Welcome to Words Matter. I'm Elise Jordan along with Steve Schmidt. Our goal is to promote

objective reality. As a wise man once said, everyone is entitled to their own opinion,

not their own facts. Words have power, and words have consequences. Joining me today

is our executive producer and my sometime co-host, Adam Levine.

Well, thank you, Elise. It's great to be here.

I'm so happy to be here today with my good friend, Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr. Eddie is the James S.

McDonald Distinguished University Professor of Religion in African American Studies and the

chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. I have had a great

time getting to know Eddie as a fellow MSNBC analyst, and we have the unique distinction of both

being Native Mississippians. And Eddie is one of the most brilliant people in my world, and I'm

so excited to have him here to talk with us. Well, I'm just so delighted to be here with you.

Finally, we get a chance to talk. I have just read your 2015 book, Democracy in Black, How Race

Still Enslaves the American Soul. And I was impressed with how many punches you throw. You really

are incredibly unsparing. And in a way that I think people hesitate to talk about race, you

don't pull any punches when it comes to be at President Bush, be at President Obama,

anyone, everyone. You're pretty equal opportunity. And that's why I feel the book is so important

because at the end of the day, it is a book about opportunity. So the book starts out in Ferguson

in 2014. And can you talk about why you decided to start the book in Ferguson, Missouri?

You know, in some ways it was the irony. First of all, let me just say thank you for saying that

about the book. Obviously, you're a partisan in the sense that you have a position,

that you have a set of commitments that animate what you take yourself to be up to.

But what you try to do is you try to be balanced and thoughtful in the way in which you put

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