Wow
- Thread starter Toots_mcgee
- Start date
Snowflakes demand their safe space away from hearing anything negative about Murica. It might hurt their feelings.
The police know who the two people with the projector are.....they are on video. Clearly they Will be prosecuted and punished. As they should be. Maybe they are waiting for the particulars of the case to come forth before saying something.
The course was Rejected as with most leftwing sponsored lies and propaganda... for not being historically accurate or truthful. The Florida DOE told the College Board to come back with a historically accurate curriculum and it would pass.
I had to laugh at the mention of the NYT bogus lies aka the 1619 project which was heavily Debunked and Proven to be a Fictional History of America. Which more than likely is what this curriculum is based upon. Lies and pseudo facts should not be taught in schools or at universities. And it appears that Radical Activist educators have become the norm in a effort to reframe the Truth for Political gain.
The course was Rejected as with most leftwing sponsored lies and propaganda... for not being historically accurate or truthful. The Florida DOE told the College Board to come back with a historically accurate curriculum and it would pass.
I had to laugh at the mention of the NYT bogus lies aka the 1619 project which was heavily Debunked and Proven to be a Fictional History of America. Which more than likely is what this curriculum is based upon. Lies and pseudo facts should not be taught in schools or at universities. And it appears that Radical Activist educators have become the norm in a effort to reframe the Truth for Political gain.
Any idea which specific parts are historically inaccurate or untruthful and which parts they just disagree with? I only ask because in the political sphere these are often presented as one and the same.
that's a great question. Which DeSantis lackey examined the course work and came to this conclusion.
I wonder what crime they can be charged with committing? Is projecting a light on a building a crime? or a symbol of a swastika? Not condoning the act, but isn't it protected by 1st Amendment?
I'm not privy to the info. at all, I'm not from Florida. I do know that he constituents from Florida are in favor of legislation of this kind and elect politicians who do their bidding.
The DOE of Florida must have red flagged some part of the agenda... in this course. Without a doubt some hint of political flavor is involved just as I'm 100% sure the Curriculum is laced with Overt and Biased Political slants as well.
Probably trespassing they projected it on a building without approval and some form of hate crime if the state and local counties have that on their books.
If they had projected that symbol on Private Property or a Private Business that supported that ideal then really the govt. shouldn't be able to do anything at all... being Anti-semitic or Racist isn't illegal. Disgusting and Vile but not illegal.
SO your saying the Govt who is stealing tax payers money to Feed the lazy and shiftless who won't work or strive to improve their own lives shouldn't have a say in how that money is spent?
The Irresponsible and Lazy are Wards of the state who give up their rights of choice to buy things with taxpayers money when they decide to live off the charity of the hardworking taxpayer's.
Commodities should be the Norm not EBT cards and Foodstamps.... Junk Food, High end Sea food, Steak should not be purchased with tax payers dollars. It amazes me that you can use your EBT card to purchase Papa Murphy's Pizza!!
Weird how you want the wards of the State to steal money from the working class to pay for their foods and spend frivolously that $$$ with no consequence or oversite.... But you Reject the taxpaying citizens from having any input or oversite of the Local educational system. That is so inverse of how things are suppose to work.
Why do you perceive the Truth as Hate? As I've stated I worked in the income maintenance field for years, I know exactly what type of personality traits and values the grifters have.
I have no issue with helping the needy who have a legitimate disability, blind, deaf, physically or mentally handicapped. But I draw the line at those who have the mental and physical ability to work and choose to grift off the system. Which is most of the people in the system.
I simply call them exactly what they are, why does it upset you so much? And why does it anger you to hear a Chevy called a Chevy?
Illogical Hate is building a Dogmatic belief system based on erroneous data points and misguided emotional idea's.
Your hate for the Constitution and Bill of Rights is clearly illogical hate.
Your love for giving away the sweat and effort of others labors to the underserving and scammers to meet their wants and desires is vile and disgusting.
I personally don't see not liking people who steal from myself and others because they game the system as hate in the heart. It's hate for the behavior and the system that promotes that behavior.
I have no issue with helping the needy who have a legitimate disability, blind, deaf, physically or mentally handicapped. But I draw the line at those who have the mental and physical ability to work and choose to grift off the system. Which is most of the people in the system.
I simply call them exactly what they are, why does it upset you so much? And why does it anger you to hear a Chevy called a Chevy?
Illogical Hate is building a Dogmatic belief system based on erroneous data points and misguided emotional idea's.
Your hate for the Constitution and Bill of Rights is clearly illogical hate.
Your love for giving away the sweat and effort of others labors to the underserving and scammers to meet their wants and desires is vile and disgusting.
I personally don't see not liking people who steal from myself and others because they game the system as hate in the heart. It's hate for the behavior and the system that promotes that behavior.
