Recently, The New York Times Magazine unveiled the “1619 Project,” a series of stories, interviews, and essays that commemorate the 400th anniversary of when slavery began in the country that would become the United States.
While education about slavery is an important aspect of America’s history and a way to ensure such evil doesn’t ever occur again, it’s clear that much of this project is a result of the NY Times’s progressive, revisionist historical approach, not a genuine desire to inform its readers.
The NY Times said, in its own words, that the project “aims to reframe our country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”
This approach not only requires a biased starting point, but a lack of nuance, historical accuracy, or global understanding of slavery at the time. Does any historian recognize 1619 as America’s founding? Yet the NY Times presents this as an accurate depiction of America’s origins, because the project’s origins are biased toward the concept of racism only, leaving out the Founders’ attempts to create an equal, free society.
The project not only purports to sell the idea that slavery was immoral and that America shouldn’t have participated in it—things that most reasonable, moral people would agree on today in hindsight—but attacks America’s core ideals, labeling them “false” and a “lie.”
The project spreads the myth 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of slavery,” something I had not only never heard of, but that is clearly false, based on this country’s founding historical documents, including the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and documents written by slave owners themselves.
The project seeks to define America by one thing: racism. It’s not only disingenuous but ignorant to claim that our country’s origins were defined by only one mistake, especially when it’s a mistake that our country has owned up to—repeatedly and in myriad ways—for centuries.
However, the writer continued to encourage people to read it. “One need not agree with everything a writer says to benefit from reading it,” the post says.
I do agree that one of the greatest ills of U.S. citizens today is misinformation, ignorance, and a lack of knowledge—or some combination of the three. Everyone in America should be fully informed and aware that slavery existed and perpetuated here during the founding of this country and against the better moral judgment of many.
However, at the same time, no history book should call out slavery as the only foundation, the only pivot upon which this country’s ideas rest, or claim that slavery was the beginning and end of the American concept of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That’s merely progressive propaganda, seeking to misinform and smear this country’s hard-fought war against tyranny, even if slavery played an important role.
