Eddie Glaude Jr. on the peril of outsourcing democracy

With just weeks to go before the election, voting and candidates are top of mind of many of us. It's easy to think that once our preferred candidates win, our obligations to democracy are finished until the next election. Scholar and author Eddie Glaude Jr. has spent his career studying the perils of that approach throughout history, particularly when it comes to Black politics and power. Glaude joins us to discuss how he's thinking about the 2024 election, the difference between hope and joy, and why we can't outsource democracy solely to elected representatives.

One of the nation's most prominent scholars, Glaude's work examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. He is the author of "We are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For," "Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul,"and "Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own." He is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies, a program he first became involved with shaping as a doctoral candidate in Religion at Princeton. He is also on the Morehouse College Board of Trustees. He frequently appears in the media, as a columnist for TIME Magazine and as an MSNBC contributor.

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Candis Watts Smith 
From the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University. I'm Candis Watts Smith.

Cyanne Loyle
I'm Cyanne Loyle.

Jenna Spinelle
I'm Jenna Spinelle and welcome to Democracy. Works this week we are excited to have with us Eddie Glaude, Jr, who is the James S McDonnell distinguished professor of African American studies at Princeton University, and author of many books, including his latest, we are the leaders we've been looking for, as well as begin again, which is about James Baldwin and Democracy in Black. And I think all three of those books come up throughout the course of this conversation and through a public lecture that Dr Glaude gave here at Penn State recently, that we'll link to in the show notes, but a point that he specifically hits in we are the leaders we've been looking for is something we've talked about before on this show, and I think is worth repeating, as we are just several weeks out from the election, is that I think it's our tendency in America to outsource some of our Democratic responsibility to elected officials to say, Okay, well, I'll show up and vote and then it's their job to do the rest them being the people that we vote for. And, you know, I realize that that is part of the way our system is designed, but I think we would say, and Dr Glaude would too, that it can't stop there, or look what's happened when we've done things that way. Look where it's gotten us.

Candis Watts Smith 
So I'm really thrilled about having Eddie Glaude on democracy works. And, you know, I read begin again, like as soon as it came out, and it was such an insightful book. And I'm really excited about this book because it asks us to reflect upon our own responsibility to care for what is an otherwise fragile system. Right that democracy is fragile, and we've seen in the past five years how important just a few people doing their jobs can influence outcomes. But you know, we're in election season, and we tend to focus on the kind of horse race and the polls and Kennedy evaluations. But what Dr Glau points out, and you know, we know from many people who we've interacted with on this podcast, that elections are the end point, not the beginning or even the middle of democracy, that people have to do the work to uphold this system that we care a lot about. I am really also kind of excited about this conversation, because I think we tend to also not only abdicate responsibility, but we don't do the self reflection about like, what is it about we see a lot of things in the world to what degree does that reflect on me or reflect on our society as a collective? So there are wars all over the place, some that we acknowledge more than others. There are school shootings. There are all of our behaviors in a post pandemic world that suggests that we have not learned any lessons. There are Grifters. There are so many things that we see in social media and, you know, all of this stuff. Now, on the other side, I'm in North Carolina. Hurricane Helene did a major damage to the western part of my state, and I also see people pulling out all of the stops to help their neighbors to make sure that people have the things that they need. You know, I guess I'm interested to know cyan, if you know, you have thoughts about what this looks like, the extent to which citizens of other places simply abdicate their responsibility for the quality of democracy to a few people? 

Cyanne Loyle
I mean, I think that's a great a great point and a great question Candace. I mean, I think I don't want to go as far as to say that some of the things that that Professor Glaude mentions in his books are is a uniquely American phenomenon, but I do think that that American culture has a has a real strong tendency to to valorize and and to make heroes out of out of some of our strongest leaders. And we often think about it in terms of pop stars or sports stars, but we can also think think about it in terms of of governing officials, right? So, so heroes of our civil rights. Movement and things like that, and there's a temptation to say, well, they've got it under control, or it's their job to do this, and all I've got to do is vote for the one person that I know represents kind of my my beliefs and ideologies and political preferences, and then that person will kind of take it from there. And what we lose in that is is a political culture of engagement and discussion and action and activity. I don't know that there is an end point in a fully functioning democracy. I think we're always in the middle of it, and we're always thinking it through, because even once our leaders are elected, it's our responsibility to hold them accountable. That's what a free press is all about. That's what public assembly is all about. And you know, say what you will about about the Trump administration, there's certainly plenty to say about it. It was a great time for civic engagement in the United States. People were talking about politics and policies and the functioning of the Supreme Court in a way that I hadn't seen in decades of being a political science professor. Right? I had students asking me questions about international law and accountability for human rights during the Black Lives Matter movement in a way that we just hadn't talked about before. And and so I will, I will actually hold that up right as as a positive outcome of what was a really challenging time for for our democracy, was getting us all to really think more about about our role and responsibility.

