The central flaw is the idea that if you teach people about how some group has been mistreated it will make them more compassionate and understanding. For a size-able percentage of the population when you teach them those facts they think, “Wow they must have deserved it.”
It’s the same when some people find out someone has cancer or their spouse ran off or they lost their job. They think, “Wow, they really must have deserved it. Because bad things don’t happen to good people like me. Bad things happen to bad people who deserve them.”
I often think this is one of the major strategic issues with a lot of people to the left of the GOP. They love to build social weapons but never seem to understand that once you make a weapon someone else might pick it up and use it against you.
Well, thing is, upper middle class doesn't really care if they lose politically. What did Trump do to them? Lower their taxes? It doesn't really matter. I think they're perfectly content to "lose" a fight of nebulous woke stuff.
This has been a major issue on the left for a while now. The middle class can afford to fail nobly. It allows you to benefit from your privilege while also exculpating yourself.
The Contact Theory seems much more effective at promoting empathy and compassion, but that's out of favor because it means people can change through relationships. Apparently, people cannot change their minds at all, and their relationships will always have a power differential, so it's useless.
Well the Contact Theory essentially states that the best way to reduce prejudice is through interpersonal contact. But current social justice orthodoxy claims that white privilege and oppression of POC is inescapable; that any relationship between a white person and a person of color is going to be tainted by the power differential. So even though five years ago the diversity and inclusion expert Verna Myers went on NPR and said the best way to combat racism is through contact, now has a course on her site called Talking Boldly: The Evolving Role of White Men in the Workplace. It's no longer enough to believe that interpersonal relationships can broaden horizons and grow understanding; now it's essential for, say, white men to understand how they are specifically a problem before they can, I dunno, work with someone who isn't a white man.
I don't exactly consider myself an optimist with regard to human behavior, but I simply don't think this is true. Like, what kind of maniac blames someone for developing cancer?
I also don't think this is true more broadly. There may be some amount of people who think, for example, that Jewish people deserved the holocaust...but the vast majority? I mean, that's just demonstrably absurd, yes?
"Like, what kind of maniac blames someone for developing cancer?"
Tons of people's first thought, when they hear about some tragedy, is to try and find a reason the person brought it on themselves. Did they not eat right, not exercise enough, drink too much, smoke, etc? Because if you can blame them then you can assure yourself that if you don't do those things that bad thing won't happen to you.
Part of the issue with these programs is that good people like you can't conceive of that kind of thought process.
I think you're right. I suspect the average 16 year old being taught about slavery doesn't think "they must have deserved it"; they think "this is boring, how long to lunch?"
If you believe as you say in the last paragraph, then why did you write earlier about how it is more important for leftists to learn history than theory?
Because a leftist by definition is already committed to leftism, and because that kind of self education will always be a more effective and consistent driver of belief than any curriculum imposed by somebody else.
I had trouble understanding the claim that what people know about history doesn’t affect how they act or think as well; but it sounds like your skepticism about that is specifically that what young people are taught in school about history has any bearing on their thoughts and actions, not what people learn about history outside of a that environment. Do I understand that right?
I think that some people make concerted efforts to learn about and interrogate history in a way that informs their consciousness, and perhaps in so doing influence their behavior. I think most people who learn in school are about as interested in it as they are in any other subject, which is to say not very, and I think that even among those who have accepted a given factual accounting of history, the tendency is to think "oh that's interesting" and not to integrate it into day-to-day thinking at all.
I'm currently reading the book and was pretty unfamiliar with what the 1619 project was. Like you, I'm no historian, but I 100% agree that the world and history are more complex than just one event. With that said, as I read this book, there are a LOT of assumptions about things happening in the world today that the authors link to racism without strong arguments to back them. I've read a ton of books on racial issues in the United States, and many create compelling arguments. With this one, it just labels things as racist or linked to slavery without making any type of valid argument, and that bothers me.
PS - shoot me an email and lets get you on the podcast. thanks <3
I started reading 400 Souls a while back, and while I found it interesting and at times compelling, there were several instances where I was like "...huh?" I had to quit reading it so as not to get overly annoyed. Like, there'd be this interesting essay about life for a slave in the decade of 1680, and the essay would end with something along the lines of "and therefore, Brionna Taylor and Eric Garner." The threads between something that happened 300 years ago and five years ago were ephemeral at best but treated as conclusive.
Time-jumping is rampant in this field, I suspect because writers are attempting to steal the emotional salience of events such as Emmet Till's death or the horrors of slavery to make later events seem even more outrageous, or as an attempt to tie things that don't exactly have to do with racism to racism.
Floyd's death, for example, is difficult to pin on racism--the facts of the case don't fit, so you have to make a generalized argument about subconscious disregard for black pain and life which, frankly, doesn't have the emotional resonance of "he killed him because he *hated* him". But if you put it in a line-up with a bunch of hate crimes, you can steal that outrage, and make Floyd's death seem like a continuing pattern of abuse going back hundreds of years, instead of (what I would say, having watched the entire trial) a deeply unfortunate collision of factors that led to a man's death without anyone deliberately wanting such an outcome.
Chauvin may not have wanted to murder George Floyd, but his actions demonstrate that he didn't not want to murder him. He wasn't even embarrassed or concerned by the fact that it was caught on video while it was happening.
Maybe it has nothing to do with racism, but I think the fact that Chauvin had a history of kneeling on black men's necks but not non-black men's isn't without significance.
The reason George Floyd's death may have had a bigger impact, at least here in Minneapolis, is because the MPD has a history of killing black people in the last few years. Philando Castile is probably the most famous previous case here.
Like, it's worth remembering that the George Floyd protests began locally before anyone outside of Minnesota heard about it. It's not until buildings caught fire that anyone outside the Twin Cities paid attention.
But there's a difference in emotional salience between "this guy, if we dig into his history, might have had a pattern of mistreating black people" and "holy shit this guy is nakedly, openly racist and nakedly, openly killed a black person because he hated them." That's why hate crimes are viewed as such a special evil--there's something different between an alleged subconscious (or at least hidden) disregard for some people based on a trait and active malice for people based on that trait. The first one isn't good, by any means, but the latter is excruciating in an entirely different way.
I would say the "special kind of evil" stems primarily from being able to choke a man to death without batting an eye.
And, I mean, we don't know that he didn't do this specifically because he hates black people. I'm not particularly interested in whether it was a hate crime or not. But I think he acted with clear and active malice.
You have to remember, George was 6'3" 240lbs, Mike Brown likewise was 6'6", I'm 6'8" & 270lbs ... us big guy scare the hell outta smaller chaps. Chauvin is 5'9" and 140 lbs. I do my very best to not frighten people, and still I fail often.
Having been a cowboy, when vaccinating, having let large calves up only to have them proceed to kick my ass, I can see that Chauvin was frightened to let George up.
Chauvin is a horrible murderous person. The tension arises between people who point to him and what he did and say “see? This is what white people do on the regular” and people who condemn everything about that situation but don’t see it as the representative image of race relations in 2021.
To be fair, the amount of people who saw the George Floyd murder and decided that all white people are murderers is a shockingly small segment of even the activist population.
I'm sure you saw some people in your social media circles saying such things, maybe even loudly and constantly, but let's not pretend that the majority or even a large minority of the population believes white people are all murderers in waiting.
Of course not. But it's pretty clear that the rallying cry wasn't "punish this murderer" but instead "this is what black/white relations are like." The "I can't breathe" shirts and metaphors about knees on necks aren't incidental. Hence all the massive protests.
Right. A JEDI activist I follow recently posted about how it was crazy how many white people said once they saw the Floyd video and heard him call for his mom, it really humanized the situation. (Without actually citing specific instances of white peoe being like “I couldn’t believe it till I saw it!” Or whatever.) And she went on to discuss how white people have always controlled the dissemination of images of harm on black bodies. She likened the scenario to Emmett Till’s mother purposefully choosing an open casket.
First, it makes total sense from a human psychology standpoint that people *seeing and hearing* something would make it more real and emotive than just reading about it, for example. To me that’s not a failure of “white imagination”; it’s a reflection of how human brains work. And second, I pointed out that the video was taken and posted by a young black woman, so in that way was it not more like Ava Duvernay’s work (she had commented to someone that the imagery of black pain presented in a DuVernay film was different because it came “from the heart of a black woman”) than the lynching imagery disseminated a century ago? But she didn’t respond to my comment.
America's history with regards to race is so bad it doesn't really need embellishment and there is already a deep and rich historiography.
If anything the lies, obfuscations, and poorly supported suppositions of 1619 give plausible deniability to those who want to minimize the worst aspects of America's history.
I think the idea of delving into the reality of lived experience for enslaved people and how that evolved through time is an excellent and fascinating idea. The 1619 project loses me where it goes from a literary history project to an overtly political one, when the politics is clearly radical and controversial.
I nominate Annette Gordon-Reed as an excellent example. Her research on Jefferson and the Hemingses is extensive and sensitive, while not giving TJ a free pass.
Instead of 1619 setting up straw man ('white supremacist history ignores history'), would have loved to see it try to account in good faith why reification of race is a good thing when Fields sisters in Racecraft argued that race is a historical derangement that we should try to free ourselves from.
