On July 14’s edition of Democracy Now, Department of African American studies chair at Princeton University and author of “Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul,” Eddie Glaude and his son, Langston, discuss leaving the ballot blank because neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton are suitable candidates.
In the clip, the two say that both presumptive nominees are deplorable and that Black voters not in a battleground state should abstain from voting.
Eddie Glaude: Yeah, I’m not — you know, I believe, like José Saramago in Seeing, that wonderful novel written by that Portuguese writer, Nobel Prize winner 1996, that we should blank out, that those of us who are not in the battleground states, that those of us who are in blue states or red states, that we should just leave the ballot blank. As Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener says, “I prefer not.” I can’t stand neither one of them.
Langston Glaude: I agree 100 percent. You know, there needs to be a stance amongst the people that we are not going to simply accept the status quo any longer, especially when the status quo is the very thing that is costing us our lives and our livelihoods. So, I personally don’t find either one of the candidates favorable in any sense, because, again, a change needs to come on the behalf of the people, and I don’t believe either one is prepared to bring that change in the manner that we need it.
