Challenging American exceptionalism is required to change the nation

Evidence

We have to tell better stories about what truly matters to us. The kinds of stories we tell reflect the kind of people—the kind of nation—we aspire to be. Bad stories, like bad habits, typically correlate with bad people. So better stories are needed to change the country. Americans have to challenge directly the idea that we are “the shining city on the hill” or “the Redeemer Nation.” We have to release democracy from the burden of American exceptionalism. To do this, we have to tell stories of those who put forward a more expansive conception of American democracy. This will involve confronting the ugly side of our history, recalling the heroic and representative efforts of countless men and women who gave everything to achieve our country, and sacrificing the comfort of national innocence and the willful blindness that comes with it. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 557

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: American exceptionalism abroad requires forgetting domestic conquest and subjugation — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 255