Quote of the Day

The formative experience around American authoritarianism has been the treatment of people of African descent and people of Indigenous descent. If you don’t examine how democracy has died for people of color in this country, you might miss how freedom fades not in big bombastic moments, but in slow ongoing repression.

And if you exclude the voices of scholars and writers who understand an anti-democratic, fascist order as heritage, rather than an aberration, you might miss how democracy has before been pulled back from the brink.

– Jelani Cobb
Quoted in Sandhya Dirks’ article,
“Biden’s So-White Historians May Miss
Crucial Points on Saving Democracy”
NPR News
September 4, 2022

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Historian Nancy MacLean: The Threat to American Democracy Is at “Red-Alert”
• “Come for the Racism, Stay for the Autocracy”
• William D. Lindsey: Quote of the Day – August 12, 2022
• Heather Cox Richardson: It’s Up to Us to Prove That Democracy Is Still a Viable Form of Government
• “How Can One Overreact to a Mortal Threat to American Democracy?”
• A Deeper Perspective on What’s Really Attacking Democracy
• “The Coup Attempt on Jan. 6th Was a Warning for What’s to Come If We Don’t Act”
• “My Biggest Worry Is for My Country”
• Republicans Pose an “Existential Threat” to American Democracy
• The Big Switch
• The Republican Party in a Nutshell
• Republicans Don’t Care About American Democracy
• Heather Cox Richardson on Combating the Republican Party’s “Rigging of the System”
• David Remnick: Quote of the Day – February 13, 2021
• Dan Rather on America’s “Moment of Reckoning”
• Michael Harriot: Quote of the Day – January 6, 2021
• Insurrection at the United States Capitol
• “We Have an Emergency On Our Hands”: Marianne Williamson On the “Freefall” of American Democracy
• Fascism Is Upon Us