I’ve come across race is a construct/we must reify race out of the same person’s mouth (literally and in writing) on multiple occasions. There’s got to be a way to address the damage wrought by segregation without continuing to segregate in perpetuity.
Like I said the other day, it's race and identity as Reaganomics. The 1619 stuff was all part of a Trump-induced Moral Panic (or TIMP for short). Like somehow if we take people who are already liberal and make them super Woke, that will create change at the ballot box by itself? Makes no sense if you give it a moment's thought.
Liberals use history in a weird way. They'll say black people are worse off since they were slaves 150 years ago. We now have a meme of land acknowledgements: natives saying their oppressed because of colonialism. But like, that's not it, right? There's certainly problems black and native people face today: lead paint, sentencing disparities, wealth and poverty gaps. Those are the reasons those groups are worse off today. Slavery and colonialism may have ultimately caused those issues, but constantly "centering" them doesn't help today.
Like, I'm Jewish. We've had some bad stuff happen to our people throughout history. But I'm fine because 1) I have my material wealth and 2) there's sufficient legal/social pressure to remove anti-Semitism from any sources of power.
I think it’s obvious why both liberals and conservatives think history is important. It defines who we are. I may think that a lot of the new way of looking at history through a progressive lens has problems but it’s not like ONLY liberals want to an about how history affects us today. Conservatives want that too, they just want different histories. Americans have always taken it for granted that the story of the Pilgrims and of Paul Revere and the Boston Tea Party and the whole Revolution are essential to our understanding of how we became Us, so why is it so hard to understand why some people think understanding slavery in that way is vitally important? It’s all in the past.
Land acknowledgements are pretty silly and hypocritical when they are done by Microsoft executives before zoom meetings, but I see value in the overall concept of adding pre Columbian history to our general American historical context. There were thousands of years of human history and activity that have been mostly invisible to our historical world view. And sometimes those types of changes start with over correction before balancing out.
I'm not fan of the way conservatives use history. In fact, I think it's much worse: they're generally trying to make current inequalities/oppressions seem natural or even good. I also agree that our understanding of history should include more about the natives. Heck, in the US, it would be nice if most people knew anything that occurred outside the US and western Europe.
My point isn't to ignore history. I don't think we should ignore the Holocaust for instance. That would be horrible. The point is there's a lot of ways to interpret the Holocaust and and to use it to understand current and future events. It's definitely a cautionary tale against scapegoating, ethnic nationalism, and a million other things. But the best interpretation is definitely not "it's worse to be Jewish today because different Jewish people suffered"
What do conservatives do with history that you don't like?
Consider the inequalities between South Asian Indians and American Blacks.
South Asian Indians often have little to no English language, they're every bit as black if not often blacker than American Black People. Yet South Asian Indians even South Asian Female Indians have higher earnings than Whites in America.
Explain how South Asian Indians come as recent immigrants, have lower language skills than American Blacks, greater cultural differences, blacker than Blacks, yet are wildly successful, more successful than even White males.
Standard answer to questions such as this are that being an immigrant at all self-selects for people who are self-motivated, resourceful, and capable of changing their circumstances.
It would be amazing if pre-columbian history were added to the general historical curriculum, but i don't see how land acknowledgements lead to that. Kind of similar to the literary canon in schools - I think it's a obviously a good idea to expand the scope of the canon but a lot of the time when people call for it in practice it means that instead of reading the Ramayana alongside the Odyssey or something you just replace all these texts with modern YA novels.
Oh yea I didn't mean to suggest that the first class of people doesn't exist (it obviously does, since I am one). I'll take it on faith that some people really do believe the second thing but most of them seem like they just want to sell their YA novel lol.
It's largely because of the issue Freddie often writes about: it's easier than making real changes. This use of history is easy unlike real change which is hard. Oh, Americans need to be better educated on slavery, and here's some random person who claims their 2nd grade class didn't teach enough about how slavery is evil! See! We need to talk about this!
It's baloney. Americans know slavery existed and it was evil. The third most watched event in American history was Roots. A supermajority of Americans believe slavery still has a large impact on society today. It doesn't translate into, say, support for reparations, because that's a completely separate issue. The idea that you're going to guilt people into somehow supporting material change is a weird fantasy. And, of course, ironically, most Americans do support material changes that would drastically benefit Blacks but politicians don't do anything about that.
Land acknowledgments are the most naked showing of this. I find them repulsive because there's a much, much, much, much more effective option than land acknowledgments: GIVE THE LAND BACK! There's five million American Indians/Native Americans still in this country. They suffer from massive problems rooted in poverty. They're actual living, breathing human beings with problems that would be alleviated with a massive transfer of wealth. I'm pretty sure they'd love to get some land back. And not the land we least want. But it's much easier to scream about how Columbus is evil and you acknowledge the crimes of the past than to actually do anything to fix the crimes of the present.
I thought this article about putting national parks under Native control was a great idea. It's a simple and obvious way to right past wrongs both symbolically and financially. Of course that means no one will talk about it as long as there's a new dumb culture war issue to discuss...
Thanks for this, I've never encountered that idea before but I look forward to reading it. I'm pretty intrigued by the idea of turning over the lands we want to preserve to the people who once had them, especially if it can benefit them financially (while maintaining conservation). But, you're right. It's ridiculous that an idea like this is a "random Atlantic article" while changing the name of a baseball team is probably terabytes of content.
Right? very few of these discourse generators have struck me as politically possible but i think this one is. Of course there would be a lot of pushback and a lot of details to be ironed out but it seems concrete and achievable in the short to medium term (and there's precedent in Australia and New Zealand) in a way a lot of these other topics like reparations or police abolition aren't.
"It's largely because of the issue Freddie often writes about: it's easier than making real changes. This use of history is easy unlike real change which is hard."
A coworker of mine shared the term "bikeshedding" to describe this kind of process in business. Seems applicable here.
It also grinds my gears that we are assuming a bunch of 2nd graders (or 12th graders for that matter) can solve problems adults themselves can't solve.
I could not even begin to tell you what I learned about history in school because it’s been so buried under what I’ve learned and read since. I’m sure it serves as a general foundation and context to make sense of what I later read on my own and contextualized from world events, but it’s definitely not the entire basis of my philosophical beliefs about what it means to be an American or what our country means to the world.
On the other hand, I do think popular histories and popular works of fiction that portray history really do shape the way a certain sector of Americans think. King Leopold’s Ghost made a huge impact on me. MAUS, the graphic novel about the holocaust, I read as a kid off my parents shelves and as my introduction to that historical event it’s now inseparable from how I think about it even after all I’ve since learned, and certainly stands out more than anything I read in school. 1491 is another popular history that shaped the way I think about pre Colombian America. And yes, reading A People’s History in my early 20s forever affected my understanding of American history, no matter how many other histories and perspectives I have since read. In that way I think that the 1619 Project (which I haven’t read yet, but plan to) will have a real impact on how a large number of people think about this country. I’m not a historian, so I have no idea if King Leopold’s Ghost or 1491 are filled with historical flaws or misleading narratives but they’ve changed my body of knowledge and thinking nonetheless, and the thinking of many others simply by being incredibly interesting, readable and popular. The 1619 project is the same. Even with its criticism you can’t just excise the influence it has had from your brain. The most similar thing I can think of is Guns, Germs and Steel, which is now quite criticized, but which many many people, including myself read 20 years ago. Even though I’m aware of the criticism and incorporate it into my thinking, I’m sure a lot of what was in it settled into my subconscious and remains there. And I think that’s why there’s such a furor over 1619.
I think about this more now that I have a toddler. I get a lot of books from the library and also tend to consume nonfiction as audiobooks but I do now want more variety of books on my shelves.
I mean, I'm the type of person who already owns multiple copies of the same book, so it's not really strange for me to own physical and digital copies of books. But I remember when I was a kid browsing my mom's library and mostly only finding catholic theology. My shelves are almost exclusively fiction and poetry, but I want him to see different kind of books and to be able to just pick one up and start reading a title that sounds interesting.
For sure. I'm glancing up at one of my book shelves this moment, and I have a biography of Malcolm X next to a book of MLK's writings/speeches and a John Lewis memoir. Breadth is so important. I'm not opposed to my kids reading/seeing 1619 materials, not at all. But I also know they'll have the opportunity to hear and read other takes on the history (not denialism, of course).
Yes. It sure is socialists lining up to critique it in the main, over two years after its launch. It sure is the thing most deserving of time and attention right now. It sure isn't a play to make sure your bona fides with a certain group of other writer-ish "intellectuals" are brightly polished.
So you're just completely unaware of the WSWS work on this, I see. Don't you think you should be getting informed before you comment? And, more importantly: what principal of Marxism would compel me not to make a mild critique of a tendentious piece of revisionist history made by liberals and for liberals, in the service of the liberal capitalist project? Is that in Capital Three? I could never get through that one.
Sure, buddy. The WSWS is who you were thinking of garnering favor with when you wrote this piece. Wasn't any other group of people who loudly hate the 1619 Project, that you're already 80% in the tank with, that you were looking to make sure knew you're on their side.