Candis Watts Smith 
And so then the question that I think that is being posed to us is, how do we maintain that that exercise, even when we think that things are going fine, things seem normal, that those are also times that we need to, you know, engage in deliberative democracy, when we need to have conversations with our neighbors, when we need to ensure that our local state and, you know, federal representatives are held accountable for the things that they said so on and so forth. So in that way, then I think we can say we see these things happen a lot in other places. So we know that we can do it, but we've also seen it happen in our own world, in our own country, and so we know we can do it. The question is, what is it that we need to do to keep it going?

Cyanne Loyle
And I love that point Candice about kind of muscle memory and and I think that that's exactly what we've seen over the last five or six years, that we we can as a population, learn how to do this better and kind of continue that momentum. And I think that the effort of continuing the momentum needs to feel less arduous and less Doom scrolly if we continue to do it for every election, right? If we are thinking about our school board elections the same way that we're thinking about our national elections, we can keep this kind of low level simmer of kind of political engagement once we've learned about all of the different clauses that we didn't know about before we can continue to engage them, right? And think about them. 

Jenna Spinelle
I think, as you said, we will touch on all of those points in much more detail with Dr Glaude in the interview, as well as some conversation about hope and joy, which we may come back to here at the end. But for now, let's go to the conversation with Eddie Glaude Jr.

Jenna Spinelle
Eddie Glaude, welcome to Democracy Works. Thanks for joining us today.

Eddie Glaude Jr.
My pleasure. I'm so delighted to be in conversation with you. 

Jenna Spinelle
So let's start with the present and maybe work our way back. So as we sit here today, we are 40 days out from the election, and it'll be a little bit closer than that by the time folks hear this. But you know, we have the first black woman atop at least a major party presidential ticket, and I know it's probably a little too soon to say where vice president Harris will fit in the lineage of black politicians that you trace in your work, but I wonder, as you've observed her on the campaign trail, in the debates at the DNC convention, what are some of the things that you're you're watching for, or you're Looking for as as you observe her in this campaign?

Eddie Glaude Jr.
Well, I think you know, she's she has to contrast herself with with Donald Trump and and MAGA republicanism, right? She has to offer a path to a different kind of future. You know, she and the campaign will emphasize notions of joy, kind of leaving behind the anger and the rage and the grievance that has defined so much of our politics over this, over the last few years. And you know, so she has to do this stuff that typical political consultants will tell her to. Do, but she also has to, I think, you know, and she's been doing a relatively good job of this right kind of really signal that we're leaving behind something right, that that we're finally, perhaps turning a corner and and I think the way in which she navigates her, her racial and ethnic identity is a good example of this. She's not trying to erase it. She's not trying to make herself blank. But she's also not running as the first woman you know, as as a woman candidate or a black candidate or South Asian candidate. She's running as Kamala Harris, the vice president and former senator and former Attorney General and the like. And I think that's a fairly interesting kind of approach, right, not to make oneself invisible, but not to Billboard it at the same time, that's a fascinating moment in our politics at this level, it seems to me,

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, and I think the campaign has also tried to reclaim the language of patriotism and pride in America for the Democratic Party. I was listening to Tim Miller, who I know you talked to. He described this 2024 DNC as like Bush Dukakis, 88 like that kind of vibe in the room with the, you know, proud to be an American kind of vibe. I wonder what you made of.

