Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

This week's special episode features Glenn Laury. He's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He's a frequent contributor to

City Journal, and he's the Merton P. Stoltz professor at Brown University. Last week,

at a Manhattan Institute event, Glenn delivered a talk entitled The Case for Black Patriotism.

A subject about which he's written for City Journal in the past, were delighted to share his remarks on the podcast.

Thanks for coming out, everyone.

I'm honored to have this opportunity to address this important question.

I'm a black American intellectual in an age of persisting racial inequality in my country.

I'm an Ivy League College professor and a descendant of slaves.

I'm a beneficiary of the Civil Rights Revolution, which made possible for me a life that my forebears could only have dreamed of.

I'm a patriot who loves the country.

I'm a man of the West.

I'm an inheritor of its great traditions. I've said this many times.

Tolstoy is mine. Dickens is mine. Newton and Maxwell and Einstein are mine. Franklin,

Hamilton and Adams are mine.

That's my heritage.

So what are my responsibilities?

I feel compelled to represent the interests of my people,

but that reference is not unambiguous.

I'm an intellectual at a moment of racial reckoning.

And I declare right here and right now for all the world to hear that no matter what the political turmoil that envelopes us may be, my fundamental responsibility is to stay in touch with reality and to insist that others do as well. That's what I'm about here today. So brace yourselves. I'm going to make a case for

unabashed black patriotism for the forthright embrace of American nationalism by black people.

...