And nice try with your usual Carlson-esque YELL LOUDER AND MORE FACTY FACT TYPE SNIPPETS and bowl people over technique.
I am aware of the WSWS objections to the piece. I have my own objections to the piece. I am not critiquing THEM. I am critiquing YOUR motivations for wanting to write about this issue now, at this point in time.
Though if you want to just triple-down on "have you read as many books as me?!?!?" as your defense to this, sure, go nuts, man.
Enjoy that e-back pats from Bari and Glenn et al. We all know that's what you really want.
What do you mean, what I really want? I write for a living and love comfortably doing so. I set my own schedule and have minimal responsibility. I read as much as I want. I continue to organize IRL, as I always have. I turn down both media hits and money I'm not comfortable taking all the time. And I maintain committed to the same politics I've had my whole life, which until the past five or so years were widely assumed to be contrary to the project of liberals and Democrats. I don't aspire to a much bigger audience or much more money and if I had been I would have made very different choices. I think the 1619 project is... harmless. You're free to disagree. But I don't get where playing Freud gets us.
Given that your past actions have made you unacceptable to a large swath of what would be your natural leftist audience, we both know that "I write for a living" is contingent, highly, on appealing to a specific, other, audience. Which, and this is the main reason I've followed you for so many years though that's clearly coming to an end, because you're a compelling write more of the time than most, you can do, quite easily. And I think that audience aligns with your built-in contrarian streak in a way that works quite well with this new business model that came along at a very fortuitous time for you.
I would ask, though, how you square your quite often complaints with "I'm cancelled!" with "I turn down media hits and money [...] all the time". If you truly were the former, would the latter exist?
Anyway... I never thought your mental breakdown should have resulted in you being penniless forever, so I've stuck around to see what your next phase would be, but I don't like where it's apparently landed. Too bad for me. You got my money for the year, enjoy it, good luck, etc., but I need to read another "leftist" writer who somehow thinks wokeism is the biggest problem facing society today like I need a falsified rape accusation leveled against me by somebody with a loud media bullhorn and a grudge.
I think it's important to broadcast a left-wing critique of wokeness. A lot of people hate wokeness, and these people move right since they see the right as the only opposition. I'd prefer those people head left.
I used to think stuff wore out it’s shelf life fast because the internet moves fast, but it just isn’t so. I recorded a couple of interviews with trans friends like 6 years ago for a podcast and never got around to putting it together for release in a timely fashion, and I thought it would no longer be salient like a year later. I was wrong.
The internet moves in weird ways. A decade ago, atheism was huge. Not very long ago, feminism was huge. Now I can't imagine clicking on article about either.
But, yes, trans issues have gained bigger clout and race exploded from the Floyd protests.
> The centrality of slavery to the founding of the United States has been widely discussed for decades
Especially because it’s explicit in our founding documents. The 3/5 compromise, the fugitive slave clause. I remember learning about it in high school, how the interests of slave states were part of the negotiations at the Constitutional Convention. It’s not some scandalous secret that the preservation of slavery was a priority.
I think you're allowing a little conceptual slippage here, though. Slavery was "vitally important to the founding and structure" of the U.S. in the sense that it was a key issue to be dealt with in constructing the Constitution. But it's just not true that slavery was a major CAUSAL factor of the Revolution, which is how Hannah-Jones framed it. ("One critical reason the colonists declared their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery in the colonies.... At the time there were growing calls to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire, which would have badly damaged the economies of colonies in both North and South.")
The problem isn't that she called it the sole factor. It's that, according to the period-expert history professor the Times hired to fact check 1619 (and then ignored), it wasn't a meaningful cause at all:
"More importantly for Hannah-Jones’ argument, slavery in the Colonies faced no immediate threat from Great Britain, so colonists wouldn’t have needed to secede to protect it. It’s true that in 1772, the famous Somerset case ended slavery in England and Wales, but it had no impact on Britain’s Caribbean colonies, where the vast majority of black people enslaved by the British labored and died, or in the North American Colonies. It took 60 more years for the British government to finally end slavery in its Caribbean colonies, and when it happened, it was in part because a series of slave rebellions in the British Caribbean in the early 19th century made protecting slavery there an increasingly expensive proposition."
In other words, the strong claim is wrong, but it hasn't been misrepresented. That was her actual claim!
And I just don't agree that historical education has no impact on how people act and vote. People routinely marshal historical arguments and precedents in order to justify a particular political outcome, and as "RC" points out, works of popular history especially sink in and affect people's thinking. (Zinn himself was a pretty sloppy historian -- but how many leftists were born from his work?)
I'll add also that the Times did some very dishonest stealth edits which undermined their central thesis when some of their claims became untenable. Freddie may not be away of this.
Also, if I am recalling correctly, Britton had a huge and booming cotten industry that was dependent on slave farmed cotten from the American south to the point that they almost intervened on the side of the Confederacy in the Civil War. As you pointed out, the UK only freed the slaves when protecting the institution of slavery became more expensive than it was profitable. The proposition that the UK was about to bankrupt one of their most profitable industries is just absurd on it face.
A comment so good it obviated the one I intended to make.
I would really encourage everyone who is interested in this to read the WSWS's coverage of the 1619 Project, less for the broad commentary and more specifically for the interviews with the historians. These are people who actually know what they're talking about and bring receipts. And it's not like they were interviewing Shelby Foote here (joke for my fellow history nerds). There's not a lot of people in American intellectual life with a stronger track record of thundering against racism than Adolph Reed. It's just an incredibly poor work of history.
And yeah, I definitely found Zinn's A People's History to be a great read when you're a teenager. But as an adult I don't see it as being useful as anything other than a Leninesque bending of the stick.
Zinn can be great IF you read him alongside jingoistic primary sources from the time. I remember reading "A People's History" alongside, e.g., Phil Sheridan's memoir, and the contrast and counterbalance was edifying. But then again, I was an especially dorky high schooler...
Should be clear to all that 1619 is primarily agitprop designed by and for midwits.
Would add that the debunking of the claim that protecting slavery was integral to 1776 has overshadowed some larger points:
1) Strong circumstantial evidence that Silverstein and NHJ failed to do basic reading of seminal US historiography which has placed slavery centrally in US history.
2) Lack of basic justification/epistemic framework/etc. for a *newspaper* to reimagine American history
I was in high school in early 90s - we read both 'traditional' textbook and Zinn. That was OK, I guess, in that Zinn was understood to be a corrective, even though at the time Zinn seemed cartoonish and deranged.
Even as a teenager the implicit expectation was that something would come along to replace Zinn that was better. But I would argue that 1619 in it's monomaniacal focus and fabrications is even worse than Zinn.
It is crazy reading the WSWS commentary which is far, far smarter than Silverstein's mealy mouthed obfuscations.
If you told me 10 years ago something like the WSWS would be mopping the floor with NYT mag EIC I could not have believed it.
After a preamble of explicit anti-white hatred, she asserts that Africans discovered the Americas "long before Columbus or any Europeans" and that "the pyramids of the Aztecs and the great stone heads of the Olmecs are lasting monuments to the friendship of these two people."
It's one thing to believe dumb things in college, and another to be this misinformed and dim as a legal adult and still go on to be one of the most acclaimed intellectuals of your era. What a time we live in.
Not for me to say because I am not black or multiracial, but I was listening to Jason Whitlock and he had an interesting take which was that in particular multiracial Americans have an insecurity and confusion that leads them to overcompensate and embrace radical politics.
Back in the day when I was on Twitter, I ran across many black nationalist types who were focused on preserving their black culture and history and setting it apart from American culture and history in general. They didn't go on and on about the evils of America and white people, but focused on showcasing black history and culture greatness, urging self-reliance and actualization, aiming to inspire black greatness in the youth.
But there were also some fringe arguments and claims woven into the "reclaim your black greatness" corner of Twitter, without any evidence to support these claims. For example, some claimed that the Persian Empire, and Persians themselves, were in fact racially black, all of them. They posted photos of the friezes on Persian Empire ruins, and claimed the perfectly coifed symmetrical ringlets of head and beard curls were evidence they were all black. The conquered were never black, only the conquerors themselves. They claimed that the Arabic language did not originate in the Arabian peninsula, but far away in Africa, and that Arabs, the original Muslims and Islamic conquerors, were all racially black. Never did I imagine that one of their ilk would pen the 1619 Project and become catapulted to the pinnacles of fame and esteem via the NYT's anointment and shameless gaslighting.
Indeed. At least he is open about it and disavows it. Of course, always in the context of recounting the road to Damascus moment when he conceived his childlike racist/antiracist binary.
I remember reading Zinn and going "huh, if you leave out all the adjectives that aren't in direct quotations, this is actually really interesting and quite readable." Seriously, the dude didn't need to editorialize so damn much; his subjects spoke for themselves just fine.
That's right. If the problem were merely that 1619 oversimplifies history I don't think there would be such outcry, and then outcry over the outcry, etc. The whole issue is that a "desire to protect slavery from the British" was *not* in fact a factor in the Revolution. The chronology just makes no sense, since British abolitionism didn't pick up political momentum until the 19th century. So, this core tenet of 1619 is made-up history, which is different than oversimplified history. Obviously many people have had a very strong negative response to the prestige-ification of made-up history.