Eddie Glaude Jr.
Yeah, no, you know, I was not very comfortable with that, you know. And I think a lot of folk who are left of Vice President Harris's politics probably weren't, were uncomfortable at least, at least a bit, at least a bit. I understand the politics of it all. You know that there's there, there's this effort to kind of wrap Maga ism in the flag, to kind of think that patriotism can only be bound up with grievance and and the like that. These are the true patriots over here, who are anti immigration, who are assaulting women's rights, you know, to choose, undermining the right to vote. You know, all the things that we see going on as we relitigate, the social revolution of the of the 20th, mid 20th century. So I understood the politics of it all. I was just uncomfortable with it. You know, patriotism for me is always a vexed notion. And you know, I want us to have an honest love of the country, not just the love of the country, right? You got to love the country with its warts and all,

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, rather than something more surface level, which is, I think, what's behind a lot of that kind of rhetoric, yeah, and so there's also, I think, a tendency to want to think about Barack Obama's trajectory, and the kind of, you know, you you write a lot about kind of putting a lot of faith and hope in Him, and being kind of burned by that ultimately, or, you know, feeling that way. And so I wonder if you see, or, I guess if one, if you feel, or if you've seen or heard from others, a sort of a similar kind of thing going on with Kamala Harris, or people are maybe a little bit more wary because of the Obama experience, from when he ran to when he you know, what he ultimately did as president? 

Eddie Glaude Jr.
You know, that's a great question. I think, you know, we've been there, done that. You know, we've done it with Barack Obama. We did it with Hillary Clinton's candidacy, although it wasn't successful. I think there's a kind of a knowledge that comes out of that experience, of those experiences. So folk won't fall for the Okey doke in some ways. But I also think that, you know, there's the underneath the joy is a kind of weariness, a kind of vulnerability. There's a desperate need for it, and so it's it's fragile, and I think we need to understand that. I think that campaign needs to understand it, that that the joy that that we saw at the convention, that that we see at the at the political rallies, it's all kind of shadowed by the experiences of the last nine years, the reality that you have these cascading anniversaries of death, you know, we still are dealing with all these people who died of covid, and the grief that lingers. So it's not it's not 2008 we've been through too much. We've taken too many blows on the chin. And so the kind of nostalgic longing for the politics and the political moment of 2008 that seems to me to be a kind of adolescent wish. Uh. We have to deal with the substance of what we've been through and what we're going through, if that makes sense. 

Jenna Spinelle
And I wonder if it's it sort of strikes me the contrast between hope and joy. You know, I'm Obama running on hope, but joy is different than hope, I think,

Eddie Glaude Jr.
Especially after, after all of these years of the of the vitriol of our politics. I mean, we have been awash in algorithms that intensify our our anxieties, our hatreds, our our our feelings of being lost and untethered. We've had politicians exploit those feelings, right? You have children, young people, growing up in the context of school shootings, one after the other, mass shootings, one after the other, war, you know, it's been a hell of a ride. And so it's you know, and you know people want us to just blink and you know and think that all of that is behind us, and it's not, it's in us. And so joy to invoke joy in this moment is almost aspirational. You know, it's something that we want, not something that we necessarily have. I don't want to sound like a Debbie Downer, but, but I think it's, I think it's important for us to understand the fragility of the moment.

Jenna Spinelle
What, what does a joyful politics look like to you?

Eddie Glaude Jr.
It's, you know, obviously they're the there's the performative stuff, you know, the laughter, the the DJ mixing, you know, nice music, dancing, all that stuff that we saw at the DNC. But I think a joyful politics is really about a future oriented politics, a politics that gives us languages to imagine ourselves differently. You know, a politics that that can have us imagine flourishing together, working for fulfilling one's aspirations and dreams, building community with folk, setting the conditions so that people who are working hard, who are busting their behinds every single day, can imagine a great life for themselves and their children, and can go home and have a beer and relax.

Jenna Spinelle
And that's a nice segue, I think, into your most recent book, because a lot of what you just described, we need to find within ourselves and organizing among each other, rather than looking to a singular leader or a couple of elected officials to provide for us? 