So what you're saying is that there exists somewhere a history curriculum that is not laced with overt and biased political slants? The naiveté that it would take to believe this is staggering, and I don't believe you to be capable of that level.
The old saying isn't "history is written by the unbiased historians." It is "history is written by the victors." This implies that it is the "winners'" interpretation of events that gets written down in history. So if you could explain to me what is inherently wrong in exploring the other side of the story, that would be great. You know as well as I do that when two (or more) stories of an event are involved, it is most often somewhere in between that is the truth.
I agree with your post for the most part. Yes history is to some degree a interpretation by those writing it and having dissenting views is a must to find the middle ground of truth.
But do you really believe that the opposing views that some of these people in organizations like 1619 are actual historically accurate?. At this time there are plenty of Historical Scholars from both sides of the aisle of political spectrums to have opposing view points for valid discussions that has been going on for decades ..... now we have interjected in a third pseudo scholar who is a activist and more interested in exploring the so called emotional ramifications and warping the Historical narrative to fit their view point.
Historical Scholars from both sides have pointed out the blatant and obvious lies and inaccuracy's put forth by these type of activist scholars and I use that term loosely. They tend to interject a lot of half truths and lies with a obvious intent to blame the people of today in a effort to extract a pound of flesh for past atrocities that they had nothing to do with.
I have literally seen nothing in the Missouri bill or the Florida Bill that stops the teaching of past systemic racism or that elevating one Race above the other is allowable.
As I posted I'm all for paying the Bill..... Reparations to the ancestors of slaves and to the Native Americans who mineral rights was stolen. Big Oil and Big Mine should pony up to the Native Americans but let's be real they are a conquered people and that will never happen.
I'm 100% against blaming and attacking every person who lived in the past or who is a ancestor of that race with lies and half truths. Which it appears is a goal of the activist scholar.... if the pendulum swings to far one way the response is a Legislative action to correct it's course. Our goal should be to remain in the middle so the govt is never involved.
So can you point out my arrogance per say.... I get you disagree with my point but how is it based on arrogance? Or does is it that opposing view points reek of arrogance to you?
I had to look this one up as I wondered about the freedom of speech issue.....Trespassing has to be the physical act of being on property after the owner tells you to leave or the property is posted with no trespassing signs. However, municipalities have codes regarding lights, and federal transportation agencies have laws and regulations regarding lighting along all roads that receive federal funds.
I guess my biggest issue here is that of all those that I know with strong opinions one way or the other about this AP thing or the 1619 thing, not a single one of them has actually ever read a single word of either. They are all, to a person, relying on the testimony of another person, typically one who has a vested interest in making this a big thing: politicians stoking a culture war to get votes.
You can read the 1619 project stuff ... NYT posted it. Plenty of Articles as well from Historical Scholars pointing out the inaccuracy's as well. But you are not wrong some people are just headline readers or twitter consumers and never delve into the full issue.
I agree Politicians leverage the Culture War... this is not new though. It has just been amped up with 24 hr Coverage and Social Media connections across the Globe.
If you have ever studied the History of the 1931 Movie The Front Page(based on the Play) it's about the Corruption of the Press and the Local Govt of Chicago... it was Remade famously as My Girl Friday 1940 with Carey Grant.
It was written by former Journalists and directly reflected what they had witnessed done and experienced. It goes into detail about how the Papers of that day, influenced, lied, bribed, black mailed and controlled or tried to control Politicians and how they even had paid henchmen on their payroll to do their bidding.
I know it can be read; most people just don't. What I've read of the 1619 Project reads like any other academic "what if" type of paper. I know, of course, that reading academic papers isn't on most folks' top 10 list of things to do before they die, but I also believe, as most people believe, that arguing from a position of total ignorance is unproductive.
I agree not reading anything about 1619 and just listening to people is not productive. But reading some of the report and then reading published articles pointing out the accuracy's and inaccuracy's of the report providing context and examples should give the average person a good baseline of the paper.
The Atlantic pointed out that the Author has walked back some of her claims as being False and Even Politico had a article quoting a NYT African American Studies fact checker who pointed out 20 overt errors(lies) that they just ignored. Even the World Socialist Web Site called it a "Racialist Falsification" of history.
Both sides of the street appear to believe a lot of 1619 is BS pseudo history. I'm not saying a person with just a Undergraduate degree in history/African American studies and Masters in Journalism can't do legit and Ground Breaking Work. Many self taught and educated historians etc. have vast knowledge and report and discover unknown truths.
But even a cursory read of Nikole Hannah-Jones 1619 Project coupled with reading the complaints with proof of her inaccuracy's, make it obvious this was more about a agenda and self insertion into a cause than a recounting of historical events representing the truth. At least that is my observation. Others may see it differently.
Either way her work is mostly being Rejected as it should be.
