Public Schools Are Teaching The 1619 Project in Class, Despite Concerns From Historians
"Mandating the use of The 1619 Project in K-12 curricula is at best premature until these issues are resolved."
![Nikole Hannah-Jones | Screenshot via UChicago / Youtube](https://d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net/img/c800x450-w800-q80/uploads/2020/01/Screen-Shot-2020-01-27-at-7.46.15-PM-800x450.png)
The 1619 Project—The New York Times Magazine's much vaunted series of essays about the introduction of African slavery to the Americas—will now be taught in K-12 schools around the country.
School districts in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Buffalo, New York, have decided to update their history curricula to include the material, which posits that the institution of slavery was so embedded in the country's DNA that the country's true founding could be said to have occurred in 1619, rather than in 1776.
"One of the things that we are looking at in implementing The 1619 Project is to let everyone know that the issues around the legacy of enslavement that exist today, it's an American issue, it's not a Black issue," Dr. Fatima Morrell, associate superintendent for culturally and linguistically responsive initiatives for Buffalo Public Schools, told Buffalo's NPR station.
Buffalo teachers and administrators have already begun studying the 1619 material so they can implement it into their curricula. The NPR story correctly notes that the essays examine "lesser-known consequences of slavery," like "how plantation economics led to modern corporate, capitalist culture."
Many historians, though, have questioned The 1619 Project's accuracy. Five of them penned a letter to The New York Times expressing dismay "at some of the factual errors in the project and the closed process behind it." These historians said the project's contention that the American Revolution was launched "in order to ensure slavery would continue" was flat-out wrong.
Another historian, Phil Magness of the American Institute for Economic Research, has criticized Matthew Desmond's 1619 Project essay, which claimed that modern American capitalism has its roots in plantation slavery. Magness has persuasively argued that this claim lacks verification, and that Desmond relied on bad data about cotton-picking rates in the pre-Civil War south.
"Desmond's thesis relies exclusively on scholarship from a hotly contested school of thought known as the New History of Capitalism (NHC)," wrote Magness in a second article. "Although NHC scholars often present their work as cutting-edge explorations into the relationship between capitalism and slavery, they have not fared well under scrutiny from outside their own ranks."
Some conservative critics have overreached: Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called The 1619 Project "propaganda" and suggested that the Times was trying to brainwash readers. That line of attack goes too far, but there are valid criticisms of the project's ideological slant.
Citing Magness' article, New York magazine's Jonathan Chait hailed The 1619 Project as a valuable corrective, but cautioned that it shouldn't be taught in schools a history. Magness agrees.
"Mandating the use of The 1619 Project in K-12 curricula is at best premature until these issues are resolved and the Times makes a good faith effort to answer its critics," Magness tells Reason. "While there is merit to some of the themes raised by The 1619 Project, it continues to be marred by its empirically debunked and explicitly anti-capitalist assessment of the economics of slavery."
Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Times reporter who spearheaded the project, has in general taken umbrage at the idea that there's anything seriously wrong with the work. She came close to accusing The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf of racism for mildly critiquing the project. In an interview with Friedersdorf's Atlantic colleague Adam Serwer, she insisted that history was not objective.
"I think my point was that history is not objective," said Hannah-Jones. "And that people who write history are not simply objective arbiters of facts, and that white scholars are no more objective than any other scholars, and that they can object to the framing and we can object to their framing as well."
Hannah-Jones is correct that the keepers of histories have always employed spin: History is written by the victors is a great aphorism because it's true. School textbooks have often been filled with ideological nonsense—sometimes as part of a conservative or religious agenda. But that's the irony of requiring The 1619 Project in high school history courses: It is itself a form of spin, and significant aspects of it are up for debate.
"The Buffalo school district's decision also risks further politicizing the classroom with explicitly ideological content, not unlike the notorious cases we often hear about coming from the other side of the spectrum such as the Texas textbook review process, which has long been a bastion of the religious right," says Magness.
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They teach Howard Zinn’s A People’s History… too.
’bout time there’s some pushback but I fear it is too little, too late.
Maybe we’ll meet at one of the camps.
JFC, I should’ve RTFA first. Robby thinks he can “to be sure” and “both sides” his way out of being put up against the wall wearing a blindfold and having a last vape.
Are you kidding? They won’t allow a last vape, vaping is bad for your health.
(Adapted from a tasteless cartoon about a final cigarette)
Howard Zinn spoke at my university graduation. Gawd it was awful! This was during the height of the Reagan years, and he spent an hour (AN HOUR) lecturing us from the podium about how we were all going to die because of Reagan.
Parents were actually walking out of their own children’s graduation.
When congress stopped financing Reagan’s illegal war on Nicaragua’s legally and democratically elected government, Reagan took the war underground. He financed it by flooding black neighborhoods of LA with crack cocaine, getting hundreds of thousands of black kids hooked on crack. You can say he was a drug lord.