I forget who made this point (someone far wiser than I, so I don't want to steal credit) but one of the great travesties of the 1619 Project is the way that it tries to minimize or erase America's robust history of progressive and even (pardon the phrase) anti-racism movements.
This is really important here because the British abolitionism was largely spurred by Americans (particularly American Quakers, the people so many modern culture warriors wish they were but erase from history).
It's not just lousy history, but it's actively harmful. Quakers - based mainly in Pennsylvania and England - managed to lead the charge in mostly ending one of humanity's most enduring institutions. That's such an unbelievable inspiration and something that anyone who was legitimately anti-racist would be shouting from the rooftop. Like, holy shit, look what we can do if we try! Ending slavery and serfdom is arguably the single greatest boon to humanity ever. I don't know about y'all but I'd want to get super into that and see what else we can do, not try and make up some competing version of history.
That's why a lot of marxist historians have been very critical of 1619. If you look at a work like Linebaugh and Rediker's "The Many Headed Hydra", every single argument that book makes about the "Revolutionary Atlantic" during the 17th-18th centuries is swept aside by 1619. With that said marxists of all stripes in the 21st century have proven themselves clumsy and timid and basically ineffective when it comes to disassociating themselves from Establishment progressivism, which is why the more forceful and effective criticism of 1619 has come from the right.
One would think. But, if there are billions to be made from a certain slanted narrative, and even more importantly, revenge to be had, well... Narrative as god is the trend these days. I don't think the promulgators of this propaganda are aware of how fast they are losing the sympathy of people and how badly they are damaging the reputations of the institutions they are using to disseminate the message. They may well be putting the left as a whole into a decades long slump, politically.
Their only saving grace may be the that there are elements of the right that are just as ridiculous.
"Ending slavery and serfdom is arguably the single greatest boon to humanity ever" . . . well, serfdom is really quite different from chattel slavery. And I'm pretty sure I'd put penicillin, golden rice, and modern construction methods ahead of the end of slavery because those mean that even slaves (which still exist all over the world) can survive with a roof over their head and food in their bowls. Even the most meagre life is better than dying of infection and starvation in the unsheltered dirt.
It was never intended as journalism. It was intended as propaganda, to be spread through schools. The school curricula projects were part of it from the beginning.
I've got a PhD in American history and wrote my dissertation (in part) on the Revolutionary period. You put it very well indeed, Chesterton Fence Repair Co.
"...what people are taught about history becomes what they know about history and that what they know about history has some material impact on how they think and act and vote. I don’t think any of those things are true."
On an almost weekly basis I learn about someone's role in history -- often an important role -- that I never learned about growing up. As just one example, women were almost completely absent from the history I studied 50+ years ago. Roles for women when I entered the workforce in 1974 reflected that same lack of representation.
So yeah -- it was a different time, and things have changed. One of the things that's changed is that we're hearing more about the people left out of past historical narratives. I don't know that I could quantify how this might impact how a person thinks or votes, but I *can* say that I've found it inspiring to learn about women who were not passive participants in the historical narrative of our country. And there is a power in being able to see yourself in those who came before you.
The problem is that the woman-less history you were taught 50+ years ago was just as present-focused and blinkered as modern representational efforts are. The past wasn't like either the U.S. of the 1970s or the U.S. of the 2020s. It was its own weird place, and trying to sift through it just to hilight the stories that serve our modern political and social goals harms both our understanding of our own past, but also keeps us from recognizing the true range of strange and wild things that the human animal is capable of. The past is just as foreign a country as [$country_you_haven't_been_to].
I agree that there will never be a way to fully understand the past. It's hard enough to maintain accurate memories for someone who's lived as long as I have. I still maintain that the ability to tap into multiple voices, documenting history as it happens, can give us a fuller view. Can any of us doubt that the written and oral histories of former slaves offered a unique point of view into slavery that those on the outside looking in could not tap into? To me, that's better than the history I grew up with.
Primary sources like those (and as many and varied as possible) is as close as we can get to actually experiencing the past, I agree. The slave narratives that the WPA took in the 30's are utterly invaluable.
I'm not a historian either, but I've read big chunks of the 1619 project and I'll be honest: A lot of the details were new to me. I was absolutely not taught much about slavery in (US, public) school; it was a sidenote, a casualty of history let's say, but for an average kid, those knots were absolutely not tied in class.
I'll start by quoting a previous comment of mine regarding this tomfoolery:
"The main issue with the 1619 Project lies in what it reveals: our "paper of record" is willing to devote a lot of resources to a fundamentally ahistorical project helmed by the shallow and intellectually dishonest Nikole Hannah-Jones. It's pathetic that she's still popular after she publicized her own uniquely shitty version of "if you don't vote for me you ain't black.""
The 1619 project is just another one of many sure signs that the NYT has not learned anything at all from its massive and invalidating failures starting with their support of the second Iraq war. Their leadership and the vast majority of their staff are losers who have lost sight of life, and they are totally unapologetic after even massive objective failures. It's time for the corporate death penalty to apply here, and failing that it's time for reasonable people to ignore and shit on the NYT at every opportunity.
The banality of the central claim, that slavery is one of many causal factors of why america is what it is today, really gets me thinking that the media world must be up to something weird. I get the feeling that they pay more attention to the person making an argument than the argument. It's always been that way but I think that in the past there was more of a semblance of a coherent discourse. Editors seemed like they were probably more likely to say "This is an old idea. Not sure it's worth publishing."
But today, it seems like you find the person you want to succeed (n hannah jones) and then give them a platform, and then you look at whatever ideas they have, and then you promote those ideas.
I think the biggest problem with the 1619 Project is that it's called the 1619 Project and the argument over which year was the "true" founding of this country. If they called it something else, there wouldn't be this much hand wringing. I found many (not all) of the essays in the 1619 project pretty convincing IMHO. I am not sure if history changes how people think and vote but it does cause me to suspect the motivations of certain political actors. For example, if libertarians have a market-based solution to a problem that better helps the poor but their history has never shown one iota of care about the poor (i.e. they didn't support any programs for the poor in the past, then I'm less likely to support their solution.
To me, that is THE problem. If it was a literary exercise meant to bring new ideas and nuance, cool. But it's not a new more accurate version of history and shouldn't be considered one.
I think it was meant to center slavery and racism in our history which many people may not know or are aware of. I learned a lot myself from several of the essays and I don't see these ideas presented too much in a major newspaper, so maybe it was more "new" or "accurate" for me.
I don't think liberals really understand that historically the NYT has not had a great track record of being on the *right side of history* from Duranty to downplaying threat of Hitler to the cozy relationship between Sulzberger and Allen Dulles leading to the NYT ignoring or whitewashing the criminality of the CIA.
I suspect that when the history of regressive identity politics for our era is written, NYT will similarly not end up looking good.
The central flaw is the idea that if you teach people about how some group has been mistreated it will make them more compassionate and understanding. For a size-able percentage of the population when you teach them those facts they think, “Wow they must have deserved it.”
It’s the same when some people find out someone has cancer or their spouse ran off or they lost their job. They think, “Wow, they really must have deserved it. Because bad things don’t happen to good people like me. Bad things happen to bad people who deserve them.”
Right - all of it is premised on a faulty connection between education and action
Yup, and not unsurprisingly it’s more popular with those who did well in school and derive a lot of their self worth from that fact.
Also it doesn't challenge their wealth/power. The upper-middle class loves race reductionism because it's free.
It's also a handy weapon to use against the left.
I often think this is one of the major strategic issues with a lot of people to the left of the GOP. They love to build social weapons but never seem to understand that once you make a weapon someone else might pick it up and use it against you.
Well, thing is, upper middle class doesn't really care if they lose politically. What did Trump do to them? Lower their taxes? It doesn't really matter. I think they're perfectly content to "lose" a fight of nebulous woke stuff.
This has been a major issue on the left for a while now. The middle class can afford to fail nobly. It allows you to benefit from your privilege while also exculpating yourself.
The Contact Theory seems much more effective at promoting empathy and compassion, but that's out of favor because it means people can change through relationships. Apparently, people cannot change their minds at all, and their relationships will always have a power differential, so it's useless.
I'm not sure what you mean
Well the Contact Theory essentially states that the best way to reduce prejudice is through interpersonal contact. But current social justice orthodoxy claims that white privilege and oppression of POC is inescapable; that any relationship between a white person and a person of color is going to be tainted by the power differential. So even though five years ago the diversity and inclusion expert Verna Myers went on NPR and said the best way to combat racism is through contact, now has a course on her site called Talking Boldly: The Evolving Role of White Men in the Workplace. It's no longer enough to believe that interpersonal relationships can broaden horizons and grow understanding; now it's essential for, say, white men to understand how they are specifically a problem before they can, I dunno, work with someone who isn't a white man.
I don't exactly consider myself an optimist with regard to human behavior, but I simply don't think this is true. Like, what kind of maniac blames someone for developing cancer?