Eddie Glaude Jr.
We can no longer afford to outsource our responsibility for democracy. You know, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, Jenna, if we're going to have the country we want, we're going to have to fight for it. Because there are folks on the other side, whatever side you happen to be on, but there are folks who have some other commitments, who are fighting like hell for the America they want. And so we cannot suddenly get excited about a politician. Politicians inevitably disappoint. That's what they do. What we have to do is to understand that elections are are at the back end of the work of democracy. On the front end, they're not, you know, that's the last thing we do is vote democracies that are vibrant, right? They are bustling with activity in civil society. They're bustling with activity in the everyday doings and sufferings that we are engaged in or experiencing right in our local communities. And so I believe that we need to stop, stop outsourcing the responsibility for American democracy to politicians or to so called leaders or prophets or heroes, however we want to describe them, and take the reins. That's what we the people is all about, if we understand it as such, and once we once we grab a hold of the reins then and understand what we're fighting for, then I think the country will change directions. We just got to understand our power.

Jenna Spinelle
I think so. As as you've been out across the country making this, this argument since the book has come out, and I'm sure before as well, who's the toughest audience to kind of sell on that particular way of doing things, or thinking about democracy, everyday, ordinary folks.

Eddie Glaude Jr.
Because, you know, I mean, we've spent the last 40 years living under an economic philosophy that has rendered working people as vulnerable as you can imagine people at work. Working harder and longer and not making more, barely keeping their noses above water. And we've seen, thank God, over the last few years, a resurgence of the power of unions. But for the most part, working people have spent much of their time not trying to be not concerned about their local politics or or the disaster that is is Washington DC, or the corruption that may be in the state, state houses, or whatever they've been trying to pay their mortgage, trying to figure out how they're going to pay this, these escalating costs for for college, for their kids, how they're going to put food on the table. And so the challenge for me is to say, Okay, we're responsible for democracy, but, but we're also responsible for the people we love, right? How do how do I figure out the way in which I live my life and take responsibility for democracy in light of all the stuff I got to do to take care of the people I love and to break through that is hard, and one of the ways I do is I come from a working class family. My dad was a post my mother cleaned toilets for a living. She was on a janitorial service for Ingle shipyard, but my father was the president of his local chapter in the union. So he was organized, working on behalf of the folks in on the hasta, folks who delivered the mail. So he was engaged actively, not in some dramatic spectacle of a march, but he was doing the hard work on the ground to improve the life circumstances of the people with whom he worked, we can make choices in the midst of our day to day lives. I think that can give democracy depth and texture, if that makes sense. 

Jenna Spinelle
This also kind of butts up against something else that we've we've talked about a lot, which is the relationship between democratic culture and the structures of democracy. So you can do the organizing and build the habits of people in community and those kinds of things. But if you know districts are still being gerrymandered, and money is still influencing what kinds of people can be involved in in politics. And I could go on and on about examples, but I wonder how you think about that relationship between building democratic structure and, you know, working, I'm sorry, building democratic culture and making the structures of our politics more well. 

Eddie Glaude Jr.
And they have to go hand in hand, you know? I mean, look, we can turn out in this presidential election in historic numbers, but if you know folk are cheating and how they count the ballots, if they're gumming up the process, as they're trying to do in Georgia and elsewhere, then we're going to have a problem. You already mentioned gerrymandered districts. You already talked about Citizens United and the extraordinary amount of money that influences and shapes our democratic elections. So we have to how can I put this? The old saying that you know, the best cure for democracy, or the ills of democracy, is more democracy. Right is right only insofar as it goes, if we don't become better people. Doesn't matter what the structures are, right? So if we're going to be the leaders that we looking for, we got to work on who, on us. We got to become more virtuous, we got to become more decent. We got to be clear about our commitments, because if we're not, then we're going to clean up the mess and then it's just going to get messy again. So I think it's both, and we have to become the kinds of people that democracies require as we work on building more democratic structures that go hand in hand.

Jenna Spinelle
So you mentioned algorithms a few minutes ago, and I want to use that to take us in a bit of a different direction. Talk about culture for a minute, and the arts you write. You've written a whole book on James Baldwin. This is his 100th birthday this year, and you know, I've been thinking a lot about the way that work like Baldwin's, which turns the lens back on us and asks difficult questions about who we are and and what we believe, how that was received in his time, and how things have changed with because of algorithms, we all have a very, you know, personalized media diet, and if you don't want anything that challenges you, you never have to see it. I mean, I'm sure that's always been the case to some degree, but I just wonder how you think about the role that arts and culture plays in our democracy today, and maybe how that's changed since Solomon's time.