The police will lock up young black kids and throw away the key, for possession of a few ounces of grass, while Regan the drug lord, never went to jail and has an aircraft carrier, buildings and a library named after him, If you knew anything, you would know Reagan, a B rated actor who was a better better actor as a US president, was a snitch during his time during the McArthy witch hunt era, fingering fellow actors and he, and especially his wife, disdained the common people, making sure he could do all he could to pass laws that benefited only his friends, the 1%.
Howard Zinn was a bombardier during the second world war. He found many targets he was ordered to bomb killed many French civilians. In fact, the US did not care how many French civilians were killed, so as to get a few Germans. Eisenhower, on Dday bombed all train station, towns, bridges and building within a 60 miles radius of the beaches. Of course French civilians were not warned as that would give the invasion away. Many thousands died, including many children. And Americans wonder why the French don’t particularly care much for Americans. I find chumps like you prefer to live a lie than to face the truth. Lies are entertaining, they are designed to make you fell good. The truth is inconvenient and hard to face.
Just in time to include this gem from Harvard Hogg:
This is a tweet for for the founders of the gun violence prevention movement started centuries ago by almost entirely black, brown and indigenous lgbtq women and non binary people that never got on the news or in most history books.
We may not know all your names but thank you.
link
Zinn is a real piece of [brown stuff].
The Times is being as accurate as they where in the 1930s about Stalin.
Won them a Pulitzer to lie about Uncle
Joe and hide the Holodomore.
The mass starvation in Ukraine.
Slavery? What is this concept they speak of?
When you’re told whom to employ or whom to rent to…just kidding, capitalists can’t be enslaved in the derogatory sense, they deserve what’s coming to them.
Then confiscate their property and wealth and given it to those whom they enslaved!
It’s a thing that only happened to Africans at the hand of white Europeans. Never happened in Asia the middle east , Europe or Africa before 1619.
So…let me get this straight.
Hebrews were never slaves to Africans in Egypt?
Africans were never slaves to Africans?
Africans never captured other Africans and sold them to slave traders?
Misc Asians never had slaves?
AmerIndians never had slaves ?
Aztecs never had slaves?
Incas never had slaves?
Japanese never had slaves?
Kingdom of Hawaii never had slaves?
Persians never had slaves?
Chinese never had slaves?
Sumerians never had slaves?
Indians never had slaves?
Assyrians never had slaves?
Sounds about right for this Narrative!
Their goal is to equate capitalism with slavery, when capitalism is what made slavery unprofitable. If they were to succeed at their goal of abolishing capitalism, true slavery would soon follow.
Capitalism also arose in Europe in nations that did not have slaves.
So?
Problematizes the assertion “that modern American capitalism has its roots in plantation slavery.”
You think I was serious? Did you look at my handle?
You never know – hard to pick up tone in print. People misunderstand me all the time.
Capitalism is simply market economics.
It arises anywhere trade utilizing currency occurs.
The presence or absence of slavery has nothing to do with it.
Capitalism arises with strong property rights and enforcement of contracts. When people are free to steal or renege on contracts because they have might on their side, you’re not going to have capitalism.
Ok.
Doesn’t really have anything to do with my comment, but sure
Food, shelter, and clothing isn’t free. Because we must work for corporations to buy stuff from corporations, we are corporate slaves. Capitalism is just a big plantation.
Looks like someone went to public school and got an A in history.
Now qualified to be a guard at the Reeducation Camp.
Or a trustee, let’s not go too far.
I actually believed that shit for a while. I was fucking Tony for fuck’s sake. Glad I learned to think instead of feel. I give a lot of credit to the cool kids who left in the Glibertarian Exodus.
Good for you. And it shows there is hope for these kids. I still think most of them will figure it out eventually.
I hope so.
“I was fucking Tony for fuck’s sake.”
TMI dude; Tony already has too much of a persecution complex for you to be outing yourselves like this.
No homo?
Oklahomo.
I’ve always been curious: Does Tony like to take it rough?
And Ben Carson is an asshole for saying that slavery was immigration.
But it’s totes cool to call anything else you want slavery, even a high school kid working at McDonald’s. That’s totally realistic and respectful to our ancestors.
Slavery is the quintessential case of immigrants doing jobs that Americans won’t do.
In the end we all end up in the big plantations.
You can provide yourself food, clothing and shelter without the blessing of corporations.
You can not provide yourself with food, clothing and shelter without the blessing of the state.
When people take 50-100% off your salary.
“ “I think my point was that history is not objective,” said Hannah-Jones.”
I assume then that there will be no grades with this course, correct?
Or what does it mean when you tell a student he’s wrong about something that isn’t objective? “Your thinking thoughts I don’t like “?
Of course no grades–they are so 20th century patriarchal, racist, oppression.
Students will instead be voted social scores by their peers.
they can object to the framing and we can object to their framing as well
What makes me think that despite her assertion that “history is not objective” she still sees her objections as more valid than their objections?