I also don't think this is true more broadly. There may be some amount of people who think, for example, that Jewish people deserved the holocaust...but the vast majority? I mean, that's just demonstrably absurd, yes?
You must not know many Calvinists 😂
Ha, maybe!
"Like, what kind of maniac blames someone for developing cancer?"
Tons of people's first thought, when they hear about some tragedy, is to try and find a reason the person brought it on themselves. Did they not eat right, not exercise enough, drink too much, smoke, etc? Because if you can blame them then you can assure yourself that if you don't do those things that bad thing won't happen to you.
Part of the issue with these programs is that good people like you can't conceive of that kind of thought process.
not to mention AIDS
I could introduce you to my mother.
I think you're right. I suspect the average 16 year old being taught about slavery doesn't think "they must have deserved it"; they think "this is boring, how long to lunch?"
If you believe as you say in the last paragraph, then why did you write earlier about how it is more important for leftists to learn history than theory?
Because a leftist by definition is already committed to leftism, and because that kind of self education will always be a more effective and consistent driver of belief than any curriculum imposed by somebody else.
I had trouble understanding the claim that what people know about history doesn’t affect how they act or think as well; but it sounds like your skepticism about that is specifically that what young people are taught in school about history has any bearing on their thoughts and actions, not what people learn about history outside of a that environment. Do I understand that right?
I think that some people make concerted efforts to learn about and interrogate history in a way that informs their consciousness, and perhaps in so doing influence their behavior. I think most people who learn in school are about as interested in it as they are in any other subject, which is to say not very, and I think that even among those who have accepted a given factual accounting of history, the tendency is to think "oh that's interesting" and not to integrate it into day-to-day thinking at all.
I'm currently reading the book and was pretty unfamiliar with what the 1619 project was. Like you, I'm no historian, but I 100% agree that the world and history are more complex than just one event. With that said, as I read this book, there are a LOT of assumptions about things happening in the world today that the authors link to racism without strong arguments to back them. I've read a ton of books on racial issues in the United States, and many create compelling arguments. With this one, it just labels things as racist or linked to slavery without making any type of valid argument, and that bothers me.
PS - shoot me an email and lets get you on the podcast. thanks <3
I started reading 400 Souls a while back, and while I found it interesting and at times compelling, there were several instances where I was like "...huh?" I had to quit reading it so as not to get overly annoyed. Like, there'd be this interesting essay about life for a slave in the decade of 1680, and the essay would end with something along the lines of "and therefore, Brionna Taylor and Eric Garner." The threads between something that happened 300 years ago and five years ago were ephemeral at best but treated as conclusive.
Time-jumping is rampant in this field, I suspect because writers are attempting to steal the emotional salience of events such as Emmet Till's death or the horrors of slavery to make later events seem even more outrageous, or as an attempt to tie things that don't exactly have to do with racism to racism.
Floyd's death, for example, is difficult to pin on racism--the facts of the case don't fit, so you have to make a generalized argument about subconscious disregard for black pain and life which, frankly, doesn't have the emotional resonance of "he killed him because he *hated* him". But if you put it in a line-up with a bunch of hate crimes, you can steal that outrage, and make Floyd's death seem like a continuing pattern of abuse going back hundreds of years, instead of (what I would say, having watched the entire trial) a deeply unfortunate collision of factors that led to a man's death without anyone deliberately wanting such an outcome.
Chauvin may not have wanted to murder George Floyd, but his actions demonstrate that he didn't not want to murder him. He wasn't even embarrassed or concerned by the fact that it was caught on video while it was happening.
Maybe it has nothing to do with racism, but I think the fact that Chauvin had a history of kneeling on black men's necks but not non-black men's isn't without significance.
I agree.
The reason George Floyd's death may have had a bigger impact, at least here in Minneapolis, is because the MPD has a history of killing black people in the last few years. Philando Castile is probably the most famous previous case here.
Like, it's worth remembering that the George Floyd protests began locally before anyone outside of Minnesota heard about it. It's not until buildings caught fire that anyone outside the Twin Cities paid attention.
But there's a difference in emotional salience between "this guy, if we dig into his history, might have had a pattern of mistreating black people" and "holy shit this guy is nakedly, openly racist and nakedly, openly killed a black person because he hated them." That's why hate crimes are viewed as such a special evil--there's something different between an alleged subconscious (or at least hidden) disregard for some people based on a trait and active malice for people based on that trait. The first one isn't good, by any means, but the latter is excruciating in an entirely different way.
I would say the "special kind of evil" stems primarily from being able to choke a man to death without batting an eye.
And, I mean, we don't know that he didn't do this specifically because he hates black people. I'm not particularly interested in whether it was a hate crime or not. But I think he acted with clear and active malice.
You have to remember, George was 6'3" 240lbs, Mike Brown likewise was 6'6", I'm 6'8" & 270lbs ... us big guy scare the hell outta smaller chaps. Chauvin is 5'9" and 140 lbs. I do my very best to not frighten people, and still I fail often.
Having been a cowboy, when vaccinating, having let large calves up only to have them proceed to kick my ass, I can see that Chauvin was frightened to let George up.
Chauvin is a horrible murderous person. The tension arises between people who point to him and what he did and say “see? This is what white people do on the regular” and people who condemn everything about that situation but don’t see it as the representative image of race relations in 2021.
Whoa substack commenting function just went bonkers and posted the same comment tons of times (hence deletions)
To be fair, the amount of people who saw the George Floyd murder and decided that all white people are murderers is a shockingly small segment of even the activist population.
I'm sure you saw some people in your social media circles saying such things, maybe even loudly and constantly, but let's not pretend that the majority or even a large minority of the population believes white people are all murderers in waiting.
Of course not. But it's pretty clear that the rallying cry wasn't "punish this murderer" but instead "this is what black/white relations are like." The "I can't breathe" shirts and metaphors about knees on necks aren't incidental. Hence all the massive protests.
Right. A JEDI activist I follow recently posted about how it was crazy how many white people said once they saw the Floyd video and heard him call for his mom, it really humanized the situation. (Without actually citing specific instances of white peoe being like “I couldn’t believe it till I saw it!” Or whatever.) And she went on to discuss how white people have always controlled the dissemination of images of harm on black bodies. She likened the scenario to Emmett Till’s mother purposefully choosing an open casket.
First, it makes total sense from a human psychology standpoint that people *seeing and hearing* something would make it more real and emotive than just reading about it, for example. To me that’s not a failure of “white imagination”; it’s a reflection of how human brains work. And second, I pointed out that the video was taken and posted by a young black woman, so in that way was it not more like Ava Duvernay’s work (she had commented to someone that the imagery of black pain presented in a DuVernay film was different because it came “from the heart of a black woman”) than the lynching imagery disseminated a century ago? But she didn’t respond to my comment.
Yeah, I just don't understand the project.
America's history with regards to race is so bad it doesn't really need embellishment and there is already a deep and rich historiography.
If anything the lies, obfuscations, and poorly supported suppositions of 1619 give plausible deniability to those who want to minimize the worst aspects of America's history.
I think the idea of delving into the reality of lived experience for enslaved people and how that evolved through time is an excellent and fascinating idea. The 1619 project loses me where it goes from a literary history project to an overtly political one, when the politics is clearly radical and controversial.
I agree with you. Felt like a series of ideological and intellectual shortcuts to prop up half-baked political orthodoxies.
Given what could be done with subject of slaverly, instead what we get is 1619/Kendi/DiAngelo.
Quite a regression from say, James Baldwin.
Also, very insulting to a many historians (many of whom are black) who have done work way better than NYT on this subject.
I nominate Annette Gordon-Reed as an excellent example. Her research on Jefferson and the Hemingses is extensive and sensitive, while not giving TJ a free pass.
Instead of 1619 setting up straw man ('white supremacist history ignores history'), would have loved to see it try to account in good faith why reification of race is a good thing when Fields sisters in Racecraft argued that race is a historical derangement that we should try to free ourselves from.
I’ve come across race is a construct/we must reify race out of the same person’s mouth (literally and in writing) on multiple occasions. There’s got to be a way to address the damage wrought by segregation without continuing to segregate in perpetuity.
Ought to look at Spanish colonization as well.
Like I said the other day, it's race and identity as Reaganomics. The 1619 stuff was all part of a Trump-induced Moral Panic (or TIMP for short). Like somehow if we take people who are already liberal and make them super Woke, that will create change at the ballot box by itself? Makes no sense if you give it a moment's thought.
The onion did this super well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpzVc7s-_e8&
Liberals use history in a weird way. They'll say black people are worse off since they were slaves 150 years ago. We now have a meme of land acknowledgements: natives saying their oppressed because of colonialism. But like, that's not it, right? There's certainly problems black and native people face today: lead paint, sentencing disparities, wealth and poverty gaps. Those are the reasons those groups are worse off today. Slavery and colonialism may have ultimately caused those issues, but constantly "centering" them doesn't help today.
Like, I'm Jewish. We've had some bad stuff happen to our people throughout history. But I'm fine because 1) I have my material wealth and 2) there's sufficient legal/social pressure to remove anti-Semitism from any sources of power.
What's done is done and cannot be undone. So the question is, now what?