Eddie Glaude Jr.
You know, I think art and artists play a critical role, because the artist, the poet, not any strict sense of what I mean, but the poet in emersonians, Emerson sense, right? They offer us languages to understand ourselves in more expansive terms. They give the world back to us, right? So we live in the world. The artist goes and describes that living and it comes back to us in ways that expands our imagination so that we could see possible futures. So the artist is central to our politics, central to our moral and ethical lives. She helps us right, understand our limitations and our possibilities. But you know, culture is overrun. Our American culture is overrun with certain kind of economic logic that drives certain things to us. I mean, you would think after, after what we've been through with covid, I keep going back to that because it's on my mind for some reason. After that scale of death, we would see and hear art that would reflect what we've been through. Think about, you know, the period before, you know, the period right after World War Two, and the art that came after that, after the ovens, I would blow your mind, not only in terms of visual arts, but in terms of music, I mean, just crazy stuff, just beautiful, haunted, where we're awash in Diddy scandals, right? Our, our, the algorithm is keeping us on the surface of things, yeah, and as opposed to art and artists, right, taking us to the depths of things, right? It's almost if you know the calculus is to keep us right at the top of the water.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, to borrow a phrase from James Brown, a lot of talking loud and saying nothing Exactly.

Eddie Glaude Jr.
And so one wonders how Jimmy would land today, although, you know, when I wrote the book in 2020, begin again, there was a hunger because Baldwin was a resource for the Black Lives Matter movement. I saw him everywhere. And so when I tried to offer a kind of interpretation of his later work in light of my own kind of journey. People were hungry for it. But, you know, I'm snapping my fingers, because everything moves so quickly these days, you know? So that's not to say there's no space for the artist and space for art that could take us to the depths. It's just harder. It's just harder

Jenna Spinelle
To bring things back to politics here. So it's also thinking a lot about your colleague, Cornel West, who I know is in your most recent book, and his run for president this year. You also talk about Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi democratic Freedom Party. There is a long history of independent black politics, the Free Soil Party, Lenore Fulani, running for president in the 80s. And I guess I just wonder where that fits in, the kind of the bigger story of black politics and black power that you tell .

Eddie Glaude Jr.
First of all, that's just a wonderful question. I haven't thought of Lenora Fullani

Jenna Spinelle
I tried for about six months to get an interview for with her separate project, so she's been on my mind.

Eddie Glaude Jr.
Look, I think what we've experienced over the last 40 years, over the last 50 years, is a narrowing of what constitutes legitimate forms of political dissent, right? We find ourselves debating within a kind of confining space of what liberalism is. Even the folk who call themselves conservatives, they're just a certain kind of liberal on a certain on a certain level, right? And this is particularly true for black politics, right? If you think about black politics in the early 20th century, I mean, you had all of these different characters. You had black Marxists, black nationalists, black anarchists, black liberals, Pan Africanist. Now it's just where do you fit within the spectrum of the Democratic Party? So I I understand the impulsive of my good friend. He's the Godfather my son, close partner. I understand his impulse, but in this. Moment, we know who's on the other side, right? We know who's on the other side. And I keep I'm haunted by something in 2016 I refuse to vote for Hillary Clinton because I didn't think everybody, anybody was going to vote for that fool. I didn't I think, I didn't think anybody was going to vote for Donald Trump? Why would I think that? I don't know. So I thought I had an opening. We had an opening to really think about democratic politics, to break loose from the triangulation of Clintonism, we could push the Democratic Party to the left. So I said, blank out. I did what folks I call for what folks did in Michigan during the Democratic primary, for folks to do it if you were in a decidedly red or blue state, right? Trump gets elected, and he doesn't tell anybody that covid is airborne. He doesn't. He's talking about bleach. And so what would have happened if someone more competent was in the office, even if I disagreed with their politics, would my close friends still be here? Right? I'm haunted by the million plus debt. And there's this wonderful essay that Baldwin wrote as as Jimmy Carter's running in 79 it's the 80 election. Ronald Reagan is the guy over there. Jimmy Carter's pissed black people off. He's, in some ways, the first neoliberal President austerity politics of just policies of just decimated black urban spaces. So they're pissed because Carter was we were the reason why he got into office. And Baldwin details the anger, but then he says, I know who the other guy is. And he says, sometimes we have to vote to buy ourselves some time. So I understand what, what, what Cornell is doing. I just fundamentally disagree with it in this moment, I understand the critique of the duopoly of the two party system. I just fundamentally disagree with the strategy in this moment, because I know what awaits on the other side, right? And I'm particularly just disturbed when you know that they're insidious forces that are propping up your efforts, right? Because they know the damage that you can do with your campaign, that can help them with

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, yeah. It just, it seems, you know, at least in in recent memory, like, when is the right time it's going away? 

