism.

Douglass's 1852 Speech: Independence Day's Meaning to Enslaved People and National Hypocrisy

Scott Tong introduces Frederick Douglass’s iconic July 5th, 1852 speech, in which Douglass questions what Independence Day truly means to enslaved people. Douglass’s rhetorical line—"What to the American slave is your 4th of July? I answer.”—exemplifies early Black resistance to sanitized national narratives. In his speech, performed here by Phil Darius Wallace, Douglass condemns the celebration as a sham, emphasizing that for the e ...

Leaders Construct a Heroic National Mythology Minimizing the History of Racial Violence and Oppression

Throughout American history, political and cultural leaders have sought to create a national mythology that emphasizes heroism and unity while minimizing or distorting the realities of racial violence and oppression. Frederick Douglass, writing in the 1870s, recognized and condemned this trend, referring to such leaders as "apostles of forgetfulness" for their efforts to erase or reinterpret the past in ways that made it more comfortable for mainstream society. Douglass saw this deliberate historical amnesia as an affront to the pursuit of truth and justice.

The fabrication of the "Lost Cause" mythology offers a stark example of this epistemic violence. After the Civil War, white Americans across the South and beyond revised the history and collective memory of the conflict and its aftermath. They recast the violent overthrow of Reconstruction not as the destruction of Black political power, but as a period of regional restoration and reconciliation. This revisionist narrative glorified Confederate leaders, downplayed the horrors of slavery, and obscured white supremacist violence that followed the war. By framing Reconstruction's violent end as a "necessary" restoration rather than acknowledging it as a deliberate campaign to strip Black Americans of newly won rights, proponents of the Lost Cause justified ongoing racial oppression and white dominance.

Erasing History Suppresses Discomfort and Promotes False National Perfection Origins

This tradition of erasing or smoothing over the nation’s historical violence serves not only to suppress collective discomfort but to promote a narrative of American moral and political perfection. President Calvin Coolidge's 1926 view of the American Revolution, which he described as fundamentally conservative and laying the foundation for national salvation, exemplifies t ...

Scott Tong and Eddie Glaude discuss the current crisis surrounding America’s 250th anniversary by highlighting efforts to reshape national memory and connect these with historical patterns of erasure and myth-making.

Second Iteration of "Lost Cause" Strategy

Scott Tong references the White House’s move to "remove museum exhibits on slavery, affirmative action" as part of an active campaign to reshape the narrative of American history within the symbolic heart of the nation’s capital. Eddie Glaude draws a direct comparison to the historical “Lost Cause” strategy—an epistemic violence that seeks to rewrite history, erase national sins, and whitewash the country’s past. He characterizes this as not merely the violent physical act of “redemption” or the overthrow of Reconstruction and disenfranchisement of Black Americans, but as a sustained assault on national memory and what the country knows about itself through the manipulation of history books and public storytelling.

Glaude notes that contemporary erasure mirrors this earlier era. Where the first Lost Cause presented the American Revolution as conservative and the solution to America’s salvation lying in a return to its founding, today’s efforts, he argues, pivot from an idealized conservatism to a new brand of ethnonationalism.

Trump-Vance Vision Claims American Perfection Was Achieved As a White Republic at Founding, Rejecting Progress Toward a More Perfect Union

Glaude explains that under MAGA ideology, promoted by figures like Trump and Vance, America is presented as having achieved perfection at its founding—as a white republic. Any talk of moving “towards a more perfect union” is considered an affront because, as they frame it, perfection was already secured in the founding moment. For Trump, this worldview is deeply tied to himself; the celebration of the country’s anniversary becomes a celebration of Trumpism, portrayed as ushering in a supposed golden age. Vance, in particular, emphasizes that America’s foundational identity and salvation come not from its democratic creed but from “blood and soil,” doubling down on America as an explicitly white nation.

In this vision, these leaders abandon the nation’s formal commitment to ever-continuing progress and instead claim that the arc of the nation need not bend towards justice. They reject the idea of ongoing improvement in favor of an imagined return to the perfection of a white-dominated ...