In recent years The 1619
Project has become the flashpoint for both sides on the history war. It is
defined as a 'journalistic revisionist work that takes a critical view of
traditionally revered figures and events in American history focusing on
subjects of slavery and the founding of the United States.'
Credit where its due: it used to
be a bad thing for most people to call themselves revisionist
historians. Of course all progressives, of which Nikole Hannah-Jones proudly
is, have always written revisionist histories that essentially do exactly what
Hannah-Jones does. There's nothing it that is any different from the writings
of Howard Zinn or Lies My Teacher Taught Me or anything that would be
unfamiliar to someone who has a passing familiarity with the work of W.E.B
Dubois, Malcolm X or James Baldwin. I mention this because I really wonder,
having done all the research she claims to have done, whether Hannah-Jones read
any of these source materials before she was 'inspired' to write her famous
work. And that's before you get to the fact that by the standard of other
historians Hannah-Jones essentially violated the rule that might cause Gore
Vidal to start spinning in his grave: at least get your facts right before you
start revising them to fit your agenda.
Because say what you will (and
trust me I will)about her predecessors: at least they were sure to
cherry pick data that was actually in the historical record before they spun it
to fit their agenda. What's clear is that every step of the way Hannah-Jones
was painting a false narrative, was informed so while the process was going on
and chose to ignore it, and after the flaws were openly pointing out almost
from the start of its publication to the present day has not only stood by her
words but done the progressive trick of accusing her adversaries of the usual
boogeymen of racism and white supremacy. It's a gift that POTUS himself would
be proud of if he weren't making it a campaign issue – and as is always the way
with conservatives, actually using it to greater effect on the battlefields
that matter than the left ever does.
(I'll get to that.)
Even the title is of dubious distinction
considering that the first enslaved Africans were brought to North America in
1526 and the enslavement of indigenous people can be dated back to
Columbus. And it was attacked by
multiple qualified historians, among them James McPherson one of the most
well-know Civil War historians who disputed the claim "made by Hannah-Jones
in her introductory essay "that the primary reasons the colonists wanted
to declare their independence was to preserve slavery." Slavery was still
active both in Britain and the British Empire well past the time of the Treaty
of Paris.
Multiple people have claimed that
the image was false but one historian consulted saying that the project was a
'much needed corrective to the blindly celebratory histories.' To be clear we
stopped having blindly celebratory histories a long time ago and the only way
you can find them is if you actively seek them out. Multiple historians from
the right and the left have pointed out that previous historians like Zora
Neale Hurston searched for 'historical understanding' by prominent
African-Americans." Yet despite all of these numerous flaws Hannah-Jones
was still awarded the Pulitzer prize and named one of the ten greatest works in
the last decade. I guess liberal guilt as well as reactionary behavior to
conservativism counts for more than
historical accuracy these days.
It's impossible not to look at
Hannah-Jones as anything but another version of an extreme progressive. And its
worth noting that in 2008 she went to Cuba to study universal health care and
the educational system under Raul Castro. When she became a staff writer for
the Times, she says she writes to 'discover and expose the systemic and
institutional racism that she says are perpetuated by official acts and
laws."
Now I'm not going to say that
racism doesn't exist in America, that the divides in our country are systemic
and possibly unsolvable and that slavery plays a huge role in everything that
has happened in our society since well
before the official founding of the republic. What troubles me is that
Hannah-Jones seems to write all of these things like every single leftist I've
had the misfortune of reading: as if
each discovery was something that is a blinding revelation to her and therefore
excluded from society. Since she has studied African-American history she has
to have studied every single one of her predecessors that every single thing
she was writing about as part of the 1619 Project had been written about before
multiple times with little change even with the outrage. Even her idea of how
the world should be viewed is derivative
of Baldwin who famously said America's real independence day came with the
Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
So there are only two conclusions
one can draw. The first is that she read all of this material when doing her
studies multiple times and decided: I want to get in on this action. She knew
that no one ever lost money by playing on the liberal guilt of America and that there was a way to work with
it.
The second alternative is that
somehow she managed to live her entire life, both before she went to college
and after, somehow thinking that America – not just white America but all
America – had no idea of just how much slavery infected society. This is a
commonality held by progressives who live in their own bubble and truly think
the reason our systemic problems have not been solved by society is their lack
of awareness on the subject. When it
comes to the subject of slavery, as I have written multiple times and will
again, this attitude has been taken as far back as the abolitionists such as
Garrison and Frederic Douglass and has been at the center of the men I
mentioned and even more. And it's not
like it hasn't been reiterated in movies, TV shows or hell, rap songs. (I can't
believe Hannah-Jones never heard 'Fight The Power' growing up.)
