‘We are not just sacks in stomachs:’ Eddie Glaude argues for individuals to take political destiny from heroes and prophets

We are the leaders we have been looking for. Not just an important statement. It’s Eddie Glaude’s new book, beginning with a folk story. 5 black men have just arrived to heaven and one of them decides to really take advantage of his wings, flying around, causing trouble and eventually forcing the Angel Gabriel to snatch his wings right back. The other four men scorned him. Quote look now everybody got wings but you. The man smiled and said, I don’t care. I sure was a flying fool when I had them. End Quote For Glaude. The story, taken from the work of the acclaimed author Zora Neale Hurston, is about maximizing your gifts no matter the cost. Glaude’s new book encourages readers to do the same thing. He makes the argument that for too long we’ve outsourced our responsibility to democracy, to politicians, to prophets, to heroes. While it’s comforting to put the fate of the democracy in the hands of visionaries, Glaude encourages the individual to take the first steps toward reaching a freer, more equitable society. Democracy conjures images of ballot boxes and electoral maps. But the real work of preserving democracy, Eddie Glaude argues, is a hyper local, hyper engaged community, something he calls networked democratic localism. Quote, democracy requires a richly textured democratic culture close to the ground. What is needed, required even under such conditions are innovative and creative ways of revitalizing local communities and fostering the development of multiple publics where citizens can engage in debate and deliberation together. End Quote. Joining me now, Eddie Glaude, junior, New York Times best selling author of this new and important book. We are the leaders We have been looking for. He is also a professor of African American studies at Princeton University and an MSNBC contributor. And the brainchild of of the Velshi Band book Club with us, which has featured so many of the people you write about, whether it’s James Baldwin or or Zora Neale Hurston. Eddie, this topic, as you know, is very close to my heart. There’s a lot of despair out there about the world, about the country, about democracy, about freedom, about liberty. And your argument is, look to yourself. Look to something very close to you. Look to your community. Don’t look out there for leadership. Look, look here, right? You know, first of all, it’s so wonderful to see you, to have this conversation with you. My friend Madison understood the importance of virtue. He understood that virtuous people were necessary for democracies to work right. And virtue is all about who we take ourselves to be. The moral question is at the heart of it oftentimes, because it’s a representative democracy. We represent folk, We vote for folk. They represent us in power, and we think we’ve done our job. That’s right. And they’re there to do the work, and they’re there to do the work, right? But democracy is more than the ballot boxes. You rightly know democracy is what we do prior to elections and after elections. And if we’re not working on ourselves, if we’re not working on becoming better people, that’s the kind of shorthand of the book. If we are the leaders we’ve been looking for, we have to be better people, right? And if we have if, if we’re going to be better people, Ali, we have to build a, a better world. So it sounds lofty, but in fact, the stuff you talk about is not about lofty. It may have lofty outcomes, it may have lofty results, but you are talking about planting seeds whose whose shade you may not sit under. Oh, absolutely right. You’re talking about doing little things that are close to you. Absolutely. I mean, the problems that we face in the country seem seem overwhelming, but the problem right in front of your nose is what you can deal with. If you believe this is the key. We need to have a conception of justice without exception. We need to have a a notion of justice without exception. What do I mean by that? If you believe that every child, no matter their zip code, the color of their skin, should have a decent education, then we should fight for that. If you believe that if you work hard 48 hours, 40 hours a week, you should be able to earn a living wage to put a roof over your head. Everybody should be able to buy a home within, in a community that if you believe in those things for you, you should fight for a world for everyone in that. So you talk about moral imagination. Your first essay, which is focused on Martin Luther King Junior, you talk about being able to imagine a freer and more equitable society, right? And you may you, you place great importance upon this that you have to imagine the world can be not just a better place, but the place you wish it to be, right? So at the moment, for example, we talk about universal healthcare. The first thing they tell us we don’t have the money to pay for. Why do they tell you that? Because they don’t want you to imagine what the country would look like if you had it. But if your son came or your daughter came up to you and said, I want to go to Princeton, well, son, we don’t have the money. You don’t say that. The first thing you say is, OK, we’ll figure it out. Right. So part of what the moral imagination is for, it’s also this move alley where I’m trying to say that profits are not anointed from on high. They’re not anointed from from powers or authorities outside of us. The prophetic is a decision of conduct. When we imagine the world as it could be and use that imagination to critique the world as it is. All of us have that capacity. So when we exercise our moral imaginations, we create the space, the elbow room to see beyond the opacity of our conditions to do the work of creating a better. But when called upon to do that, many people struggle with the I’m not up to this. I am not the leader for this moment, whether it’s the leader of your block who I’m going to feature later on, a woman from Philadelphia or, or the leader for your organization or a civic leader. And the, the argument you make when you say profits are are made from within is that you are, you can be the leader for this time. That’s just a choice. And I understand that. You know, part of what I do in the book is I, I, I talk about my heroes. I talk about Martin Luther King Junior. I went to Morehouse College. I was baptized in Martin Luther King Junior waters, as it were. I wear my book Goatee Alley because Malcolm X was so critical for me, finding a sense of my own manner in relation to my father. Ella Baker gave me some, but what what? She gave me a way of thinking about democracy. But Ralph Waldo Emerson says imitation is suicide. We’re not sacks and stomachs. We shouldn’t long in a, you know, waddle in nostalgia, longing for oh, if we only had a Doctor King, if we only had a Malcolm, if we only had an FDR, right? No great people, Emerson said, come to us so that even greater people can be possible. They exemplify characteristics that we’re capable of. We read them, we follow them, we learn from them so that we can be the leaders that we’re looking for. Great people come to us so that even greater people can be possible. That is the optimistic note on which I will end this discussion because I want that to really sink in. Eddie, always thank you for being here. You are such a great friend to our show. Eddie Glaude Junior is a professor of African American studies at Princeton University and MSNBC political analyst. The of numerous important books, including this new one. It’s a must read. We are the leaders we have been looking for.