S E1331: In Class with Carr, Ep. 330: “Belonging Beyond 1776: The Semiquincentennial Blues”
About this episode
The episode discusses the implications of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence amidst current political crises in the U.S.
As the United States notes the 250th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, it confronts its deepest crisis of structural political integrity since its Civil War and Reconstruction. The ritual corridor between Juneteenth and July 4 exposes the widening gap between US founding mythologies and its lived political realities. This year’s observance arrives amid the Trump administration’s transformation of the government’s America250 commemoration into a religio-fascist, cult of personality-driven “Freedom 250” spectacle, while the Supreme Court’s 6-3/5-4 Birthright Citizenship ruling in Trump v. Barbara saw four justices prepared to abandon the Reconstruction/Second Founding itself by effectively rewriting the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Taken together with renewed efforts to restrict immigration, weaken the administrative state, and redefine citizenship, these developments raise the central question of this year’s semiquincentennial: what becomes of a polity built on competing definitions of belonging when its white nationalist-fueled authority permanently fractures? Using the Africana Studies framework, today’s session continues the work of reframing…
More episodes of In Class with Carr
- S E1333: In Class with Carr, Ep. 332: "Rock the Vote!"
- S E1332: In Class with Carr, Ep. 331: "Odds and Ends"
- S E1330: In Class with Carr, Ep. 329: Belonging in the Liberation Corridor
- S E1329: In Class with Carr, Ep. 328: Celebrations
- S E1328: In Class with Carr, Ep. 327: Cupping the World
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