The Atlantic pointed out that the Author has walked back some of her claims as being False and Even Politico had a article quoting a NYT African American Studies fact checker who pointed out 20 overt errors(lies) that they just ignored. Even the World Socialist Web Site called it a "Racialist Falsification" of history.
Both sides of the street appear to believe a lot of 1619 is BS pseudo history. I'm not saying a person with just a Undergraduate degree in history/African American studies and Masters in Journalism can't do legit and Ground Breaking Work. Many self taught and educated historians etc. have vast knowledge and report and discover unknown truths.
But even a cursory read of Nikole Hannah-Jones 1619 Project coupled with reading the complaints with proof of her inaccuracy's, make it obvious this was more about a agenda and self insertion into a cause than a recounting of historical events representing the truth. At least that is my observation. Others may see it differently.
Either way her work is mostly being Rejected as it should be.
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This is an interesting response letter to some historians who objected to what they perceived as inaccuracies: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/...istorians-who-critiqued-the-1619-project.html
This is the perspective you talked about: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248
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Yes that is the Politico article.... and yes I know it comes across as supportive to a degree but I just dismiss that as partisan bias.... if you ignore 20 errors, make claims that other historians are being to literal and that a lot of your paper is stepped in metaphors then IMO you can't take the research as fact based. It is more historical fiction. Trying to Frame American History in Literal Racial terms of Black and White is lazy and a lie. It makes for great emotional hype.
Can't read the NYT reached my max quota of free...but I think I read it in the past. But I won't comment from memory.
www.forbes.com
reason.com
Can't read the NYT reached my max quota of free...but I think I read it in the past. But I won't comment from memory.
What History Professors Really Think About ‘The 1619 Project’
Many history professors are using “The 1619 Project” in their classrooms and feel strongly about the importance of its use.
www.forbes.com
The 1619 Project Unrepentantly Pushes Junk History
"I too yearn for universal justice," wrote Zora Neale Hurston in her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, "but how to...
reason.com
Part 1
New York Times Editor’s response:
Since The 1619 Project was published in August, we have received a great deal of feedback from readers, many of them educators, academics and historians. A majority have reacted positively to the project, but there have also been criticisms. Some I would describe as constructive, noting episodes we might have overlooked; others have treated the work more harshly. We are happy to accept all of this input, as it helps us continue to think deeply about the subject of slavery and its legacy.
The letter from Professors Bynum, McPherson, Oakes, Wilentz and Wood differs from the previous critiques we have received in that it contains the first major request for correction. We are familiar with the objections of the letter writers, as four of them have been interviewed in recent months by the World Socialist Web Site. We’re glad for a chance to respond directly to some of their objections.
Though we respect the work of the signatories, appreciate that they are motivated by scholarly concern and applaud the efforts they have made in their own writings to illuminate the nation’s past, we disagree with their claim that our project contains significant factual errors and is driven by ideology rather than historical understanding. While we welcome criticism, we don’t believe that the request for corrections to The 1619 Project is warranted.
The project was intended to address the marginalization of African-American history in the telling of our national story and examine the legacy of slavery in contemporary American life. We are not ourselves historians, it is true. We are journalists, trained to look at current events and situations and ask the question: Why is this the way it is? In the case of the persistent racism and inequality that plague this country, the answer to that question led us inexorably into the past — and not just for this project. The project’s creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer at the magazine, has consistently used history to inform her journalism, primarily in her work on educational segregation (work for which she has been recognized with numerous honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship).
Though we may not be historians, we take seriously the responsibility of accurately presenting history to readers of The New York Times. The letter writers express concern about a “closed process” and an opaque “panel of historians,” so I’d like to make clear the steps we took. We did not assemble a formal panel for this project. Instead, during the early stages of development, we consulted with numerous scholars of African-American history and related fields, in a group meeting at The Times as well as in a series of individual conversations. (Five of those who initially consulted with us — Mehrsa Baradaran of the University of California, Irvine; Matthew Desmond and Kevin M. Kruse, both of Princeton University; and Tiya Miles and Khalil G. Muhammad, both of Harvard University — went on to publish articles in the issue.) After those consultations, writers conducted their own research, reading widely, examining primary documents and artifacts and interviewing historians. Finally, during the fact-checking process, our researchers carefully reviewed all the articles in the issue with subject-area experts. This is no different from what we do on any article.
As the five letter writers well know, there are often debates, even among subject-area experts, about how to see the past. Historical understanding is not fixed; it is constantly being adjusted by new scholarship and new voices. Within the world of academic history, differing views exist, if not over what precisely happened, then about why it happened, who made it happen, how to interpret the motivations of historical actors and what it all means.
