Opinion of the 1619 project?

[lfromnj]

Wanted to see the orange man effect.

[Santander]

Better than the orange man's 1488 project.

[John Dule]

From what I understand, it's riddled with historical inaccuracies.

[KaiserDave]

Not a big fan

[RINO Tom]

From what I understand, it's riddled with historical inaccuracies.

From my little research into it, this pretty much seems to cover it.  Another ridiculous gimmick by people who'd be better to just improve how they treat and interact with actual Black Americans everyday in their real lives and stop doing dumb stuff like this.

[Kingpoleon]

Nikole Hannah Jones subscribes to fake history inspired by black supremacist groups. The New York Times should be under much hotter fire for keeping her on than they are.

[Ferguson97]

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.

[VPH]

I'll be honest, much of it is important information that doesn't get covered in schools. We need to draw attention to things like redlining and environmental issues disparately affecting Black neighborhoods. That said, I do not like the anti-patriotic tinge to some of the pieces (certainly not all) in the collection. I think it should be taught alongside the 1776 Project. Lean FP but some pieces are HP.

[Coastal_Elite]

I'll be honest, much of it is important information that doesn't get covered in schools. We need to draw attention to things like redlining and environmental issues disparately affecting Black neighborhoods. That said, I do not like the anti-patriotic tinge to some of the pieces (certainly not all) in the collection. I think it should be taught alongside the 1776 Project. Lean FP but some pieces are HP.

[PSOL]

They are entirely right

[WD]

HP. Full of historical inaccuracies and revisionism. The authors are well intentioned, but their are so many mistakes that reduce the overall quality of it.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

HP. Full of historical inaccuracies and revisionism. The authors are well intentioned, but their are so many mistakes that reduce the overall quality of it.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

When is the "race explains everything" trend going to end?

[Averroës Nix]

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.

[ChrisMcDanielWasRobbed]

Garbage which leads to more scum like this.

[KaiserDave]

Аverroës strikes again with facts, eloquence, and quotes for me to use in arguments.

[TDAS04]

Mixed.  It goes too far in painting a portrait of America as being entirely defined by racism.

At the same time, racism is something that should be discussed, as it was terrible and its impacts linger today.  Also, the fact that African-Americans have remained so patriotic in spite of everything is something a lot of white people don’t appreciate.

Overall, the 1619 project is better than people who shout “there is no more discrimination against black people.  Shut up about racism already.”

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

This is why I call this a left-wing Lost Cause and people need to understand that the core problem at the root of the Lost Cause is the methods, the methods that lead to the distortion not the distortion itself. That is why people take umbrage when I make this comparison "how dare you compare us to those racists, we aren't white supremacists" and yet it is the methods that are dangerous and the methods that are the same.


We have a two front war on the founding, by right wing extremists seeking to drag the founders down with them in an attempt to gain legitimacy and by left-wing extremists seeking to knock them down from above in the name of false conceptualizations of political correctness and flawed historical narratives created on that basis.

Calhoun, Davis and Taney are wrong and they were wrong then and the contention by Lincoln and the Republicans was that they were wrong at the time. The view of the former group was the product of slavery's growth post cotton gin and the evolutionary effect this had the political dynamics as a result. A process I have long described in these discussions. This doesn't give them legitimacy to define the founding, it should illustrate that they are politicians contemporary to their time and corrupted by the politics and economic interests into warping and distorting the founding.

[S019]

Massive Freedom Project (same, doesn't believe our racist history should be forgotten)

[Continential]

Massive Freedom Project (same, doesn't believe our racist history should be forgotten)

We all know that you believe in safe spaces and the such and don't believe in real history.

[Alcibiades]

It draws attention to overlooked, yet important, aspects of American history, but goes too far in trying to make everything about slavery. Ultimately, history does not really follow grand ideological narratives, whether those be the ‘patriotic’ narrative that the US has a glorious history or the 1619 Project’s one.

[HillGoose]

idk tbh but Fetty Wap should start the 1738 project

[John Dule]

Massive Freedom Project (same, doesn't believe our racist history should be forgotten)

But you do think it should be fabricated?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This is not an argument over whether or not to remember slavery and genocide. I read Howard Zinn too, but there is a difference between not forgetting and creating a whole curriculum that is cobbled together based of what is essentially the historical equivalent of junk science then you have gone wrong.

I will take James McPherson's work over any of this trash.

We should not be forced into a false dichotomy here.

[dead0man]

Don't worry guys, she's walking back one of her main talking points

One thing in which the right has been tremendously successful is getting media to frame stories in their language and through their lens.  The #1619Project does not argue that 1619 is our true founding. We know this nation marks its founding at 1776.

meanwhile, her banner at Twitter


The Daily Kos's (not a right wing media) headline for the story read, "1619.  The 400th anniversary of the real founding of America".

The New York Times once said this in a blurb about it, "The 1619 project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the 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 our national narrative."  It recently removed the bolded part.  (if they had integrity, they'd mention that they changed something, but they don't so they didn't)