Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

What I've chosen to do with my life is by definition, by definition requires solitude.

It requires a kind of loneliness, especially when people want you to sing in the chorus.

And you think what they're singing is wrong.

I experienced that from 2008 to 2016 with the Obama administration.

But that's another story.

Tell us more.

No, in Democracy in Black, I was really critical of the Obama administration.

I wanted him to do more.

And many people were delighted to get invitations to the White House and

They were delighted by the symbolism of a Black president.

And I was more distraught by what was happening to Black communities.

And so I wrote a book and called him a confidence man in the line of Melville.

I'm still not living that one down, along with some other things I wrote.

But if you're going to speak the truth,

If you're going to bear witness and make the suffering real, you're going to risk loneliness.

But in the midst of it all, you have to find the community of love that will love you to death, no matter your faults, who will give you the space to replenish so that you can join the fight again.

Oh, yeah.

He got to the heart of the matter.

You know, I call him Jimmy because his closest friends called him Jimmy.

And even though I never got to know him, I feel like, you know, he walks with me.