The passages cited in the letter, regarding the causes of the American Revolution and the attitudes toward black equality of Abraham Lincoln, are good examples of this. Both are found in the lead essay by Hannah-Jones. We can hardly claim to have studied the Revolutionary period as long as some of the signatories, nor do we presume to tell them anything they don’t already know, but I think it would be useful for readers to hear why we believe that Hannah-Jones’s claim that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery” is grounded in the historical record.
The work of various historians, among them David Waldstreicher and Alfred W. and Ruth G. Blumrosen, supports the contention that uneasiness among slaveholders in the colonies about growing antislavery sentiment in Britain and increasing imperial regulation helped motivate the Revolution. One main episode that these and other historians refer to is the landmark 1772 decision of the British high court in Somerset v. Stewart. The case concerned a British customs agent named Charles Stewart who bought an enslaved man named Somerset and took him to England, where he briefly escaped. Stewart captured Somerset and planned to sell him and ship him to Jamaica, only for the chief justice, Lord Mansfield, to declare this unlawful, because chattel slavery was not supported by English common law.
New York Times Editor’s response:
Since The 1619 Project was published in August, we have received a great deal of feedback from readers, many of them educators, academics and historians. A majority have reacted positively to the project, but there have also been criticisms. Some I would describe as constructive, noting episodes we might have overlooked; others have treated the work more harshly. We are happy to accept all of this input, as it helps us continue to think deeply about the subject of slavery and its legacy.
The letter from Professors Bynum, McPherson, Oakes, Wilentz and Wood differs from the previous critiques we have received in that it contains the first major request for correction. We are familiar with the objections of the letter writers, as four of them have been interviewed in recent months by the World Socialist Web Site. We’re glad for a chance to respond directly to some of their objections.
Though we respect the work of the signatories, appreciate that they are motivated by scholarly concern and applaud the efforts they have made in their own writings to illuminate the nation’s past, we disagree with their claim that our project contains significant factual errors and is driven by ideology rather than historical understanding. While we welcome criticism, we don’t believe that the request for corrections to The 1619 Project is warranted.
The project was intended to address the marginalization of African-American history in the telling of our national story and examine the legacy of slavery in contemporary American life. We are not ourselves historians, it is true. We are journalists, trained to look at current events and situations and ask the question: Why is this the way it is? In the case of the persistent racism and inequality that plague this country, the answer to that question led us inexorably into the past — and not just for this project. The project’s creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer at the magazine, has consistently used history to inform her journalism, primarily in her work on educational segregation (work for which she has been recognized with numerous honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship).
Though we may not be historians, we take seriously the responsibility of accurately presenting history to readers of The New York Times. The letter writers express concern about a “closed process” and an opaque “panel of historians,” so I’d like to make clear the steps we took. We did not assemble a formal panel for this project. Instead, during the early stages of development, we consulted with numerous scholars of African-American history and related fields, in a group meeting at The Times as well as in a series of individual conversations. (Five of those who initially consulted with us — Mehrsa Baradaran of the University of California, Irvine; Matthew Desmond and Kevin M. Kruse, both of Princeton University; and Tiya Miles and Khalil G. Muhammad, both of Harvard University — went on to publish articles in the issue.) After those consultations, writers conducted their own research, reading widely, examining primary documents and artifacts and interviewing historians. Finally, during the fact-checking process, our researchers carefully reviewed all the articles in the issue with subject-area experts. This is no different from what we do on any article.
As the five letter writers well know, there are often debates, even among subject-area experts, about how to see the past. Historical understanding is not fixed; it is constantly being adjusted by new scholarship and new voices. Within the world of academic history, differing views exist, if not over what precisely happened, then about why it happened, who made it happen, how to interpret the motivations of historical actors and what it all means.
The passages cited in the letter, regarding the causes of the American Revolution and the attitudes toward black equality of Abraham Lincoln, are good examples of this. Both are found in the lead essay by Hannah-Jones. We can hardly claim to have studied the Revolutionary period as long as some of the signatories, nor do we presume to tell them anything they don’t already know, but I think it would be useful for readers to hear why we believe that Hannah-Jones’s claim that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery” is grounded in the historical record.
The work of various historians, among them David Waldstreicher and Alfred W. and Ruth G. Blumrosen, supports the contention that uneasiness among slaveholders in the colonies about growing antislavery sentiment in Britain and increasing imperial regulation helped motivate the Revolution. One main episode that these and other historians refer to is the landmark 1772 decision of the British high court in Somerset v. Stewart. The case concerned a British customs agent named Charles Stewart who bought an enslaved man named Somerset and took him to England, where he briefly escaped. Stewart captured Somerset and planned to sell him and ship him to Jamaica, only for the chief justice, Lord Mansfield, to declare this unlawful, because chattel slavery was not supported by English common law.
