Jackson: What if the goal isn't to save your political opponents, but to build a world where their views are simply irrelevant? That's the provocative idea we're wrestling with today, inspired by one of America's most powerful thinkers. Olivia: It’s a radical thought, isn't it? It completely reframes the nature of social change. And it’s at the heart of the book we’re diving into: Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. Jackson: That’s a title that feels like it was written yesterday. Olivia: It practically was. Glaude is a distinguished professor of African-American Studies at Princeton, and he wrote this book right in the thick of the Trump era. He saw this direct, chilling parallel between the backlash James Baldwin faced after the Civil Rights Movement and the resurgence of white nationalism we’re seeing today. The book was widely acclaimed, a bestseller, because it hit such a raw nerve. Jackson: So he’s using Baldwin as a guide to navigate our own mess. Where does he even start with such a huge, tangled topic? What's the core problem he's getting at through Baldwin? Olivia: He starts with a single, devastating idea that Baldwin returned to again and again. He calls it "the lie."

Jackson: The lie. That sounds ominous. What exactly is it? Is it just a simple way of saying that people are racist? Olivia: It’s so much deeper than that. For Baldwin, and for Glaude, "the lie" isn't just about individual prejudice. It's the foundational myth America tells itself. It's the story of American innocence, of exceptionalism, the idea that this country is fundamentally good and always progressing towards a more perfect union. The lie is what allows the country to ignore the brutal contradiction at its core: the chasm between its creed of freedom and its history of slavery, segregation, and systemic violence. Jackson: Okay, so it’s a national self-deception. A story we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night. Olivia: Exactly. And Glaude makes this idea so visceral right from the start of the book with a personal story. In 2018, he travels to Heidelberg, Germany, to receive an award. He’s feeling this sense of relief, of escaping the daily racial tensions of America under Trump. He’s literally seeking a refuge. Jackson: I can imagine that feeling. A chance to finally breathe. Olivia: But on his very first day, he walks out of the train station and witnesses four German policemen piled on top of a screaming Black man, one officer kneeling on his back, pressing his face into the concrete. The crowd just watches, impassive. And in that moment, the hope of refuge shatters. He realizes there is no "elsewhere" that's truly safe from this global reality. The lie isn't just an American problem. Jackson: Wow. So there's no escape. That's a brutal opening. It immediately makes you feel the weight of what he's talking about. It’s not an abstract political theory; it’s a punch to the gut. Olivia: And that’s the point. The lie creates what Glaude calls the "value gap"—the unspoken belief that white lives matter more than others. It’s what allows a crowd to watch that kind of brutality and feel nothing. It’s what allows a nation to celebrate its own progress while ignoring the wreckage it leaves behind. Jackson: That feels so familiar. It’s like after Obama was elected, there was this widespread narrative that America was 'post-racial.' We’d fixed it! And then... wham. The rise of the Tea Party, the murder of Trayvon Martin, the explosion of Black Lives Matter, and the election of Donald Trump. Is that what Glaude means by the 'after times'? Olivia: That is precisely what he means. Baldwin lived through his own 'after times.' The 1960s started with so much hope—the March on Washington, the Civil Rights Act. But then came the assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. Then came the riots, the backlash, the election of Nixon. Baldwin saw the country betray its promises in real time. Jackson: It’s a cycle, then. A moment of hope, followed by a violent regression. Olivia: A violent regression fueled by the lie. Baldwin witnessed it firsthand in 1963, when he went to Selma, Alabama, for a voter registration drive. He described the scene, seeing Black men and women standing in line for hours, hungry and terrorized, just for the right to vote. And surrounding them were police with their helmets, guns, clubs, and cattle prodders. He said the helmets looked like a garden of so many colors. It was this surreal, horrifying image of state power designed to crush the most basic act of democracy. Jackson: That image is chilling. And to see that, to feel that rage and impotence… it must change you. Olivia: It shattered him. He said his fear was "swallowed up by fury." He realized the country wasn't just slow to change; it was actively, violently resisting it. This is the betrayal that sits at the center of the book. It’s the moment you realize the story you’ve been told about your country is a lie. Jackson: Okay, so if you're Baldwin, and you see this brutal reality and feel this deep betrayal... what do you do? It sounds completely crushing. How do you not just give up or get consumed by that fury? Olivia: That is the million-dollar question. And Baldwin’s answer is one of the most fascinating and counterintuitive parts of the book. He had to find what Glaude calls an "elsewhere."