I think it’s obvious why both liberals and conservatives think history is important. It defines who we are. I may think that a lot of the new way of looking at history through a progressive lens has problems but it’s not like ONLY liberals want to an about how history affects us today. Conservatives want that too, they just want different histories. Americans have always taken it for granted that the story of the Pilgrims and of Paul Revere and the Boston Tea Party and the whole Revolution are essential to our understanding of how we became Us, so why is it so hard to understand why some people think understanding slavery in that way is vitally important? It’s all in the past.
Land acknowledgements are pretty silly and hypocritical when they are done by Microsoft executives before zoom meetings, but I see value in the overall concept of adding pre Columbian history to our general American historical context. There were thousands of years of human history and activity that have been mostly invisible to our historical world view. And sometimes those types of changes start with over correction before balancing out.
I'm not fan of the way conservatives use history. In fact, I think it's much worse: they're generally trying to make current inequalities/oppressions seem natural or even good. I also agree that our understanding of history should include more about the natives. Heck, in the US, it would be nice if most people knew anything that occurred outside the US and western Europe.
My point isn't to ignore history. I don't think we should ignore the Holocaust for instance. That would be horrible. The point is there's a lot of ways to interpret the Holocaust and and to use it to understand current and future events. It's definitely a cautionary tale against scapegoating, ethnic nationalism, and a million other things. But the best interpretation is definitely not "it's worse to be Jewish today because different Jewish people suffered"
What do conservatives do with history that you don't like?
Consider the inequalities between South Asian Indians and American Blacks.
South Asian Indians often have little to no English language, they're every bit as black if not often blacker than American Black People. Yet South Asian Indians even South Asian Female Indians have higher earnings than Whites in America.
Explain how South Asian Indians come as recent immigrants, have lower language skills than American Blacks, greater cultural differences, blacker than Blacks, yet are wildly successful, more successful than even White males.
Standard answer to questions such as this are that being an immigrant at all self-selects for people who are self-motivated, resourceful, and capable of changing their circumstances.
It would be amazing if pre-columbian history were added to the general historical curriculum, but i don't see how land acknowledgements lead to that. Kind of similar to the literary canon in schools - I think it's a obviously a good idea to expand the scope of the canon but a lot of the time when people call for it in practice it means that instead of reading the Ramayana alongside the Odyssey or something you just replace all these texts with modern YA novels.
Oh yea I didn't mean to suggest that the first class of people doesn't exist (it obviously does, since I am one). I'll take it on faith that some people really do believe the second thing but most of them seem like they just want to sell their YA novel lol.
It's largely because of the issue Freddie often writes about: it's easier than making real changes. This use of history is easy unlike real change which is hard. Oh, Americans need to be better educated on slavery, and here's some random person who claims their 2nd grade class didn't teach enough about how slavery is evil! See! We need to talk about this!
It's baloney. Americans know slavery existed and it was evil. The third most watched event in American history was Roots. A supermajority of Americans believe slavery still has a large impact on society today. It doesn't translate into, say, support for reparations, because that's a completely separate issue. The idea that you're going to guilt people into somehow supporting material change is a weird fantasy. And, of course, ironically, most Americans do support material changes that would drastically benefit Blacks but politicians don't do anything about that.
Land acknowledgments are the most naked showing of this. I find them repulsive because there's a much, much, much, much more effective option than land acknowledgments: GIVE THE LAND BACK! There's five million American Indians/Native Americans still in this country. They suffer from massive problems rooted in poverty. They're actual living, breathing human beings with problems that would be alleviated with a massive transfer of wealth. I'm pretty sure they'd love to get some land back. And not the land we least want. But it's much easier to scream about how Columbus is evil and you acknowledge the crimes of the past than to actually do anything to fix the crimes of the present.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/05/return-the-national-parks-to-the-tribes/618395/
I thought this article about putting national parks under Native control was a great idea. It's a simple and obvious way to right past wrongs both symbolically and financially. Of course that means no one will talk about it as long as there's a new dumb culture war issue to discuss...
Thanks for this, I've never encountered that idea before but I look forward to reading it. I'm pretty intrigued by the idea of turning over the lands we want to preserve to the people who once had them, especially if it can benefit them financially (while maintaining conservation). But, you're right. It's ridiculous that an idea like this is a "random Atlantic article" while changing the name of a baseball team is probably terabytes of content.
Wow. I actually like this idea. Very creative. I've bookmarked the link. Thanks!
Right? very few of these discourse generators have struck me as politically possible but i think this one is. Of course there would be a lot of pushback and a lot of details to be ironed out but it seems concrete and achievable in the short to medium term (and there's precedent in Australia and New Zealand) in a way a lot of these other topics like reparations or police abolition aren't.
"It's largely because of the issue Freddie often writes about: it's easier than making real changes. This use of history is easy unlike real change which is hard."
A coworker of mine shared the term "bikeshedding" to describe this kind of process in business. Seems applicable here.
https://effectiviology.com/bikeshedding-law-of-triviality/
It also grinds my gears that we are assuming a bunch of 2nd graders (or 12th graders for that matter) can solve problems adults themselves can't solve.
I could not even begin to tell you what I learned about history in school because it’s been so buried under what I’ve learned and read since. I’m sure it serves as a general foundation and context to make sense of what I later read on my own and contextualized from world events, but it’s definitely not the entire basis of my philosophical beliefs about what it means to be an American or what our country means to the world.
On the other hand, I do think popular histories and popular works of fiction that portray history really do shape the way a certain sector of Americans think. King Leopold’s Ghost made a huge impact on me. MAUS, the graphic novel about the holocaust, I read as a kid off my parents shelves and as my introduction to that historical event it’s now inseparable from how I think about it even after all I’ve since learned, and certainly stands out more than anything I read in school. 1491 is another popular history that shaped the way I think about pre Colombian America. And yes, reading A People’s History in my early 20s forever affected my understanding of American history, no matter how many other histories and perspectives I have since read. In that way I think that the 1619 Project (which I haven’t read yet, but plan to) will have a real impact on how a large number of people think about this country. I’m not a historian, so I have no idea if King Leopold’s Ghost or 1491 are filled with historical flaws or misleading narratives but they’ve changed my body of knowledge and thinking nonetheless, and the thinking of many others simply by being incredibly interesting, readable and popular. The 1619 project is the same. Even with its criticism you can’t just excise the influence it has had from your brain. The most similar thing I can think of is Guns, Germs and Steel, which is now quite criticized, but which many many people, including myself read 20 years ago. Even though I’m aware of the criticism and incorporate it into my thinking, I’m sure a lot of what was in it settled into my subconscious and remains there. And I think that’s why there’s such a furor over 1619.
I think about this more now that I have a toddler. I get a lot of books from the library and also tend to consume nonfiction as audiobooks but I do now want more variety of books on my shelves.
I mean, I'm the type of person who already owns multiple copies of the same book, so it's not really strange for me to own physical and digital copies of books. But I remember when I was a kid browsing my mom's library and mostly only finding catholic theology. My shelves are almost exclusively fiction and poetry, but I want him to see different kind of books and to be able to just pick one up and start reading a title that sounds interesting.
For sure. I'm glancing up at one of my book shelves this moment, and I have a biography of Malcolm X next to a book of MLK's writings/speeches and a John Lewis memoir. Breadth is so important. I'm not opposed to my kids reading/seeing 1619 materials, not at all. But I also know they'll have the opportunity to hear and read other takes on the history (not denialism, of course).
1491 is amazing. Strong recommend to everyone.
Let's check in on what target our brave, loudly self-proclaimed leftist man of the people is attacking today... oh.
A product of the New York Times and its professional managerial class workforce?
You get that the most effective critics of 1619 are socialists, right?
Yes. It sure is socialists lining up to critique it in the main, over two years after its launch. It sure is the thing most deserving of time and attention right now. It sure isn't a play to make sure your bona fides with a certain group of other writer-ish "intellectuals" are brightly polished.
So you're just completely unaware of the WSWS work on this, I see. Don't you think you should be getting informed before you comment? And, more importantly: what principal of Marxism would compel me not to make a mild critique of a tendentious piece of revisionist history made by liberals and for liberals, in the service of the liberal capitalist project? Is that in Capital Three? I could never get through that one.
here comes the 10-ply credentialism...
Sure, buddy. The WSWS is who you were thinking of garnering favor with when you wrote this piece. Wasn't any other group of people who loudly hate the 1619 Project, that you're already 80% in the tank with, that you were looking to make sure knew you're on their side.
And nice try with your usual Carlson-esque YELL LOUDER AND MORE FACTY FACT TYPE SNIPPETS and bowl people over technique.
I am aware of the WSWS objections to the piece. I have my own objections to the piece. I am not critiquing THEM. I am critiquing YOUR motivations for wanting to write about this issue now, at this point in time.
Though if you want to just triple-down on "have you read as many books as me?!?!?" as your defense to this, sure, go nuts, man.
Enjoy that e-back pats from Bari and Glenn et al. We all know that's what you really want.
