America's 250th Anniversary
An optimistic liberal perspective
AMERICA’S 250TH ANNIVERSARY
An optimistic liberal perspective
John Albert Washington
I recently watched the Democracy Now! interview with Eddie Glaude, who happens to be black. The episode is titled “‘America, U.S.A.’: Eddie Glaude on the 250th Anniv., Race & ‘Madness at the Heart of the Country,’” and as the title indicates, the episode focuses primarily on the darkness of American history, particularly with respect to race. On our country’s Semiquincentennial, pessimistic narratives like Glaude’s demand critique.
The interview opens with Professor Glaude bragging about the opening statement of his new book America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries: “I do not love America and never have, especially now.”
If you are unfamiliar with Eddie Glaude, he is a professor of history at Princeton University, a bestselling author, and a frequent MSNow commentator with a substantial national audience. His command of American and black history is exceptional, and his delivery is marked by wit and intellectual sharpness. Yet, in my view, the central thread running through much of his commentary is one of black victimhood. He dwells almost exclusively on America’s darkest chapters, leaving little room for the remarkable moral progress the nation has made.
Like Professor Glaude, I am a black liberal. Yet on the fundamental point of our feelings for our country, we part ways. I love America. Born in the South in 1945, I have witnessed both the worst and the best this country has to offer—from the poverty and racial oppression of the Jim Crow era to the blood-spattered jungles of Vietnam as an infantryman. Through it all, I have never stopped loving my country, and on its birthday, I proudly salute the American flag.
As I said, I know the dark side. About ten years ago, a cousin asked me as we talked about our childhood days, “Don’t you remember when we drove past that lynched man?” I did not, because I had not been in the car with them that night. On that drive, my cousins had seen a black man hanging from a utility pole somewhere in the Rutherfordton County area of North Carolina in the early 1950s. When they began screaming, my aunt and uncle ordered them to be quiet, keep looking straight ahead, and act as though they had seen nothing. They were told that someone would come and take him down. That was the world into which I was born. Even having grown up in the shadow of that kind of evil, I have never stopped loving America.
Professor Glaude and I share the same broad political orientation, but our perspectives differ in an important way. I was born in 1945 under Jim Crow, before the Civil Rights Movement transformed this nation; he was born in 1968, after many of its greatest victories had already been won. Having experienced segregation firsthand, I possess a historical reference point that allows me to measure not only America’s failures but also its extraordinary progress.
I see the Declaration of Independence as a living promise and a moral ideal that has continually challenged each generation to move America closer to its highest ideals and its fullest humanity. The Civil Rights Movement marked one of the greatest advances in moral consciousness in our history. Although much work remains, to deny that progress is to overlook one of democracy’s most remarkable achievements.
Like the human soul itself, America is not a finished creation but a living experiment, continually evolving toward a higher moral consciousness and, I hope, a second Enlightenment.
During my 20-years of military service, my kids grew up on Fort Bragg, NC, and I remember looking out the window at times as they played with their buddies who were white, black, Hispanic, and Asian; with some of them mixed, like black and Asian or Hispanic and Asian or white and Asian, or black and Hispanic. At one time during those years, there was an American Indian couple whose tribe I was unfamiliar with. As far as race was concerned, those kids didn’t give a damn, and the parents were less focused on race than in the civilian world owing to military camaraderie.
In my mind, I see that culture spreading across America and the world in the future. And this is what the Declaration, with its insistence that all men are created equal, is all about.
That does not mean I am blind to America’s failures. As I said, I know the darkness of our history—from the arrival of the first slave ship and the terror of lynchings to a foreign policy that has too often relied on military aggression and global dominance. Is there a nation-state on earth that does not have evils in its history? There is not, but unlike America, some of these have never worked for any type of change.
On the down side, I believe the current administration is attempting to turn back the racial clock, that the United States is complicit in the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza, and that our political system increasingly resembles a billionaire oligarchy more than a functioning democracy.
Unlike Professor Glaude, however, I do not see America’s story as one of unrelenting darkness. I see a nation engaged in a continual struggle to fulfill the ideals proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. Rather than signaling America’s decline, I believe the turmoil of the present moment—from domestic political extremism to the wars in Gaza and Iran—has awakened a majority of Americans to the need to defend democracy and reclaim our highest ideals. And that will become obvious in the mid-term and the 2028 elections.
But first we blacks must take a good look at ourselves. No longer is our problem the lynching that Professor Glaude constantly reminds us of, but rather black souls butchering black souls in high numbers, as the race itself looks the other way and acknowledges only blacks who die at the hands of whites. In the last 10 years, with black Americans at 13.7 percent of the population, 54 percent of all the known murders were black. And the figure is more horrifying since most killings are committed by males, which cuts that 13.7 percentage of the population in half.
