I've seen a lot of people say it's anti-America or historically inaccurate, but I haven't actually seen anyone on Atlas give an example of either.
Unfortunately the debate has penetrated mainstream discourse well after some of us have grown tired of hearing about it.
It doesn't help that Nikole Hannah-Jones is a tedious and often nasty Twitter personality whose use of that platform and occasional micro-controversy (e.g. deleted tweets promoting conspiracy theories or incendiary racial theories, bullying behavior) present a case study in why pubic figures should avoid it.
Here are a couple of balanced pieces that point to issues with the project, both of which have been shared here:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/historians-clash-1619-project/604093/ - Professor of history and fact-checking collaborator who was rebuked for rejecting one of the project's central claims, that the American War of Independence was fought primarily to preserve slavery. He also expresses concern about criticism of the project taking toxic forms, but this contributes to his critique.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/magazine/we-respond-to-the-historians-who-critiqued-the-1619-project.html - Critique from Victoria Bynum, James McPherson and other historians, published as a letter to the editor + response in the NY Times. They argue that the project involves substantial failures in matters of fact, method, and presentation.
Quoting central claims for those too lazy to click:
We are dismayed at some of the factual errors in the project and the closed process behind it.
These errors, which concern major events, cannot be described as interpretation or “framing.” They are matters of verifiable fact, which are the foundation of both honest scholarship and honest journalism. [...] On the American Revolution, pivotal to any account of our history, the project asserts that the founders declared the colonies’ independence of Britain “in order to ensure slavery would continue.” This is not true. If supportable, the allegation would be astounding — yet every statement offered by the project to validate it is false. Some of the other material in the project is distorted, including the claim that “for the most part,” black Americans have fought their freedom struggles “alone.”
Still other material is misleading. The project criticizes Abraham Lincoln’s views on racial equality but ignores his conviction that the Declaration of Independence proclaimed universal equality, for blacks as well as whites, a view he upheld repeatedly against powerful white supremacists who opposed him. The project also ignores Lincoln’s agreement with Frederick Douglass that the Constitution was, in Douglass’s words, “a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.” Instead, the project asserts that the United States was founded on racial slavery, an argument rejected by a majority of abolitionists and proclaimed by champions of slavery like John C. Calhoun.
The 1619 Project has not been presented as the views of individual writers — views that in some cases, as on the supposed direct connections between slavery and modern corporate practices, have so far failed to establish any empirical veracity or reliability and have been seriously challenged by other historians. Instead, the project is offered as an authoritative account that bears the imprimatur and credibility of The New York Times. Those connected with the project have assured the public that its materials were shaped by a panel of historians and have been scrupulously fact-checked. Yet the process remains opaque. The names of only some of the historians involved have been released, and the extent of their involvement as “consultants” and fact checkers remains vague. The selective transparency deepens our concern.
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