What do you mean, what I really want? I write for a living and love comfortably doing so. I set my own schedule and have minimal responsibility. I read as much as I want. I continue to organize IRL, as I always have. I turn down both media hits and money I'm not comfortable taking all the time. And I maintain committed to the same politics I've had my whole life, which until the past five or so years were widely assumed to be contrary to the project of liberals and Democrats. I don't aspire to a much bigger audience or much more money and if I had been I would have made very different choices. I think the 1619 project is... harmless. You're free to disagree. But I don't get where playing Freud gets us.
Given that your past actions have made you unacceptable to a large swath of what would be your natural leftist audience, we both know that "I write for a living" is contingent, highly, on appealing to a specific, other, audience. Which, and this is the main reason I've followed you for so many years though that's clearly coming to an end, because you're a compelling write more of the time than most, you can do, quite easily. And I think that audience aligns with your built-in contrarian streak in a way that works quite well with this new business model that came along at a very fortuitous time for you.
I would ask, though, how you square your quite often complaints with "I'm cancelled!" with "I turn down media hits and money [...] all the time". If you truly were the former, would the latter exist?
Anyway... I never thought your mental breakdown should have resulted in you being penniless forever, so I've stuck around to see what your next phase would be, but I don't like where it's apparently landed. Too bad for me. You got my money for the year, enjoy it, good luck, etc., but I need to read another "leftist" writer who somehow thinks wokeism is the biggest problem facing society today like I need a falsified rape accusation leveled against me by somebody with a loud media bullhorn and a grudge.
I think it's important to broadcast a left-wing critique of wokeness. A lot of people hate wokeness, and these people move right since they see the right as the only opposition. I'd prefer those people head left.
That's true lol. I know deBoer said he got a lot of cancellations after criticizing Rogan
Israel. I gain nothing from writing critically about Israel. So if I ever censor myself on that topic I'll know it's time to hang it up
I used to think stuff wore out it’s shelf life fast because the internet moves fast, but it just isn’t so. I recorded a couple of interviews with trans friends like 6 years ago for a podcast and never got around to putting it together for release in a timely fashion, and I thought it would no longer be salient like a year later. I was wrong.
The 1619 stuff is just beginning its rollout.
its*
You neednt bother, we all know substack doesnt allow editing and getting the apostrophes right is way too much trouble
The internet moves in weird ways. A decade ago, atheism was huge. Not very long ago, feminism was huge. Now I can't imagine clicking on article about either.
But, yes, trans issues have gained bigger clout and race exploded from the Floyd protests.
I'm on both sides of that issue. Video games suck and over-sensitive identitarian criticism sucks
> The centrality of slavery to the founding of the United States has been widely discussed for decades
Especially because it’s explicit in our founding documents. The 3/5 compromise, the fugitive slave clause. I remember learning about it in high school, how the interests of slave states were part of the negotiations at the Constitutional Convention. It’s not some scandalous secret that the preservation of slavery was a priority.
Yep, I learned about it in high school in the 1960s in rural Ohio. Us kids were kinda proud that Ohio (go Buckeyes!) was not a slave state.
I think you're allowing a little conceptual slippage here, though. Slavery was "vitally important to the founding and structure" of the U.S. in the sense that it was a key issue to be dealt with in constructing the Constitution. But it's just not true that slavery was a major CAUSAL factor of the Revolution, which is how Hannah-Jones framed it. ("One critical reason the colonists declared their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery in the colonies.... At the time there were growing calls to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire, which would have badly damaged the economies of colonies in both North and South.")
The problem isn't that she called it the sole factor. It's that, according to the period-expert history professor the Times hired to fact check 1619 (and then ignored), it wasn't a meaningful cause at all:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248
"More importantly for Hannah-Jones’ argument, slavery in the Colonies faced no immediate threat from Great Britain, so colonists wouldn’t have needed to secede to protect it. It’s true that in 1772, the famous Somerset case ended slavery in England and Wales, but it had no impact on Britain’s Caribbean colonies, where the vast majority of black people enslaved by the British labored and died, or in the North American Colonies. It took 60 more years for the British government to finally end slavery in its Caribbean colonies, and when it happened, it was in part because a series of slave rebellions in the British Caribbean in the early 19th century made protecting slavery there an increasingly expensive proposition."
In other words, the strong claim is wrong, but it hasn't been misrepresented. That was her actual claim!
And I just don't agree that historical education has no impact on how people act and vote. People routinely marshal historical arguments and precedents in order to justify a particular political outcome, and as "RC" points out, works of popular history especially sink in and affect people's thinking. (Zinn himself was a pretty sloppy historian -- but how many leftists were born from his work?)
I came here to say the same thing. Sean Wilentz (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/1619-project-new-york-times-wilentz/605152/) and Cathy Young (https://www.thebulwark.com/the-fight-over-the-1619-project/; https://www.thebulwark.com/1619-1776-and-us/) both did great work exploring this at length.
I'll add also that the Times did some very dishonest stealth edits which undermined their central thesis when some of their claims became untenable. Freddie may not be away of this.
Also, if I am recalling correctly, Britton had a huge and booming cotten industry that was dependent on slave farmed cotten from the American south to the point that they almost intervened on the side of the Confederacy in the Civil War. As you pointed out, the UK only freed the slaves when protecting the institution of slavery became more expensive than it was profitable. The proposition that the UK was about to bankrupt one of their most profitable industries is just absurd on it face.
At the time of the Revolution, though, growing cotton wasn't really a thing.
A comment so good it obviated the one I intended to make.
I would really encourage everyone who is interested in this to read the WSWS's coverage of the 1619 Project, less for the broad commentary and more specifically for the interviews with the historians. These are people who actually know what they're talking about and bring receipts. And it's not like they were interviewing Shelby Foote here (joke for my fellow history nerds). There's not a lot of people in American intellectual life with a stronger track record of thundering against racism than Adolph Reed. It's just an incredibly poor work of history.
And yeah, I definitely found Zinn's A People's History to be a great read when you're a teenager. But as an adult I don't see it as being useful as anything other than a Leninesque bending of the stick.
Zinn can be great IF you read him alongside jingoistic primary sources from the time. I remember reading "A People's History" alongside, e.g., Phil Sheridan's memoir, and the contrast and counterbalance was edifying. But then again, I was an especially dorky high schooler...
Good comment.
Should be clear to all that 1619 is primarily agitprop designed by and for midwits.
Would add that the debunking of the claim that protecting slavery was integral to 1776 has overshadowed some larger points:
1) Strong circumstantial evidence that Silverstein and NHJ failed to do basic reading of seminal US historiography which has placed slavery centrally in US history.
2) Lack of basic justification/epistemic framework/etc. for a *newspaper* to reimagine American history
I was in high school in early 90s - we read both 'traditional' textbook and Zinn. That was OK, I guess, in that Zinn was understood to be a corrective, even though at the time Zinn seemed cartoonish and deranged.
Even as a teenager the implicit expectation was that something would come along to replace Zinn that was better. But I would argue that 1619 in it's monomaniacal focus and fabrications is even worse than Zinn.
It is crazy reading the WSWS commentary which is far, far smarter than Silverstein's mealy mouthed obfuscations.
If you told me 10 years ago something like the WSWS would be mopping the floor with NYT mag EIC I could not have believed it.
Speaking of youth and school days, this is a letter to the editor NHJ wrote in college:
https://www.scribd.com/document/466921269/NYT-s-1619-Project-Founder-Calls-White-Race-Barbaric-Devils-Bloodsuckers-No-Different-Than-Hitler-x#fullscreen&from_embed
After a preamble of explicit anti-white hatred, she asserts that Africans discovered the Americas "long before Columbus or any Europeans" and that "the pyramids of the Aztecs and the great stone heads of the Olmecs are lasting monuments to the friendship of these two people."
It's one thing to believe dumb things in college, and another to be this misinformed and dim as a legal adult and still go on to be one of the most acclaimed intellectuals of your era. What a time we live in.
Not for me to say because I am not black or multiracial, but I was listening to Jason Whitlock and he had an interesting take which was that in particular multiracial Americans have an insecurity and confusion that leads them to overcompensate and embrace radical politics.
Quite plausible, but radical politics is one thing. She evidently believed in street-rant level hotep-ery.
Didn't TNC embrace similar beliefs in his youth?
It does seem to say something that this type of crackpot nonsense is normative early on for many of our elite 'anti-racist' thought leaders.
Yes, his father published it for a living in fact.
Kendi too, if I'm not mistaken.
I've been surprised to discover many black social justice proponents who say such things who actually have white mothers. NHJ is among them.
Back in the day when I was on Twitter, I ran across many black nationalist types who were focused on preserving their black culture and history and setting it apart from American culture and history in general. They didn't go on and on about the evils of America and white people, but focused on showcasing black history and culture greatness, urging self-reliance and actualization, aiming to inspire black greatness in the youth.
But there were also some fringe arguments and claims woven into the "reclaim your black greatness" corner of Twitter, without any evidence to support these claims. For example, some claimed that the Persian Empire, and Persians themselves, were in fact racially black, all of them. They posted photos of the friezes on Persian Empire ruins, and claimed the perfectly coifed symmetrical ringlets of head and beard curls were evidence they were all black. The conquered were never black, only the conquerors themselves. They claimed that the Arabic language did not originate in the Arabian peninsula, but far away in Africa, and that Arabs, the original Muslims and Islamic conquerors, were all racially black. Never did I imagine that one of their ilk would pen the 1619 Project and become catapulted to the pinnacles of fame and esteem via the NYT's anointment and shameless gaslighting.
