Black historical struggles redefined American democracy against the value gap

Evidence

With a revolution of value, the blank-out campaign of 2016, continued grassroots organizing, and ongoing direct action in the streets, we can set a new course for this nation. Black people have done it before. In our resistance against slavery, we offered a new path for the country. After the devastation of the Civil War, we put forward a more expansive idea of democracy as we legislated in statehouses throughout the reconstructed South. We changed the course of the nation by leaving the rural South and moving into cities in search of freedom. We connected our oppression at home with the effects of empire abroad and challenged directly U.S. foreign policy. This is the heart of democracy in black—efforts to imagine a democratic way of life without the burden of the value gap or the illusion that somehow this country is God’s gift to the world. We have marched. We have rebelled. We have loved, and we have hated. And in each moment America has succumbed to the belief that some people are better than others because they are white. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 641

Categorization

• XREF: Places the blank-out campaign of 2016 inside Glaude’s longer tradition of black political innovation — central to judging how the proposal has aged.