Jackson: An elsewhere? What does that mean? Like a fantasy world? Olivia: Not at all. A literal, physical elsewhere. For Baldwin, it was Paris. He moved there in 1948, a young, broke, unknown writer escaping the suffocating racism of America. He famously said that in Paris, he was freed from the American racial paradigm. He said, "I didn’t have to walk around with one half of my brain trying to please Mr. Charlie and the other half trying to kill him... I felt that I was left alone in Paris to become whatever I wanted to become." Jackson: Hold on, that sounds a bit like running away. How is leaving the country a form of fighting back? I think a lot of people today would see that as abandoning the struggle. Olivia: That’s the skeptical question, and it's the right one to ask. But for Baldwin, it wasn't about abandonment. It was about survival and gaining perspective. Glaude quotes him reflecting on being in a place where you don't know the language: "Words do not interrupt your vision. Silence allows you to see differently." Jackson: Huh. So it’s like stepping out of a loud, chaotic room to finally be able to think clearly. You can see the patterns you missed when you were in the middle of the noise. Olivia: Exactly. He had to get outside of America to truly see America. He needed that distance to diagnose the sickness without being infected by it. Later in his life, he found another 'elsewhere' in Istanbul, Turkey. He lived there on and off for a decade. It was a place where he could rest, write, and process the trauma of the 'after times'—especially after MLK's assassination. It was in these places of refuge that he wrote some of his most powerful work, like The Fire Next Time and No Name in the Street. Jackson: So the 'elsewhere' is a strategic retreat. It's a place to sharpen your tools before you go back into the fight. Olivia: A place to sharpen your tools and heal your wounds. Because the fight is soul-crushing. Glaude drives this point home with another powerful story. He travels to the South of France to visit the site of Baldwin's last home, a beautiful old villa where he lived for years. But when he gets there, it’s a construction site. The house is being demolished to make way for luxury apartments. Jackson: Oh, that’s heartbreaking. Olivia: It’s this perfect, tragic metaphor. The physical refuge, the 'elsewhere,' is literally being turned into rubble by the forces of capital and indifference. Glaude writes that his heart broke seeing the ruins, because it mirrored the wreckage Baldwin saw in America in his final years. It poses the question: What do you do when even your refuge is destroyed? Jackson: Right. If you can't escape to an 'elsewhere,' what's left? Olivia: And that's the key. Baldwin wasn't running away; he was regrouping. Because after witnessing the ruins of the civil rights movement, and then the ruins of his own sanctuary, he had to figure out what comes next. He had to find a way to begin again.

Jackson: So how did he begin again? After all that disillusionment, where did he find the energy? Olivia: He made a crucial shift in his thinking. A shift that Glaude argues is the most urgent lesson for us today. For much of his early career, Baldwin was writing to white America, trying to explain Black pain, trying to appeal to the nation's conscience, trying to save them from their own lie. But in his later work, he essentially gave up on that project. Jackson: He gave up on saving white people? That’s a bold move. Olivia: It was a revolutionary one. He realized that white Americans were, as he put it, a "broken motor." He said, "It’s been said, and it’s been said, and it’s been said. It’s been heard and not heard." The burden of changing white minds was a trap. So he shifted his focus. He started writing more directly to and for Black people, focusing on their survival, their beauty, their future. Jackson: That's a huge shift. I'm thinking of that incredible line he wrote, which Glaude highlights: "You're the nigger, baby, it isn't me." Olivia: Electrifying, isn't it? It's him flipping the entire script. He’s saying the "Negro problem" is not a problem with Black people. It's a problem with the white people who invented the category of "nigger" to justify their own power and absolve their own sins. The burden is on them to deal with their own pathology. It’s not our job to fix you. Jackson: That feels so incredibly relevant to today's debates. The emotional labor, the expectation that marginalized groups have to constantly explain their existence to the majority. But if you stop trying to save them, what does 'beginning again' actually look like for us, now? It sounds so... big and abstract. Olivia: Glaude makes it concrete by pointing to the work of people like Bryan Stevenson and his Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. The museum directly confronts the history of slavery, lynching, and mass incarceration. It tells the truth, without flinching. That, for Glaude, is the first step of beginning again: a moral reckoning. You have to look at the ruins of the past honestly. Jackson: You have to sift through the wreckage. Olivia: You have to. You can't build anything new on a rotten foundation. And this leads to the ultimate call to action in the book: the need for a "third American founding." The first founding was based on slavery. The second, after the Civil War, was a betrayed promise. A third founding would require us to finally close the value gap, to build a society where the lie has no place. Jackson: But how? That still feels monumental. Olivia: It is. But Baldwin’s answer wasn't a political program. It was a moral and spiritual one. Glaude ends with one of Baldwin's most beautiful and challenging quotes, from his last novel: "Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again." Jackson: Wow. So it’s not about a magic solution. It’s a choice. A daily, difficult choice to refuse to give up your responsibility for creating a better world. Olivia: It’s the choice to invent hope every single day, even when you’re standing in the ruins. It’s not about optimism; it's about courage.

Jackson: This is such a heavy, but also strangely empowering, book. It doesn't offer easy answers, which I appreciate. It’s not a five-step plan to fix racism. Olivia: Not at all. Ultimately, Glaude shows us that Baldwin's message isn't about finding a neat solution. It's about having the courage to live in the wreckage of our history without being destroyed by it. The real work isn't about changing the minds of your opponents, which can be an exhausting and fruitless task. Jackson: Right, back to that opening idea. Olivia: Exactly. The work is about building communities of love and solidarity, and about committing to tell a truer story about who we are and who we want to be. The goal is to create a world so rooted in truth and justice that the lie no longer has any air to breathe. Jackson: It’s about making a different world possible, not just winning an argument. It leaves you with a powerful question: What is the lie you're still telling yourself, about yourself or your country, and what would it take for you to begin again? Olivia: That's the question for all of us. We’d love to hear your thoughts on that. Find us on our socials and share what 'beginning again' means to you. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.