Professor Breaks Down U.S. Racism, Trump’s ‘Ugliness’ In 3 Powerful Minutes

A Princeton professor broke down racism in America in a now-viral video this week, calling out President Donald Trump for being the “manifestation of the ugliness that’s in us.”

On Monday, Eddie Glaude Jr., the chair of Princeton’s Department of African American Studies, sat down with MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” to discuss the shooting that killed 22 people in El Paso, Texas, over the weekend. The gunman is suspected of holding white supremacist views, which has reinvigorated a national conversation about the impact of Trump’s racist rhetoric.

“America’s not unique in its sins. As a country, we’re not unique in our evils,” Glaude says in a 3-minute clip from the segment. “I think where we may be singular is our refusal to acknowledge them. And the legends and myths we tell about our inherent goodness, to hide and cover and conceal so that we can maintain a kind of willful ignorance that protects our innocence.”

Glaude explained the country’s long history of refusing to contend with racism, citing the rise of the tea party and how many Americans attributed that to “economic populism” because they didn’t want to acknowledge that it was about race.

But “social scientists were already writing that what was driving the tea party were anxieties about demographic shifts,” he added. “That the country was changing, that they were seeing these racially ambiguous babies on Cheerios commercials, that the country wasn’t quite feeling like it was a white nation anymore.”