American whites are pathologized with anti-black racism, argues Princeton professor Eddie Glaude in a Sunday-published op-ed at TIME entitled “James Baldwin and the Ugly Moral Problem in America’s Heart”:
As it has always been, much more is required of us than easy condemnations or the traditional theater of American racial politics. James Baldwin was right 54 years ago today: The American white republic must answer, once and for all, the question that haunts it: why do you need “niggers” in the first place?
During the Civil Rights Movement, America refused to “solve the ugly moral problem that sits at the heart of [the] Republic,” asserts Gaude, “the country has consistently refused to do so.”
President Donald Trump’s proposed ban of transgender persons in the military is a modern iteration of Jim Crow’s codified racial discrimination and segregation, writes Gaude.
Trump’s proposed immigration restrictions related to seven Muslim-majority states are “draconian” and “suggest a corrosion of the [nation’s] soul.”
The Trump administration is a “presidency of hate,” concludes Gaude.
Gaude chairs the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, a professor of religion and African American studies, and is a regular fixture of MSNBC.
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