Eddie Glaude Jr.
I think, unlike any other moment, though, unlike any other moment, we know what Trump represents. I mean, even George W Bush, H, you know, even when Nader did his thing with Gore, right? We had, we didn't, we didn't know what Iraq would generate. We didn't know it would produce a surveillance state in the way that it would, that way that it did. But, my God, we know what this guy is all about. He's going to want to fundamentally dismantle democratic structures, right? And I would, I, I don't agree with Liz Cheney about anything, but the one thing we agree on are the background conditions that allow us to disagree. Donald Trump doesn't. He doesn't at all.

Jenna Spinelle
Last question, what's next for you? Strike me as a guy who's always thinking about the next project, the next book, the next lecture, what? What's on your mind?

Eddie Glaude Jr.
I'm working on a book now entitled, tentatively, at least, America comma USA. America comma USA, and it's a it's a meditation, it's a long essay on race, democracy and the 250th anniversary of the nation. Every major anniversary, the centennial, sesquicentennial, we can go all the way up the contradiction, the tragic choice that we made at the beginning is evidenced so 1876 1926 1976 and 2026 are the chapters. And then the question is, what do we make of who we take ourselves to be when we don't think about it as a hyphen, but we think about it as a come, not something that joins us, but something that splits us, that breaks us. So, so I'm thinking through that now, right? Writing vigorously.

Jenna Spinelle
Sounds fascinating, and I know that many of our listeners will be in line to get it when it publishes. We'll also link to your books that are currently out there in the show notes. And. You so much for joining us today. 

Eddie Glaude Jr.
You are amazing.

Candis Watts Smith 
Thank you, Jenna and Dr Glaude for that great interview. It was really affirming and uplifting, which I think we need right now. Cyan, I was really intrigued by the Convert part of the conversation around joy and hope, and you know the difference between them and what we need right now. What did, and I don't know, did that stand out to you too?

Cyanne Loyle
I mean, it absolutely did, and I agree with you. Is this such an affirming way to think about what I think has been a really challenging election season, right? In a really, in some ways, an election season that has been a struggle, in some ways, between kind of hatred and anger, and then also thinking about joy and and celebration around our American democracy. That for me, the tension that I liked is the idea the tension between hope and joy that really, that really stuck with me is the idea that we may be at a time where it's too difficult to hope, right? That that we've we're kind of in a post hope era in many ways, right? So when we think about the pandemic and and Candace, You listed a lot of these in our opening discussion, right? We're thinking about school shootings, we're thinking about racial violence, we're thinking about struggles with the economy and immigration challenges in the United States, it's really been a heck of a ride for the last couple of decades, and in that way, I think it is difficult to believe it's going to get better. And that, to me, is what hope is about, right, that things are going to radically shift or change, and even that they're radically going to shift or change based on the person that we elect in for office in just a couple of weeks, but but the idea of of joy and continuing to engage in our crazy, wild ride of a democracy with with a sense of optimism, with a sense of openness, with a sense of agency, I hear that being what Dr Glaude is really, is really calling for that we are making the choices in our day to day lives of how we want to engage with all of these things.

Candis Watts Smith 
I think one of the thing that stood out to me about that is was the word imagination and and, you know, thinking about what could be, what kind of system could we have? What kind of politics could we have? What kind of society could we have as an exercise to maybe critique the way that things are without also feeling that they're inevitable, right? I mean the things that we see, that make things feel doom and gloom are not inevitable, and that we could imagine a different kind of world, generally speaking, I think. And maybe I'm like making a dot that's not really supposed to be connected around the idea about patriotism. And I think that, for me, the most patriotic people are people who are who have the idea that we could move closer to our ideals, and that, you know, it's not just nostalgia and grievance, but it's also about critique and imagination. For you know, how can we all enjoy these rights? How can we all enjoy these liberties? How can we and also, what a what are our responsibilities to each other and in a kind of system where we value public goods and we value one another as citizens. One of the things I think that is part of the tension here. And you can tell me what you think comes up in this conversation around the duopoly of the two party system, how far our imaginations go when you ask that question?

