Scholar Eddie Glaude Jr. reflects on America at 250

Eddie Glaude Jr. delivers a searing, grief-laden meditation on America’s 250th anniversary in his new book, *America USA*, arguing that the nation’s grand celebrations are ritualized acts of erasure—moments when the country collectively forgets its foundational violence and racial contradictions. Far from a nostalgic tribute, Glaude frames the 250th as a reckoning: a moment when the myth of American innocence collapses under the weight of history. He traces this pattern across pivotal anniversaries—1876, 1926, 1976—showing how each time, the nation celebrates freedom while simultaneously disenfranchising Black Americans, from Frederick Douglass being barred from speaking at the 1876 Centennial to the absorption of Black history into a sanitized, celebratory narrative by 1976. The book, written in the form of a blues elegy, is not an act of rejection but a radical love letter—a demand for America to grow up, confront its demons, and finally live up to its own ideals. Glaude insists that true patriotism isn’t blind loyalty but the courage to critique, remember, and reclaim the nation’s story with full honesty. At the heart of Glaude’s argument is the idea that America’s identity is built on a split: it imagines itself as both a beacon of freedom and a white republic. This contradiction produces a national 'double consciousness'—a madness that repeats across generations.