Part 2:
It is true, as Professor Wilentz has noted elsewhere, that the Somerset decision did not legally threaten slavery in the colonies, but the ruling caused a sensation nonetheless. Numerous colonial newspapers covered it and warned of the tyranny it represented. Multiple historians have pointed out that in part because of the Somerset case, slavery joined other issues in helping to gradually drive apart the patriots and their colonial governments. The British often tried to undermine the patriots by mocking their hypocrisy in fighting for liberty while keeping Africans in bondage, and colonial officials repeatedly encouraged enslaved people to seek freedom by fleeing to British lines. For their part, large numbers of the enslaved came to see the struggle as one between freedom and continued subjugation. As Waldstreicher writes, “The black-British alliance decisively pushed planters in these [Southern] states toward independence.”
The culmination of this was the Dunmore Proclamation, issued in late 1775 by the colonial governor of Virginia, which offered freedom to any enslaved person who fled his plantation and joined the British Army. A member of South Carolina’s delegation to the Continental Congress wrote that this act did more to sever the ties between Britain and its colonies “than any other expedient which could possibly have been thought of.” The historian Jill Lepore writes in her recent book, “These Truths: A History of the United States,” “Not the taxes and the tea, not the shots at Lexington and Concord, not the siege of Boston; rather, it was this act, Dunmore’s offer of freedom to slaves, that tipped the scales in favor of American independence.” And yet how many contemporary Americans have ever even heard of it? Enslaved people at the time certainly knew about it. During the Revolution, thousands sought freedom by taking refuge with British forces.
As for the question of Lincoln’s attitudes on black equality, the letter writers imply that Hannah-Jones was unfairly harsh toward our 16th president. Admittedly, in an essay that covered several centuries and ranged from the personal to the historical, she did not set out to explore in full his continually shifting ideas about abolition and the rights of black Americans. But she provides an important historical lesson by simply reminding the public, which tends to view Lincoln as a saint, that for much of his career, he believed that a necessary prerequisite for freedom would be a plan to encourage the four million formerly enslaved people to leave the country. To be sure, at the end of his life, Lincoln’s racial outlook had evolved considerably in the direction of real equality. Yet the story of abolition becomes more complicated, and more instructive, when readers understand that even the Great Emancipator was ambivalent about full black citizenship.
The letter writers also protest that Hannah-Jones, and the project’s authors more broadly, ignore Lincoln’s admiration, which he shared with Frederick Douglass, for the commitment to liberty espoused in the Constitution. This seems to me a more general point of dispute. The writers believe that the Revolution and the Constitution provided the framework for the eventual abolition of slavery and for the equality of black Americans, and that our project insufficiently credits both the founders and 19th-century Republican leaders like Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and others for their contributions toward achieving these goals.
It may be true that under a less egalitarian system of government, slavery would have continued for longer, but the United States was still one of the last nations in the Americas to abolish the institution — only Cuba and Brazil did so after us. And while our democratic system has certainly led to many progressive advances for the rights of minority groups over the past two centuries, these advances, as Hannah-Jones argues in her essay, have almost always come as a result of political and social struggles in which African-Americans have generally taken the lead, not as a working-out of the immanent logic of the Constitution.
And yet for all that, it is difficult to argue that equality has ever been truly achieved for black Americans — not in 1776, not in 1865, not in 1964, not in 2008 and not today. The very premise of The 1619 Project, in fact, is that many of the inequalities that continue to afflict the nation are a direct result of the unhealed wound created by 250 years of slavery and an additional century of second-class citizenship and white-supremacist terrorism inflicted on black people (together, those two periods account for 88 percent of our history since 1619). These inequalities were the starting point of our project — the facts that, to take just a few examples, black men are nearly six times as likely to wind up in prison as white men, or that black women are three times as likely to die in childbirth as white women, or that the median family wealth for white people is $171,000, compared with just $17,600 for black people. The rampant discrimination that black people continue to face across nearly every aspect of American life suggests that neither the framework of the Constitution nor the strenuous efforts of political leaders in the past and the present, both white and black, has yet been able to achieve the democratic ideals of the founding for all Americans.
This is an important discussion to have, and we are eager to see it continue. To that end, we are planning to host public conversations next year among academics with differing perspectives on American history. Good-faith critiques of our project only help us refine and improve it — an important goal for us now that we are in the process of expanding it into a book. For example, we have heard from several scholars who profess to admire the project a great deal but wish it had included some mention of African slavery in Spanish Florida during the century before 1619. Though we stand by the logic of marking the beginning of American slavery with the year it was introduced in the English colonies, this feedback has helped us think about the importance of considering the prehistory of the period our project addresses.