Cyanne Loyle
One of the things that I think about was the incredible self reflective moment that Professor Glaude had when he was talking about some of his some of the arguments he made in advance of the 2016 election, and in particular, how he encouraged people to maybe think about opting out of voting that round because of push, of ability to push the Democratic Party in a more progressive direction. And I think that that some of those inclinations are luxuries that citizens of more multi party systems have, because the a smaller political party that is more agile in a multi party system has the ability, in many ways, to kind of tailor its policies and its priorities towards towards individuals in a way that that a dual party system in the United States doesn't have, right and and we see this discussion about the the Republican Party. Party kind of trying to really moderate. It's more conservative for from its Maga wing, and kind of thinking through how to do that, as the Democrats are also kind of in this stance with with the much more progressive wing of the party, and so thinking about what that kind of middle of the road option looks like. 

Candis Watts Smith 
I mean, that brings to the that brings to mind another question, just to pull a strand from the interview about the relationship between democratic structures and democratic cultures, and that the relationship, of course, is endogenous, but there are ways that we can see virtuous cycles, and there are ways in which we can see downward spirals. And, you know, I don't want to say we're in a downward spiral. I don't, I'm not going to say that. But what I do see, maybe I will say that, okay, what I do see, even, for example, in this election, that it's, you know, a lot of this started in in in 2020, we're going to talk about election fraud, and so we're going to have election integrity things. And now we're going to make, like, make the absurdity, make absurdities normalized, so that when we have any future election, it is perfectly okay for you to question the legitimacy of that, even though we haven't done anything different systematically, and that the previous system was just fine anyway. But then so now we have this upcoming election, and everyone is nervous from both the right and the left, right. So okay, are people who aren't supposed to be voting, voting, and that's why you know this outcome happened. And then folks are on the left are, well, now you've elected people who actually don't believe in the vote to count the votes. And so how do we know that the outcome is legitimate?

Cyanne Loyle
For me, I think it's actually Glaude's message that answers your question Candace, which is to step out from behind our heroes, and your heroes may not be my heroes, and so we can think about, you know, media representation that allow us to not form our own political opinions, but rather, we're listening to pundits tell us what to think. And so instead of actually, when you go to vote, look around. Does the system look free and fair to you? Does it look like there are impartial people that are correctly registering your vote? Trust that, right? So, so trust the things that you are seeing and that you are engaging with. Ask questions about how votes are counted in your own community, and I think that that is a much better indicator for how the election is progressing nationally than things that you're watching on mainstream media sources. This is the quote from Ella Baker, right. This is how Professor Glaude gets the title of his book, that we are the heroes and the leaders and the democracy advocates that we've been looking for, right So, so Baker tells us that that it's the strong people don't need strong leaders. And I think that that's true, because if you learn how to organize and mobilize, you don't need someone coming in and telling you to do it. I mean, Candice, you referenced a lot of the community efforts that are being done in North Carolina right now. You don't need a single person to come in and tell you how to organize in a way that's going to help support your neighbors, if you already have those institutions in place, strong church groups and, you know, strong community organizations that allows you to kind of move that process forward and that, you know, that is the community that is democracy at its greatest, right? It's, I mean, democracy is based on the idea that we can govern ourselves, right, that we don't need a single leader telling us what to do, that we can, you know, delegate some responsibilities, right? 

Candis Watts Smith 
I mean, just ordinary Americans are and can be, the heroes of our democracy, and you bring to light, you know what James Baldwin and Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer and now Eddie Glaude's perspective on the question? And so with that, I want to say thank you to Dr Glaude for joining us and for coming to Penn State to share his insights with us, especially in a moment when we are all sitting on the edges of our seat as we move toward this 2024 election. And thank you cyan and of course, Jenna, I'm Candis Watts Smith for Democracy Works.

Cyanne Loyle
And I’m Cyanne Loyle. Thank you for listening.

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