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‘Donald Trump and his supporters, they want to be white without judgment,’ African American scholar says
A Princeton University professor said he is approaching America’s 250th anniversary with “great trepidation” due to President Donald Trump’s “storybook” view of the nation’s history.
Speaking Tuesday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, African American studies Professor Eddie Glaude questioned what Americans are “actually celebrating” on this year’s Independence Day.
“I’m thinking about Donald Trump … blending his own kind of cult of personality with the celebration of the nation, and wondering what exactly are we celebrating? Is it a storybook version of America?” Glaude said, according to Fox News.
Some scholars and news outlets have accused the Trump administration of presenting a too rosy picture of America’s history by glossing over slavery and other past injustices.
Speaking to this, Glaude told MSNBC, “This idea that, you know, we are a beacon of freedom and that our perfection was secured in our salvation, or are we looking at the way in which our ideals don’t match up to our practices, our current practices?”
“And so I’m really going into July 4, grappling with whether or not the ugly ghosts of our country have us by the nape of the neck,” he said, continuing:
Glaude argued that people who imagine the country as a “White Republic” were actively trying to make it so, and that diversity was no longer seen as a strength.
“I believe, in this 250th, we have to make a choice,” he said. “America, in many ways, has to leave behind [this] guaranteed innocence … and confront who we actually are so that we can release ourselves into being otherwise. Otherwise, we’re not going to make it to the other side of this madness, it seems to me.”
“So I’m barreling towards July 4 with great trepidation, but hoping that the great diversity of this country will make itself known, and we can beat back some of these ugly forces,” he added. “Because remember, JD Vance doesn’t believe that the creed defines who we are. He believes in something more sinister. That there’s something more fundamental about who we are as Americans that we need to reject, I think, outright,” Glaude said.
He also criticized Trump in an interview Monday with the progressive news group Democracy Now.
“Donald Trump and his supporters, they want to be white without judgment,” Glaude said. “History is a battleground, because history, of course, holds them to account.”
The interview also highlighted the professor’s new book, “America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries,” which was released in connection with the country’s 250th anniversary.
The book begins with “I do not love America, and never have, especially now,” according to the report.
A historian and scholar in African American studies, Glaude told a Georgetown University audience in 2022 that white supremacy has distorted democracy in America, and the country must be refounded rather than just reformed.
MORE: Princeton professor argues America is irredeemably racist, must be refounded
