(From BenIndy contributor Roger Straw: Professor Eddie Glaude is a favorite author and one of my heros. His clarity on issues of U.S. history and culture and the reality of longstanding and pervasive racism in the U.S. is inspiring and challenging – and dead on righteous and true. Listen to his recent interview…and note my transcription below.)

White nationalist agenda: Professor slams Trump’s racist, sexist DEI comments

 Chris Jansing Reports, MSNBC on YouTube: Professor Eddie Glaude interview 31 Jan 2025

Partial transcript, by Roger Straw, Benicia Independent, Professor Eddie Glaude on 31 Jan 2025:

1:24
It’s important for us to take Donald Trump at his word. There is no evidence to suggest that diversity had anything to do with the loss of 67 people. And what you see, in no uncertain terms, is the way DEI is being used for a white Christian Nationalist agenda. This had nothing to do with merit. This has everything to do, to my mind – because yesterday revealed it – because there’s no evidence to correlate these two considerations. He’s not interested in merit. The assumption is, that if you have women, if you have black people or brown people, if you have a diverse workforce, that by definition, the standards have been compromised. That is a racist, a sexist view.

So what does it mean, Chris, that people are taking this seriously? If we understand it for what it is, an item in a white Christian Nationalist agenda, and you see businesses and government following suit, what are we to conclude? So I think yesterday was quite revealing, and the policies and the decisions that are being made now are as revealing as well.

3:08
I mean, how many McKinsey reports do we have to cite about the value and the power of a diverse workforce? Of a diverse leadership team? So we know that’s the truth. We know that’s to be the case. So what we’re seeing here, or witnessing here, is the capitulation to a white Nationalist agenda. And I want to stop dancing around this, Chris. We need to understand what we are confronting. We need to understand what the tattoos mean on Pete Hegseth. We need to understand what this particular decision is actually revealing. CRT, DEI, ‘woke’ – all of this is aimed at cultivating and stoking white grievance. And if we keep dancing around it, and keep capitulating to it, we’re going to find ourselves, shall we say, harkening back to the days where people like me supposedly knew our place – and people like you, Chris.

6:04
We have to be clear about our values. We have to be clear about who we believe ourselves to be. What is the nature of the America that he’s putting forward? What does it mean that for a large number of our fellows, that we have to endure this sort of view? Right? And what are its implications for the very way in which this country goes about its business? I mean, we are barreling towards the 250th anniversary of the nation. And here we are, grappling with the contradiction that has haunted this place since its founding. We have a president who believes that this country must be a white nation in the vein of old Europe. He talks about immigration, Chris, but we know birthright citizenship has nothing to do with the “crisis at the border” (quote unquote). It has everything to do with great replacement theory. We have to start being honest with what’s in front of us. Because if we’re not being honest, we’re being complicit. And so we’ve got to get clear about the values that animate the very country we claim to be so committed to.