In celebration of what would have been writer and activist James Baldwin’s 100th birthday, Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr. delivered a talk in discussing recent election results and the future of the United States in relation to Baldwin’s works. The talk took place on Nov. 7 in the Campus Center Auditorium at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This event was organized by the Office of Equity and Inclusion (OEI).
Glaude is a professor of African American studies at Princeton University, and one of the nation’s leading experts on Baldwin. He was the inaugural chair of the Afro-American studies department for over 14 years at Princeton and is a member of the Morehouse College Board of Trustees.
Glaude is a former columnist for TIME magazine and is currently an MSNBC contributor. He has authored many works including “Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own,” “We are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For” and “Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul.”
Before the main lecture, around 25 students gathered at 4 p.m. in one of the Campus Center meeting rooms to have a discussion with Glaude about recent election results.
“Part of our task is to understand what it means, in all its details, that a country, the majority of voting citizens would elect a convicted felon who has been held liable for sexual assault, as president of the United States,” Glaude said. “What’s at the heart of [the election of Donald Trump] is white supremacy and patriarchy.”
“[Gen-Z has] come of age in the midst of cascading crises,” Glaude said. “Some people are reaching for progressive, new languages while some are reaching for the old languages of fascism.”
“For the next four years, at least for the first two years, the far-right, alt-right, white nationalists will have control of all branches of government,” Glaude said. “That makes us extraordinarily vulnerable.”
When Trump was elected for the first time, Glaude’s response was his novel “Begin Again.” It’s “me walking with Baldwin as he helps me try to figure out how to deal with the fact that the country had just elected Donald Trump.”
Charles Walker-Hoover, a junior studying history and Afro-American studies, asked Glaude about what Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan would look like.
“What I can imagine it entailing is a massive expansion of the rolling scope of ICE, that there are going to be raids in communities across the United States. There will be policing that will presume your [citizenship] status,” Glaude said. “I think that there’s going to be a general environment of terror.”
Walker-Hoover shared his gratitude for Glaude’s discussion, saying, “It was great to hear someone in a position of circumstance to share those same fears and share those same uncertainties about the future as I do.”
Glaude explained the purpose of fighting for the future and not giving up. “Our task in this moment as we fight for a more just world is to ensure that our children survive the madness and get to the other side,” Glaude said.
Glaude then referenced Baldwin, and said, “The messiness of the world is in part a reflection of the messiness of our interior lives, if we are to build a better world, we’re going to have to become better people.”
Linda Ziegenbein, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Strategic Outreach and Engagement at OEI, said, “The importance of events like this are one to bring world-class scholars to our campus to help us think through these issues and to engage in conversations around difference.”
“In this moment of political backlash and betrayal,” Glaude said, “our task is to imagine ourselves in the most expansive of terms, and to do so in the midst of rhetoric and policy that will call us all into question and to resist it fundamentally.”
Explaining his personal significance to Baldwin, Glaude said, “I’m trying to hold myself together, trying to pick up the pieces that I am in the midst of my deep disappointment and despondency, so rereading Baldwin helps me, talking about him with you helps me.”
At 5:30 p.m., students, community members and faculty all gathered in the Campus Center Auditorium for live jazz music and lively conversation over dinner before the lecture at 6 p.m.
Glaude began his talk with an anecdote about Howard University and Baldwin’s speech to Howard students, “[These students] were risking everything, including their lives, to transform the nation and what they were now confronting was the undeniable fact that the country refused to change.”
“We are forced to live with the idea that because of the color of our skin, because of the color of yours, that somehow it says something about our value, about our worth. And we have to move mountains to keep that insidious idea from taking hold in our guts,” Glaude said.
In discussing those fighting for social change, Glaude said, “To develop a critical stance towards this society and its view of black and brown people, for example, is to risk death.”
“So Baldwin’s insistence on reaching for higher forms of excellences, of setting no other captive conditions, demands an unflinching encounter of the uses and abuses of the past,” he said.
Valentina Duarte, a sophomore legal studies major who attended the event for class, said, “It’s a privilege to be able to go to a university that highlights diversity and hosts events amplifying diversity. That’s not something that a lot of universities, especially those further away from Massachusetts, can say. I just wish that it had been advertised more.”
“As students in the Afro-American studies department, we are having conversations like this at the classroom level everyday,” Nikki Metzger, a first-year graduate student in Afro-American studies, said. “I think that it’s a really good thing to see this represented on a larger scale on campus where you have attendees from across campus that are coming from different disciplines.”
After the speech, Ziegenbien asked Glaude questions that were sent in by the audience.
“This talk was right on time,” Marsha McGriff, Vice Chancellor for OEI, said. “He named, he identified and helped us to process through the emotions we are feeling.”
“To be at [UMass], a place where James Baldwin was a faculty member,” McGriff said, “to be at a place where W. E. B. Dubois is celebrated, I’m just overwhelmed with gratitude. Sometimes the universe knows exactly where you need to be.”
Norah Stewart can be reached at [email protected]