Valuable critiques may come from many sources. The letter misperceives our attitudes when it charges that we dismiss objections on racial grounds. This appears to be a reference not to anything published in The 1619 Project itself, but rather to a November Twitter post from Hannah-Jones in which she questioned whether “white historians” have always produced objective accounts of American history. As is so often the case on Twitter, context is important. In this instance, Hannah-Jones was responding to a post, since deleted, from another user claiming that many “white historians” objected to the project but were hesitant to speak up. In her reply, she was trying to make the point that for the most part, the history of this country has been told by white historians (some of whom, as in the case of the Dunning School, which grossly miseducated Americans about the history of Reconstruction for much of the 20th century, produced accounts that were deeply flawed), and that to truly understand the fullness and complexity of our nation’s story, we need a greater variety of voices doing the telling.
That, above all, is what we hoped our project would do: expand the reader’s sense of the American past. (This is how some educators are using it to supplement their teaching of United States history.) That is what the letter writers have done, in different ways, over the course of their distinguished careers and in their many books. Though we may disagree on some important matters, we are grateful for their input and their interest in discussing these fundamental questions about the country’s history.
Sincerely,
Jake Silverstein
Editor in chief
It is true, as Professor Wilentz has noted elsewhere, that the Somerset decision did not legally threaten slavery in the colonies, but the ruling caused a sensation nonetheless. Numerous colonial newspapers covered it and warned of the tyranny it represented. Multiple historians have pointed out that in part because of the Somerset case, slavery joined other issues in helping to gradually drive apart the patriots and their colonial governments. The British often tried to undermine the patriots by mocking their hypocrisy in fighting for liberty while keeping Africans in bondage, and colonial officials repeatedly encouraged enslaved people to seek freedom by fleeing to British lines. For their part, large numbers of the enslaved came to see the struggle as one between freedom and continued subjugation. As Waldstreicher writes, “The black-British alliance decisively pushed planters in these [Southern] states toward independence.”
The culmination of this was the Dunmore Proclamation, issued in late 1775 by the colonial governor of Virginia, which offered freedom to any enslaved person who fled his plantation and joined the British Army. A member of South Carolina’s delegation to the Continental Congress wrote that this act did more to sever the ties between Britain and its colonies “than any other expedient which could possibly have been thought of.” The historian Jill Lepore writes in her recent book, “These Truths: A History of the United States,” “Not the taxes and the tea, not the shots at Lexington and Concord, not the siege of Boston; rather, it was this act, Dunmore’s offer of freedom to slaves, that tipped the scales in favor of American independence.” And yet how many contemporary Americans have ever even heard of it? Enslaved people at the time certainly knew about it. During the Revolution, thousands sought freedom by taking refuge with British forces.
As for the question of Lincoln’s attitudes on black equality, the letter writers imply that Hannah-Jones was unfairly harsh toward our 16th president. Admittedly, in an essay that covered several centuries and ranged from the personal to the historical, she did not set out to explore in full his continually shifting ideas about abolition and the rights of black Americans. But she provides an important historical lesson by simply reminding the public, which tends to view Lincoln as a saint, that for much of his career, he believed that a necessary prerequisite for freedom would be a plan to encourage the four million formerly enslaved people to leave the country. To be sure, at the end of his life, Lincoln’s racial outlook had evolved considerably in the direction of real equality. Yet the story of abolition becomes more complicated, and more instructive, when readers understand that even the Great Emancipator was ambivalent about full black citizenship.
The letter writers also protest that Hannah-Jones, and the project’s authors more broadly, ignore Lincoln’s admiration, which he shared with Frederick Douglass, for the commitment to liberty espoused in the Constitution. This seems to me a more general point of dispute. The writers believe that the Revolution and the Constitution provided the framework for the eventual abolition of slavery and for the equality of black Americans, and that our project insufficiently credits both the founders and 19th-century Republican leaders like Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and others for their contributions toward achieving these goals.
It may be true that under a less egalitarian system of government, slavery would have continued for longer, but the United States was still one of the last nations in the Americas to abolish the institution — only Cuba and Brazil did so after us. And while our democratic system has certainly led to many progressive advances for the rights of minority groups over the past two centuries, these advances, as Hannah-Jones argues in her essay, have almost always come as a result of political and social struggles in which African-Americans have generally taken the lead, not as a working-out of the immanent logic of the Constitution.
And yet for all that, it is difficult to argue that equality has ever been truly achieved for black Americans — not in 1776, not in 1865, not in 1964, not in 2008 and not today. The very premise of The 1619 Project, in fact, is that many of the inequalities that continue to afflict the nation are a direct result of the unhealed wound created by 250 years of slavery and an additional century of second-class citizenship and white-supremacist terrorism inflicted on black people (together, those two periods account for 88 percent of our history since 1619). These inequalities were the starting point of our project — the facts that, to take just a few examples, black men are nearly six times as likely to wind up in prison as white men, or that black women are three times as likely to die in childbirth as white women, or that the median family wealth for white people is $171,000, compared with just $17,600 for black people. The rampant discrimination that black people continue to face across nearly every aspect of American life suggests that neither the framework of the Constitution nor the strenuous efforts of political leaders in the past and the present, both white and black, has yet been able to achieve the democratic ideals of the founding for all Americans.