The paradox of course is that this type of cartoon silliness obscures the monumental achievements of black Americans in American culture and history.
that's so weird. Xendi also wrote similarly deranged things in college, before he got too smart to write them in public.
Indeed. At least he is open about it and disavows it. Of course, always in the context of recounting the road to Damascus moment when he conceived his childlike racist/antiracist binary.
I didn't know he disavowed it. I'm not a huge fan of him, but at least he did that.
His binary does force him to adopt a few woke-heretical positions, such as that blacks can also be racist. For what it's worth.
“…agitprop designed by and for [dim]wits.” Perfect. Thank you!
Midwit is an intentional term to describe people who are just average dumb
Ah, I see. LOL!
I remember reading Zinn and going "huh, if you leave out all the adjectives that aren't in direct quotations, this is actually really interesting and quite readable." Seriously, the dude didn't need to editorialize so damn much; his subjects spoke for themselves just fine.
That's right. If the problem were merely that 1619 oversimplifies history I don't think there would be such outcry, and then outcry over the outcry, etc. The whole issue is that a "desire to protect slavery from the British" was *not* in fact a factor in the Revolution. The chronology just makes no sense, since British abolitionism didn't pick up political momentum until the 19th century. So, this core tenet of 1619 is made-up history, which is different than oversimplified history. Obviously many people have had a very strong negative response to the prestige-ification of made-up history.
I forget who made this point (someone far wiser than I, so I don't want to steal credit) but one of the great travesties of the 1619 Project is the way that it tries to minimize or erase America's robust history of progressive and even (pardon the phrase) anti-racism movements.
This is really important here because the British abolitionism was largely spurred by Americans (particularly American Quakers, the people so many modern culture warriors wish they were but erase from history).
It's not just lousy history, but it's actively harmful. Quakers - based mainly in Pennsylvania and England - managed to lead the charge in mostly ending one of humanity's most enduring institutions. That's such an unbelievable inspiration and something that anyone who was legitimately anti-racist would be shouting from the rooftop. Like, holy shit, look what we can do if we try! Ending slavery and serfdom is arguably the single greatest boon to humanity ever. I don't know about y'all but I'd want to get super into that and see what else we can do, not try and make up some competing version of history.
That's why a lot of marxist historians have been very critical of 1619. If you look at a work like Linebaugh and Rediker's "The Many Headed Hydra", every single argument that book makes about the "Revolutionary Atlantic" during the 17th-18th centuries is swept aside by 1619. With that said marxists of all stripes in the 21st century have proven themselves clumsy and timid and basically ineffective when it comes to disassociating themselves from Establishment progressivism, which is why the more forceful and effective criticism of 1619 has come from the right.
One would think. But, if there are billions to be made from a certain slanted narrative, and even more importantly, revenge to be had, well... Narrative as god is the trend these days. I don't think the promulgators of this propaganda are aware of how fast they are losing the sympathy of people and how badly they are damaging the reputations of the institutions they are using to disseminate the message. They may well be putting the left as a whole into a decades long slump, politically.
Their only saving grace may be the that there are elements of the right that are just as ridiculous.
"Ending slavery and serfdom is arguably the single greatest boon to humanity ever" . . . well, serfdom is really quite different from chattel slavery. And I'm pretty sure I'd put penicillin, golden rice, and modern construction methods ahead of the end of slavery because those mean that even slaves (which still exist all over the world) can survive with a roof over their head and food in their bowls. Even the most meagre life is better than dying of infection and starvation in the unsheltered dirt.
serfdom needs to be understood on its own, but it wasn't good.
Thank you for adding serfdom which somehow gets ignored.
Yeah, I think this ground is well established with respect to slavery as a causal factor. That NHJ line was not accurate.
I just think it wasn't necessary to make the piece interesting as a matter of journalism.
It was never intended as journalism. It was intended as propaganda, to be spread through schools. The school curricula projects were part of it from the beginning.
I've got a PhD in American history and wrote my dissertation (in part) on the Revolutionary period. You put it very well indeed, Chesterton Fence Repair Co.
"...what people are taught about history becomes what they know about history and that what they know about history has some material impact on how they think and act and vote. I don’t think any of those things are true."
On an almost weekly basis I learn about someone's role in history -- often an important role -- that I never learned about growing up. As just one example, women were almost completely absent from the history I studied 50+ years ago. Roles for women when I entered the workforce in 1974 reflected that same lack of representation.
So yeah -- it was a different time, and things have changed. One of the things that's changed is that we're hearing more about the people left out of past historical narratives. I don't know that I could quantify how this might impact how a person thinks or votes, but I *can* say that I've found it inspiring to learn about women who were not passive participants in the historical narrative of our country. And there is a power in being able to see yourself in those who came before you.
The problem is that the woman-less history you were taught 50+ years ago was just as present-focused and blinkered as modern representational efforts are. The past wasn't like either the U.S. of the 1970s or the U.S. of the 2020s. It was its own weird place, and trying to sift through it just to hilight the stories that serve our modern political and social goals harms both our understanding of our own past, but also keeps us from recognizing the true range of strange and wild things that the human animal is capable of. The past is just as foreign a country as [$country_you_haven't_been_to].
I agree that there will never be a way to fully understand the past. It's hard enough to maintain accurate memories for someone who's lived as long as I have. I still maintain that the ability to tap into multiple voices, documenting history as it happens, can give us a fuller view. Can any of us doubt that the written and oral histories of former slaves offered a unique point of view into slavery that those on the outside looking in could not tap into? To me, that's better than the history I grew up with.
Primary sources like those (and as many and varied as possible) is as close as we can get to actually experiencing the past, I agree. The slave narratives that the WPA took in the 30's are utterly invaluable.
I'm not a historian either, but I've read big chunks of the 1619 project and I'll be honest: A lot of the details were new to me. I was absolutely not taught much about slavery in (US, public) school; it was a sidenote, a casualty of history let's say, but for an average kid, those knots were absolutely not tied in class.
I'll start by quoting a previous comment of mine regarding this tomfoolery:
"The main issue with the 1619 Project lies in what it reveals: our "paper of record" is willing to devote a lot of resources to a fundamentally ahistorical project helmed by the shallow and intellectually dishonest Nikole Hannah-Jones. It's pathetic that she's still popular after she publicized her own uniquely shitty version of "if you don't vote for me you ain't black.""
The 1619 project is just another one of many sure signs that the NYT has not learned anything at all from its massive and invalidating failures starting with their support of the second Iraq war. Their leadership and the vast majority of their staff are losers who have lost sight of life, and they are totally unapologetic after even massive objective failures. It's time for the corporate death penalty to apply here, and failing that it's time for reasonable people to ignore and shit on the NYT at every opportunity.
The banality of the central claim, that slavery is one of many causal factors of why america is what it is today, really gets me thinking that the media world must be up to something weird. I get the feeling that they pay more attention to the person making an argument than the argument. It's always been that way but I think that in the past there was more of a semblance of a coherent discourse. Editors seemed like they were probably more likely to say "This is an old idea. Not sure it's worth publishing."
But today, it seems like you find the person you want to succeed (n hannah jones) and then give them a platform, and then you look at whatever ideas they have, and then you promote those ideas.
I've always found strange these people's expectation that kids won't just ignore or rebel against propaganda in schools.
Some will, some won't. It's the won'ts that the propagandists are going after. And there always some, and sometimes a lot.
I think the biggest problem with the 1619 Project is that it's called the 1619 Project and the argument over which year was the "true" founding of this country. If they called it something else, there wouldn't be this much hand wringing. I found many (not all) of the essays in the 1619 project pretty convincing IMHO. I am not sure if history changes how people think and vote but it does cause me to suspect the motivations of certain political actors. For example, if libertarians have a market-based solution to a problem that better helps the poor but their history has never shown one iota of care about the poor (i.e. they didn't support any programs for the poor in the past, then I'm less likely to support their solution.
To me, that is THE problem. If it was a literary exercise meant to bring new ideas and nuance, cool. But it's not a new more accurate version of history and shouldn't be considered one.
I think it was meant to center slavery and racism in our history which many people may not know or are aware of. I learned a lot myself from several of the essays and I don't see these ideas presented too much in a major newspaper, so maybe it was more "new" or "accurate" for me.
1619 a very straightforward example of a motte-bailey.
Bailey: "US founded to protect slavery from British"
Motte: "We're just saying slavery was bad."
Re Pulitzers, remember that time a NYT journo won a Pulitzer for helping cover up the Ukrainian famine?
I don't think liberals really understand that historically the NYT has not had a great track record of being on the *right side of history* from Duranty to downplaying threat of Hitler to the cozy relationship between Sulzberger and Allen Dulles leading to the NYT ignoring or whitewashing the criminality of the CIA.
I suspect that when the history of regressive identity politics for our era is written, NYT will similarly not end up looking good.