I'm relatively sure by this point
in history every educated American knows how horrible slavery was even if we
don't know the details. I grant you that white America has always handled
discussion of it poorly but honestly, what could we possibly say that would do
it justice? I seriously doubt Hallmark makes a card that says: "I'm sorry
that my ancestors held your ancestors in bondage for 400 years." Setting aside that half of white America (at
least) doesn't think they have to apologize for anything, I'm not convinced
that a majority of African-Americans would accept it if it was offered by every
white American. Nor should they, honestly.
I will admit that Hannah-Jones has
put forth a solution of sorts, though it comes after hundreds of pages of
regurgitating old leftist standards and making some new ones up. Like
everything else it's cribbed from a combination of progressive and racial
talking points: reparations for descendants of slaves, national health care and
other social welfare for all American. Of course there are no details, no such
things as cost analysis and no assessment of the political climate. None of
that is surprising either: the left has never been about solutions to problems
and pragmatism is not part of their vocabulary.
And I suspect that the only reason Hannah-Jones actually put even these
token suggestions in her conclusion was so that she didn't sound like another
'angry black woman' to the New York Times.
As always with progressives my
problem is less with the reason of their moral outrage but their execution of
what they do. So much of the journalism Hannah-Jones has been doing is closer
to the level of activism then reporting. The two can and have overlapped in the
20th century but in this one their has been a failure in the mission
statement. As Hannah-Jones knows having studied history activism only works
when it is a means to an end. Works like The 1619 Project are the means and
the end. As activism it will accomplish nothing long term. As a historian
it is a betrayal of the term.
So to reiterate: there is nothing
in Nicole Jones's project that hasn’t been said hundreds of times before. What
is said is little more than 'junk history'.
She was warned by multiple historians during the Project that what Jones
was saying was inaccurate and was ignored. There are no solutions offered in
the subject that would count. My question is simple: At any point didn't
someone in Times editorial process say anything to someone about what
they were putting into print?
For all my issues with the New
York Times none of them are with their actual reporting. I've read enough
of it over the decades to know that they are basically thorough, objective and
even handed when it comes to nearly every subject whether it be foreign or
domestic affairs, dives into cultural trends and when they choose to do it,
sports. I also know that they will take Democrats to task and in just as harsh
terms as they do Republicans. (The difference is, ever since Nixon, the right
has been more, shall we sensitive to criticism.)
So the Times's failure to not only
let the 1619 Project go into print but also when asked by numerous
historians to offer corrections to stand by Hannah Jones even in the face of
the multiple criticisms from so many sources is a betrayal of their usually
impeccable standards. To be sure they offered a 'clarification' but never
offered an accompanying editorial note. They've since done a podcast series, a
book and a documentary series, which have made it more than clear that they are
fine with everything this project this says. When critics have attacked the
project the Times stood by Hannah-Jones
The only criticism Hannah-Jones
has ever responded to, of course, is the one that comes from conservatives, and
has only responded on Twitter. "Those who've wanted to act as if
tweets/discussions about the project hold more weight than the actual words of
the project cannot be taken in good faith" and "Those who point to
edits of digital blurbs but ignore the unchanged text of the actual project
cannot be taken in good faith'. In a sense she said that all the criticism of
her project were fake news.
Its telling that while high
profile conservatives criticized the project, the only prominent Democrat to
defend it at the time was Kamala Harris and former President Obama. I suspect the only reason Democrats lined up
behind it was a combination of liberal guilt and the reactionary behavior that
has multiplied exponentially since Trump took office. I seriously wonder if
anyone actually read the project by the time Biden took office and if they did
they no doubt thought: "Well we're committed to it now. We have to stand
by it." That they kept doing so even after one such historian wrote a
detailed essay in Jacobin – Jacobin! – which said that it "botched
the history of the slave economy, misconstrued the origins of Northern economic
development, erased the history of anti-slavery and rendered emancipation
irrelevant' – is a sad sign as to how polarized so much of our American
discourse has become. Even the World Socialist Web Site has criticized
the falsification of history saying it wrongly centers on racial rather than
class conflict.
Had the GOP chosen to take the
approach that many prominent historians did and quoted numerous liberal
journals criticisms they would have had that rarest of things: their assertions
would have been backed up by facts and records. Instead by the GOP choosing to
make it part of the culture wars and threatening to withhold funding for
teaching it, as well as using the same terminology of 'left-wing propaganda',
which is their go-to response for everything from politics to hip-hop to the
Green M & M, they put it under the same ridiculous banner and gave cover
for the left to defend it without quarter or likely even reading it. And it has no doubt given cover for The
Times as well: given that the Republicans will as a given, attack them
about everything that they do correctly (the majority of them) they have been
insulated from having to back away from a horrible error in judgment.