This is an important discussion to have, and we are eager to see it continue. To that end, we are planning to host public conversations next year among academics with differing perspectives on American history. Good-faith critiques of our project only help us refine and improve it — an important goal for us now that we are in the process of expanding it into a book. For example, we have heard from several scholars who profess to admire the project a great deal but wish it had included some mention of African slavery in Spanish Florida during the century before 1619. Though we stand by the logic of marking the beginning of American slavery with the year it was introduced in the English colonies, this feedback has helped us think about the importance of considering the prehistory of the period our project addresses.
Valuable critiques may come from many sources. The letter misperceives our attitudes when it charges that we dismiss objections on racial grounds. This appears to be a reference not to anything published in The 1619 Project itself, but rather to a November Twitter post from Hannah-Jones in which she questioned whether “white historians” have always produced objective accounts of American history. As is so often the case on Twitter, context is important. In this instance, Hannah-Jones was responding to a post, since deleted, from another user claiming that many “white historians” objected to the project but were hesitant to speak up. In her reply, she was trying to make the point that for the most part, the history of this country has been told by white historians (some of whom, as in the case of the Dunning School, which grossly miseducated Americans about the history of Reconstruction for much of the 20th century, produced accounts that were deeply flawed), and that to truly understand the fullness and complexity of our nation’s story, we need a greater variety of voices doing the telling.
That, above all, is what we hoped our project would do: expand the reader’s sense of the American past. (This is how some educators are using it to supplement their teaching of United States history.) That is what the letter writers have done, in different ways, over the course of their distinguished careers and in their many books. Though we may disagree on some important matters, we are grateful for their input and their interest in discussing these fundamental questions about the country’s history.
Sincerely,
Jake Silverstein
Editor in chief
Also useful info:
slate.com
The Cutthroat Historian Brawl Over the 1619 Project Is Only Getting Worse
At one point, printed-out tweets were deployed.
Thanks for the reprint of the Times article that is the one I read.....and it's pretty obvious that a bunch of journalist who are well versed in the propaganda field as that is their trade, are just playing cover their Arse. After rereading their response really I think it proves that they spewed out a bunch of BUNK and this was their cover. Historians while of course having some human bias are not going to slant as much as a bunch of muckrakes and who's literal stated goal was to find and prove that America was founded on Racism. If you strive to find something you usually do.
I paraphrase If not over what precisely happened then about why it happened, who made it happen, How to interpret the motivations of historical actors.... that's IMO taking a huge leap of self insertion to further a agenda.
Their analysis about the Revolutionary war being primarily about slavery is false to a 1/4 truth...... it was more so over the Rum trade and the colonies dependence on those jobs.... almost half of the economy was tied up in the alcohol business and that economic circle did involve slavery but to say it was the main and only driving force is not founded. I scoffed at a how they try to Leverage Britain and English common law.... Britain didn't out law slavery till 1833!! Sure Britain wanted slaves to flee and up rise so it would help their war effort.
To say that Blacks have been marginalized in American History is a gross overstatement.. The 1619 project wants to sensationalize and overstate their role. Where the component of the catalyst yes but they where not the main motivating point.
I do agree with their analysis of Lincoln for the most part but that is nothing new at all, many of his speeches and written word and statements proves that Lincoln was definitely racist and softened to a degree in the effort to save the Union his main goal. And that was driven by $$$$. Books have been written about this before with factual data.
Clearly the 1619 project goal was to Prove that Racism drove everything in America and that the Legacy of Racism still exist and is the Driving force in America to this day and in their words how it effects contemporary life.
They Claim there is persistent racism and inequality to this day. Which is a complete lie... You don't elect a Black President, have Black Doctors, Police Officers at all levels, Attorney Generals, Military Generals, Senators, Representatives, Black Journalist who can write and pen inaccurate historical accounts and have a Society that is running rampant with Racism. You don't provide more funding and Resources based on race to a certain demographic giving them access to improvement and have inequality.
And nobody is stopping the Teaching of the 3/5 compromise and the oppression of slavery and the Systemic Racism of Jim Crow laws....that again is a fallacy that is being spread about the laws being passed by states across America.
If people want to buy into history written by Propagandist with a agenda then that is fine, but I will defer to actual historians who take a bit of pride in their craft and work.
Even in the Rebuttal I just reread they delve more into the lasting effects and legacy of today than the past.... which is their Goal. The oppression and atrocities of the past where real and vile. The ongoing plight today is about a broken culture not hatred and built in racism.
I paraphrase If not over what precisely happened then about why it happened, who made it happen, How to interpret the motivations of historical actors.... that's IMO taking a huge leap of self insertion to further a agenda.