Professor Glaude falls short by assigning race as the primary explanation for our present condition and fails to see that we as black people have agency that has not always been utilized as well as it could have been. We as a race seem to have forgotten that the human evolutionary process would have been a failed project if not for the two-parent family. Other animal offspring are born with the necessary hardware and software; however, human children need at least 17 years to become independent, and if the socialization process is handled sloppily, problems emerge.
Denial of our complicity and absorbing ourselves in the blame of others blinds us to the causes of our failures; it tells us that we lack agency as a result of a brutal history and that anti-black whites are in complete control of our destiny, as though they were psychological slave owners.
Only about 44.6 percent of black children today are raised in two-parent homes. Family instability contributes to poverty, educational struggles, crime, and reduced workforce participation, etc.
Civic engagement is another concern. In the 2024 presidential election, despite having a black candidate on the Democratic ticket, only about 59.6 percent of eligible black voters cast ballots, and approximately 15 percent of those voters supported Donald Trump. If we are serious about improving our future, we must examine not only the barriers placed before us but also the choices we make ourselves.
America’s 250th anniversary should not be a celebration of perfection. It should be a celebration of progress—of a nation that has repeatedly confronted its deepest contradictions and, however imperfectly, moved closer to the ideals upon which it was founded. That is the America I love, and that is the America I believe will eventually bring the second Enlightenment.
John Albert Washington is an octogenarian who has earned his daily bread, first, as an Army paratrooper and then, later in civilian life, as a computer support technician, two careers from which he has now achieved a double retirement. In and around these occupations, he fed his family with janitorial work, factory labor, and long-haul trucking, while also managing the completion of 2 years of college during the journey. Though he is not academically credentialed, he feels his short school life expanded his ability to think broadly and enhanced his analytical thinking skills. As a center-left liberal, he holds firmly that values like family commitment, self-sufficiency, and personal responsibility are not merely conservative but also deeply liberal ideals. He has published in Quillette and has two previous articles in the Journal of Free Black Thought: “Black Culture and the Euro-American Collective Brain,” “Blaming Racism Won’t Cut It,” “The Unraveling of the Black Family,” “The Brother War,” “‘Uplift Suasion’ vs. Dysfunctional Black Behavior,” “Pathways to Manhood: The Military vs. the Gang,” “The Truth Is in the Mirror,” and “The Vote My Grandfather Never Had.'“ He lives in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
I’m so happy another article by the great John Albert Washington! I hope you had a wonderful 4th of July, sir! It’s America’s 250th Anniversary something all of us regardless of political views or race should be happy about and we should all be very proud of what our country has achieved. But Eddie Glaude is not and says so quite openly in his book and on MSNBC. He largely only focuses on the horrors of America’s past. This he believes is what defines America. Eddie Glaude has an impressive knowledge of both American and black history and is a most eloquent speaker and writer. But he is 100% wrong about our country and is all about black victimhood. Eddie Glaude was born in 1968 after all the amazing progress America made on race started to take hold. Mr. Washington on the other hand was born in 1945 in the South, so he unlike Professor Glaude, actually saw Jim Crow up close and personal. He has seen both the worst and best America has to offer. He saw the poverty and racial oppression of the Jim Crow era and the horrors of the Vietnam War. Through it all, he never lost his love for America and kept proudly saluting old glory. Never doubt his knowledge of the dark side. For example, he once spoke to his cousin who asked him about if he remembered seeing a black man hanging from a utility pole. Mr. Washington did not as he was not there at the time. But the incident indeed did take place. His cousins were with Mr. Washington’s uncle and aunt driving through Rutherfordton Country, North Carolina in the early 1950s. When all of a sudden, they saw something horrific and that they would never forget, a black man who’d been lynched hanging from a utility pole. His cousins were terrified and started screaming. His aunt and uncle immediately ordered them to be quiet and look straight ahead. Someone would come around and cut him down later they said.
Mr. Washington grew up in the shadow of that evil. He grew up in the shadow of racial discrimination, second-class citizenship, blacks being denied the vote, lynching, medical experiments, red lining, housing covenants, poll taxes, literacy tests, and racial violence from law enforcement, white mobs and groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council. He grew up in a time where racial demagogues like George Wallace, Storm Thurmond, James Eastland, Herman Talmedge, Lester Maddox, Jimmie Davis, Ross Barnett, and Orval Faubus reigned supreme, the Lost Cause view of the Civil War was taught in schools across the South and interracial marriage was against the law and was considered a felony in many states. But none of this dimmed his love for America. This being the case, Mr. Washington possess a reference point to trace America’s racial progress. He can chart both its failures and its extraordinary progress. Mr. Washington sees the Declaration of Independence and I agree, as a living promise and a moral idea that has challenged each generation of Americans to move our country closer to its higher ideals and its fullest humanity. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and the 1960s marked one of the greatest advances in moral consciousness in our history. Work remains to be done, but there can be no doubt we’ve made extraordinary progress. To deny any of this is to deny one of the more remarkable achievements of democracy. America is not a finished creation but a living experiment, that is continually evolving more and more toward a higher moral consciousness and God willing, a second Enlightenment.
