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“I do not love America, and never have, especially now.” Those are the opening words of America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, a new book from Princeton historian Eddie Glaude. Released ahead of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, the book is a critical look back at how the United States has celebrated previous milestone birthdays, including what narratives were left out of the official commemorations. This comes as President Donald Trump has made himself the center of many events and celebrations for the 250th anniversary, while promoting a “storybook version” of U.S. history that elides the injustice that was baked into the very founding of the country, Glaude tells Democracy Now! in a wide-ranging conversation about race, inequality and the legacy of slavery.

“Donald Trump and his supporters, they want to be white without judgment,” says Glaude. “History is a battleground, because history, of course, holds them to account.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

This week, as the United States is getting ready to celebrate its 250th anniversary, we begin our series on reckoning with the dark legacies of this country’s history with a new book by the public intellectual, Princeton University African American studies professor Eddie Glaude Jr. The book is called America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, a blistering look at the stories we tell ourselves about our past and present, the book centered around the major celebrations of the United States’ milestone birthdays, from 1876, 1926, 1976, now the 250th in 2026, and in each time, an enduring refusal to face its true history. Eddie Glaude is professor of African American studies at Princeton University. His previous books include Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own and Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul. Professor Glaude’s latest book, America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, opens with the words, “I do not love America, and never have, especially now.”

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Professor Glaude, welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: It’s such a pleasure to be back and to see you.

AMY GOODMAN: So, start with those words.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about why you opened your book in that way.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah, you know, I was — it was an initial moment of fear and trepidation, and I had to say it. I wanted to announce that I have no interest in the idolatry of the state, that I’m more interested in loves closer to the ground, ordinary people. But I also had to foreground the wound, my own interior experience.

You know, as a growing — my dad was the second African American hired at the post office in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and he moved his family in Moss Point from one side of town to the other. And I’m playing — I’ve told this story in Democracy in Black. I’m playing with my Tonka truck, and with my new friend, and his dad came out and said, “Stop playing with that N-word.” And at that moment, America told me what it thought about me. And then I took my truck and went inside, and my parents went to work to keep me from believing what the world said about me.

AMY GOODMAN: How did they do that?

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Oh, they put a crown above my head, you know. They told me that, you know, I come out of a grand tradition, that my life was my own to create, that it’s something wrong with them, in a way. And that was affirmed when I went to Morehouse and the like. So, I’m always puzzled when people think I should love the country. They expect gratitude, when I’m more interested in loving the people who make the country what it is.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk first about the title.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries. Why America, U.S.A.?

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Well, you know, I’m a professor. I have all these folks coming — you know, I read all the time, and I’m — you know, you and I were talking about John Dos Passos. Is it Dos Passos or Dos Passos? And, you know, his trilogy, his classic trilogy, U.S.A., where he looks at the 42nd Parallel and 1919 and big money, is supposed to be this epic account of the country, and it fails when it comes to the issue of race during that period.

But also I’m trying to think about the division, the divided soul of the country, the comma instead of the hyphen, this split, this idea that America imagines itself as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic, and the comma represents that contradiction between these two different versions of the nation, and how it deposits, Amy, a kind of madness at the heart of the country that we experience in these cycles repeatedly, over and over again.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to 1776. What does it mean to you? What do you teach in class?

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah. Now, this is an extraordinary explosion of democratic energy, at a certain level, right? It’s this idea that explodes onto the scene, that everyday people don’t have to be subject to monarchical rule, that they can engage in self-governance. But it’s also deeply contradictory, because it’s wrapped in the horrors of slavery, right? And so, 1776 for me is this moment of profound complexity and contradiction, where you have this idea that everyday ordinary people can engage in self-governance, but it happens alongside of the horrific relationship between the trafficking of Black bodies and the introduction of the modern world. And these things are happening all at once. Colonial settlers, all this stuff is happening at once. So, we have to unpack that date for what it represents.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you talk a lot about Philly. You’ve spent a lot of time there.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re a Princeton University professor in New Jersey. And I was just in Philadelphia. A National Park Service exhibit about slavery has been the subject of monthslong court battle between the city of Philadelphia and the federal government. Following President Trump’s, quote, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order, the National Park Service removed a display from a historic site known as the President’s House along Independence Mall in Philadelphia. Of course, the President’s House was the first White House —

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: — as it was for George Washington. The exhibit describes the lives of nine enslaved men and women who lived in one of the homes George Washington occupied as president. Philadelphia sued the federal government over the exhibit’s removal in February, and initially won. But earlier this month, an appeals court panel of three judges unanimously sided with the federal government, saying Philadelphia has no authority over a federally owned site. The Department of Interior has proposed a new exhibit that would contain fewer references to enslaved people and place less emphasis on George Washington’s history as an enslaver. Philadelphia Mayor Parker has vowed to continue pursuing legal avenues to reverse the decision. It’s unclear what might appear at the President’s House site on the July Fourth weekend, when the city is expecting a rush of tourists. Since the exhibit’s removal, however, volunteers in Philadelphia have been standing at the site and sharing the original text that was removed from the exhibit with visiting tourists. It’s like they’re reading the Emancipation Proclamation.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Exactly, exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: So, they did this in the middle of the night. They came in with pickup trucks. They took down the written history of George Washington as an enslaver. This is very specific, but also emblematic of what’s happening right now.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Right. There is this insistence on a kind of storybook version of the country, that America’s perfection was founded in its — it was evident in its founding, that there’s no need to talk about a more perfect union. These people, Donald Trump and his minions, they don’t even agree with more perfect union talk, because it calls into question the very virtue of the nation itself.

And so, you know, in the context of the aftermath of the Civil War, we talk about redemption, that moment in which the South reasserts itself to retain power, to reclaim power after the horrors of the Civil War. Well, that’s the violent part, the disenfranchisement of Blacks. But there’s also something that happens at the level of history. We call it the Lost Cause. There’s an assault on the very story we tell about Reconstruction, the very story we tell about the aftermath of the Civil War that produced the Civil War Amendments, 13th, 14th and 15th.

And we’re in a second lost cause. It’s an epistemic assault. What do I mean by that? That’s an old professor phrase, right? Or word. An epistemic assault. It’s an assault on what we know and how we know, what we see and how we see, because at the end of the day, Amy, Donald Trump and his supporters, they want to be white without judgment. They want to be white without judgment. And if that’s true, if I’m right in that description, that means that history — right? — is a battleground, because history, of course, holds them to account.

AMY........

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