Their analysis about the Revolutionary war being primarily about slavery is false to a 1/4 truth...... it was more so over the Rum trade and the colonies dependence on those jobs.... almost half of the economy was tied up in the alcohol business and that economic circle did involve slavery but to say it was the main and only driving force is not founded. I scoffed at a how they try to Leverage Britain and English common law.... Britain didn't out law slavery till 1833!! Sure Britain wanted slaves to flee and up rise so it would help their war effort.
To say that Blacks have been marginalized in American History is a gross overstatement.. The 1619 project wants to sensationalize and overstate their role. Where the component of the catalyst yes but they where not the main motivating point.
I do agree with their analysis of Lincoln for the most part but that is nothing new at all, many of his speeches and written word and statements proves that Lincoln was definitely racist and softened to a degree in the effort to save the Union his main goal. And that was driven by $$$$. Books have been written about this before with factual data.
Clearly the 1619 project goal was to Prove that Racism drove everything in America and that the Legacy of Racism still exist and is the Driving force in America to this day and in their words how it effects contemporary life.
They Claim there is persistent racism and inequality to this day. Which is a complete lie... You don't elect a Black President, have Black Doctors, Police Officers at all levels, Attorney Generals, Military Generals, Senators, Representatives, Black Journalist who can write and pen inaccurate historical accounts and have a Society that is running rampant with Racism. You don't provide more funding and Resources based on race to a certain demographic giving them access to improvement and have inequality.
And nobody is stopping the Teaching of the 3/5 compromise and the oppression of slavery and the Systemic Racism of Jim Crow laws....that again is a fallacy that is being spread about the laws being passed by states across America.
If people want to buy into history written by Propagandist with a agenda then that is fine, but I will defer to actual historians who take a bit of pride in their craft and work.
Even in the Rebuttal I just reread they delve more into the lasting effects and legacy of today than the past.... which is their Goal. The oppression and atrocities of the past where real and vile. The ongoing plight today is about a broken culture not hatred and built in racism.
The problem seems to be that people keep characterizing as lies things they just disagree with rather than things that are falsehoods. We have had black people in positions of power...but it's a pretty big leap in logic to say that it's proof positive that persistent racism and inequality don't exist any more. In fact, it's pretty non-sequitur. A claim by its very nature is a statement that takes a side on an issue and can be disputed. Evidence is then presented to support that claim. All of which requires a degree of interpretation.
So since you don’t want the chiefs to get away with a block in the back on the big punt return, that means it didn’t happen. Got it. You are pot to MG’s kettle. As biased as MG. Sad.
Let me clarify systemic racism doesn't exist....laws have been put in place to make it illegal. Hence black people in the position of power and control. And to say Persistent racism exist is yes a lie because if it had endured and was prevalent and the Norm in the System we would have racist road blocks and laws baked into the system because the majority would demand it and Black People and other minorities could not obtain the positions of power.
Of course individual racist... and prejudice people exist and will always exist that is human nature. If they had made a statement like some Racist minded people still are out there but are few and far between and some prejudiced opinions still creep into EVERY races thought process... well that would be true.
But to make a statement that America is still a Country with Overt Racist and Bigoted idea's and beliefs that run rampant is so far from the truth.
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Systemic racism is not overt. That’s the issue. It’s far worse because it’s hard to point to something concrete, so people say, “see, it doesn’t exist.”
Statistics do not agree. Longer prison sentences for black men is not just in a few isolated states. Harsher punishment for “black drugs” at the federal and state level has been an obvious issue. Literally no text books anywhere in the country for 100 years even mentioned the slaughter in Tulsa.
There is still redlining going on by banks despite everyone knowing it’s an issue.
All the red states outlawing CRT, which isn’t even taught at the high school level is as overt as you can get. We don’t even want Suzy feeling bad because her great grandfather lynched Reggie’s great grandpa. We don’t want her to know about it period.
It’s not her fault those crazy indoctrinating teachers want her to know our real history. Let’s whitewash it. No systemic racism here.
Give me a break.
There is still redlining going on by banks despite everyone knowing it’s an issue.
All the red states outlawing CRT, which isn’t even taught at the high school level is as overt as you can get. We don’t even want Suzy feeling bad because her great grandfather lynched Reggie’s great grandpa. We don’t want her to know about it period.
It’s not her fault those crazy indoctrinating teachers want her to know our real history. Let’s whitewash it. No systemic racism here.
Give me a break.
His argument is that because there are no laws that codify racist practices, that means it isn’t “systemic.”
I know. I have heard his argument over and over and over. There are a lot of systems in our country. The legislative branches of government aren’t the only ones that dictate our way of life.
If something is happening across the country it’s systemic whether he wants to believe it or not.