Compared to everything the GOP and
conservative media have done as I speak, the obsession over The 1619 Project
has long since faded into the background. The problem is by this point it
has essentially become part of the education curriculum and leftist dogma in
multiple sources, including this site. It's now essentially the historical
record even though its junk history. And for any true historian that's
appalling.
The 1619 Project was no doubt celebrated in large
part because it completed one of the goals of progressives: 'raising
awareness'. This has always struck me as the mirror image as when right-wing
journalists and politicians say "we're just asking questions'. And as with
so many things the left's version is far more nebulous and harder to measure if
it is successful then the right's version. From my perspective this approach
has been just as effective at changing the conversation and winning hearts and
minds as Hollywood's role in 'The Resistance' has been when it comes to issues
like income equality and DEI.
To be clear the reasons for my
anger at Hannah-Jones and The 1619 Project go beyond my usual issues
with the left overall. It is yet another example of them fighting battles that
don't matter while the right continues to fight – and win – the battles that
do. It's another example of the left's ridiculous focus on trying to point out
the cause of societal problems as a solution rather than try to deal with
actual solutions and then try to put them into effect. It's another example of
every pattern I see with the left in so many places: write nebulous theories to
deal with problems, double down on them when you are called out, and never
apologize. And like everything else the left does it exists for two reasons: to
play to your base and provoke outrage from 'the establishment'. It's usually conservatives but as is always
the case with the left, they will view against anyone who pushes back against
them as their mortal enemy.
All of these are bad enough from
an activist and while I would have issues with Hannah-Jones if she were
only one of those I could at least comprehend it. But Hannah-Jones fancies
herself a historian. 1619 demonstrates she doesn't pass muster as one of
those but let's engage in the kind of magical thinking she does and say she
actually has spent her life reading so many histories of African Americans.
Considering she's a journalist I assume she is familiar with the idea of doing
research on a project before you do it is well.
It's clear when she was doing
whatever work she did she has to have read the documents about the efforts at
emancipation and the abolitionist movement. She also has to have done her work
on the various battles for civil rights from the end of the war and to the
present day. So by that standard she has to know what helps a cause succeed and
what leads it to fail. Abolitionism and
every cause of reform is full of example of the division within them of the
activist and the politician and even if that no longer exists in so many
progressive causes today at the very least she has to have read about them.
So in other words Nikole
Hannah-Jones was provided countless examples of what brings about the kinds of
deep societal change in America and around the world – and chose to devote
her time and energy to a method that has never worked historically and shows no
signs of working in the present day.
That leads me to the question I
ask over and over when I read works like 1619 and the overwhelming
majority of these left-wing revisionist histories: what are you trying to accomplish?
You know, besides getting rich off the guilt of liberals and receiving fame and
infamy in a certain segment of society. I guess that in itself is its own
reward (though it goes against so much of the morality that the left uses to
judge the rest of society by) but in the short and long term how do you change
anything?
Works like this are,
unfortunately, another reason that the right has a built-in advantage in the
war of revisionist history. As I'll illustrate in later articles the right
approaches history much like it approaches politics: there is a clear story
with heroes and villains. The 'Great Man' version they create is the hero and
it tells the reader that yes, America is a good place to live in and you should
be proud of it. Lie or not, it offers an
optimistic view of the world.
Hannah-Jones, by contrast, creates
a world where America itself is the villain from the time of its
founding to the present day. There are no good people in her America and the
entire system is rigged against them from the day you were born. The country
you live in is corrupt, immoral and fundamentally broken. It is less about
education or enlightenment then hitting you over the head with the fact that
your world is hopelessly broken and the powers that be will do nothing to solve
it even if they wanted to.
To be very clear Hannah-Jones'
work is not the least bit original when it comes to this tone even among
previous leftist revisionists. And like everything else by the so called
progressive it will sell very little beyond the converted. It's bad enough when they make this argument
about the present and talk the same way about the future. When they do the
exact same thing to the past then the world is even more miserable then it's
ever been.
And that brings me to the final
question, the one I never truly get an answer too: If America is such a shitty
and unforgiving place to everybody who has ever lived here then why do people
like Hannah-Jones still voluntarily live here? Despite the fact she didn't
write about it the 13th Amendment has been signed into law since
1865. What's chaining her and her colleagues to a nation that holds them in a
state of such oppression? Did that
question ever occur to her writing this work? Or did she just do what she did
to the historical record and choose to ignore the part that wasn't flattering?
I welcome whatever vitriol will
come my way.
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