America faces a forced choice between the value gap and multiracial democracy.

Evidence

First steps are always important. We have to exhibit the courage and the willingness to take the risk and step out on faith with the hope that our rocky start will give way to more confident strides. The country needs to take such a step. We stand at a critical crossroads with the lie of the American idea in full view. Our after times confront us with a choice, and a decision has to be made. We cannot stand pat where we currently are, or the political superstorms will tear us apart. Either America will turn its back and embrace the value gap as Trumpism demands, or we will risk everything, finally, to become a truly multiracial democracy and the first of its kind in the West. In the past, white America has chosen the safety of its illusions. No matter. We go on, together. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 593

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concentrates the book’s core idea: the after times are the moment of reckoning where the ‘lie’ is in full view and a decision is forced.
• DEEPTHINKING: The compressed statement of a fully-worked historical argument about cycles of failed reckoning — America has ‘chosen the safety of its illusions’ before and may do so again.
• XREF: connects to: Multiracial democracy and white Christian nationhood are logically incompatible in the US — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian…, 49