Mr. Washington saw this remarkable evolution first hand when he was in the military. During his twenty years of military service, he raised his children at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He would look out the window and see his children playing with their buddies who were white, black, Latino, Asian, and mixed-race. At one time, an American Indian couple also lived on the base with white, black, Latino, Asian, and mixed-race families too. The kids didn’t give a d*** about race and due to military camaraderie those families were less focused on race than they otherwise would have been. This would not have been the case in the 30s, 40s or 50s I would note as the military in those times was strictly racially segregated and there was much resistance to President Truman’s executive order to desegregating the military. So much resistance that President Eisenhower had to complete it a whole presidency and many years later. During World War II, black soldiers were treated like s***. The Military Police watched them much more closely and punished them a lot more harshly than white soldiers. MPs would beat them up if they caught them with white women. Black soldiers were executed at much higher rates than white soldiers. Black soldiers contracted STDs at higher rates than white soldiers because they weren’t allowed to go to mainstream brothels that white soldiers frequented. They faced bigotry and hatred from within their own military and weren’t allowed to serve in combat. But fast forward more than thirty years later, and people of all races live together in the military with no problems. That racial harmony is now spreading around the world. Indeed the statement that “all men are created equal” from the preamble of the Declaration of Independence is already being lived out in America and around the globe.
Neither Mr. Washington nor myself are blind to America’s failures. To an extent, racial discrimination still exists, social challenges for women and minorities exist, LGBTQ+ people still do not have full equal rights, it is still legal in some states to pay people with disabilities sub-minimum wages, the racial insensitivity of the Trump administration, the shocking rise of antisemitism in this country to 1930s levels, the widespread xenophobia and Islamophobia we’re seeing, wealth inequality, our broken healthcare system, our broken public education system, and the foreign policy messes we left behind in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria to name a few. But our many flaws don’t change how great our nation is. Nor is America’s story one of unrelenting darkness. Rather our nation has been engaged in a constant struggle to fulfill the ideals proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. The turmoil of the present moment is very unfortunate, but it has a silver lining. That being that it has awakened a majority of Americans of the need to defend democracy and reclaim our highest ideals. As to black America, they must take a good hard look at themselves. Professor Glaude is 100% wrong to solely blame race or even to primarily blame race for what ails black America. Let’s be clear here, employment discrimination, racial profiling, voter suppression, hate crimes, police brutality, judges and courts giving black defendants harsher sentences than white defendants for the same crime, etc. are all very real. But in 2026, it is primarily the internal issues that plague black America that are the biggest issue facing the black community. 70% of black children are born of wedlock, 50% of the prison population is black, 45% of the prison population are young black people, the lack of black fathers in the home, the high crime rates in black communities, the shockingly high rates of black on black crime, the prevalence of antisemitism as well as anti-white and anti-Asian racism in the black community, a majority of black students flunk the ACT, a majority of black students drop out of high school, and the high rates of black boys being expelled from school regardless of the race of the school board are all problems white racism can’t account for.
On the 250th Anniversary of this great country, black Americans should be proud of how far they’ve come and of America and seek to look within in order to get back on track as a community. Black Americans must reject the doom and gloom view of America and its history peddled by the likes of Professor Glaude and embrace black patriotism, do some crucial self-reflection as a community and stop blaming racism for all their problems. That is unhelpful and will only hold them back. Someone who is victim will never be able to do self-reflection and will blame someone else for all their problems. “I don’t have the job I want, the car I want, the wife I want because they s****** me!” that’s how victims think. So they will always be stuck in that nasty cycle and never able to climb out of the hole they keep digging themselves deeper into. Black America has achieved so much as of America’s 250th birthday and that should be celebrated by black leaders and organizations across the country. But it is not because they think that it is better to just bash America and western civilization and that will magically make everything all better. But there is a better way. That being to take an honest look at black America’s house and get it in order. Instead of looking to likes of Eddie Glaude, Ta-Nieshi Coates, Nikki Hannah-Jones, and Dr. Cornel West they should look to America’s black founding fathers and mothers for inspiration like Crispus Attucks, Rev. Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, Prince Hall, Lemuel Haynes, Peter Salem, Salem Poor, James Forten, and James Lafayette Smith.
I consider you incredibly wrong about the IRGC and its Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi proxies - none of those are forces of good or democracy. If anything, they’re genocidal racist imperialists. I do appreciate what you wrote about America. Thank you.