She’s also conceding that the white supremacist interpretation of history is equally valid, and ought to be taught along side her version, since neither perspective is objectively superior. So I expect she, consistent in her anti-foundationalism – will endorse the teaching of the Pink Swastika as a valid revisionist history of Naziism and homosexuality, right? Right?
*objectively, “your” grammar is wrong.
“Some conservative critics have overreached: Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called The 1619 Project “propaganda” and suggested that the Times was trying to brainwash readers. That line of attack goes too far, but there are valid criticisms of the project’s ideological slant.”
So it’s not propaganda or brainwashing, they’re just randomly teaching kids some unverified or disproven material which by a series of unfortunate coincidences, pushes the students toward a tendentious view of our past?
Incidentally, will the public-school supporters shut up (if they haven’t already) about what a great assimilationist influence they used to be for the huddled masses of immigrant kids? They’re not going for assimiliation anymore.
“Welcome to America, boys and girls, today we teach you how your parents may as well have stayed home rather than subject themselves to such a wicked society.”
Despite the horror of this falsification of history, it IS being committed by the left, so they had to find some basis to slap down the opposition from the right.
Because even when the left is doing wrong, the right can have no valid criticism of it.
“Welcome to America, boys and girls, today we teach you how your parents may as well have stayed home rather than subject themselves to such a wicked society.”
That’s not the lesson.
The lesson is: “today we teach you how to resent your new neighbors and demand government do more”
I was thinking the same thing, this is fucking textbook propaganda.
Slavery is much more socialist than capitalist.
The foundation of capitalism is property rights, and the most fundamental property right is the right of self-ownership. Therefore, there is nothing as antagonistic to capitalism as slavery.
On the other hand, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”: that is an exact description of slavery. You get only your bare necessities, and you give away everything you can produce.
It’s not capitalism that takes 10 to 35% of everyone’s income before they get a chance to touch it, to spend it on things they may or may not care about. That’s socialism. So at that point, is in our government 10 to 35% slavery? I assume when taxes get to 100%, it’s slavery in everything but name.
So yes, slavery is much more socialist and capitalist. And if the members of the 1619 project disagree, they can remind themselves at history of subjective and go fuck themselves.
“The dissociation of labor and disintegration of society, which liberty and free competition occasion, is especially injurious to the poorer class; for besides the labor necessary to support the family, the poor man is burdened with the care of finding a home, and procuring employment, and attending to all domestic wants and concerns. Slavery relieves our slaves of these cares altogether, and slavery is a form, and the very best form, of socialism.”
/slavery apologist George Fitzhugh, 1854
https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/fitzhughsoc/fitzhugh.html
Fitzhugh is a wonderful resource for summarizing Leftist perspectives
There is one big problem with your argument. Slaves were property.
“How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg?”
“Four, you postmodernist hack.”
… which completely violates the right to self-ownership as the most fundamental property right.
Therefore, slaves were stolen property.
For the life of me, I can’t begin to imagine why socialists think slavery is wrong. Given its history, it can’t be because forced labor is bad.
“For the life of me, I can’t begin to imagine why socialists think slavery is wrong. Given its history, it can’t be because forced labor is bad.”
Lefties are upset because slaves weren’t subject to mass murder; it’s preferable to their brand of slavery.
Only because the government said so. Only because the government neglected its duty to protect the lives, liberties, and properties of the enslaved.
Slavery without government sanction is called “kidnapping” and “assault”.
Some conservative critics have overreached: Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called The 1619 Project “propaganda”
In what way is this overreach? The 1619 Project is not historical scholarship, it is a naked attempt to advance the argument for reparations by linking contemporary wealth and prosperity to a system that was destroyed over 150 years ago. Granted it attempts to do so with poor scholarship and a patently false presentation of capitalism but that is a propagandist’s stock and trade.
Democrats have convinced large swathes of Black Americans that the Democrat party was not the Party of slavery, the KKK, and segregation…because reasons.
Because when they lost the fight to disenfranchise black voters, they decided to try and buy their votes instead, in exchange for mess-of-pottage short term gains. Don’t ask about the long term, only a Republican or libertarian would do that!
They’ve convinced large swaths of blacks because large swaths of blacks are fucking stupid. That’s what you get when your entire race is dumber than everybody else and your IQ is in double digits. But we can’t say that cause feelz…
I think you meant to post this at Stormfront.
Damned well said swillfredo.
It’s just the latest iteration of Afro-centric pseudohistory, the same kind that claims ancient Egypt was run for its entire existence by sub-Saharan Africans and that Cleopatra was as black as Grace Jones.
The problem is that this version is not being rightly marginalized for the ahistorical nonsense that it is, but taught in public schools as factual because being pimped by a mixed-race NYT reporter gave it a veneer of respectability.
claims ancient Egypt was run for its entire existence by sub-Saharan Africans and that Cleopatra was as black as Grace Jones
Well, the ancient, ancient Egyptians were black – closely related to Ethiopians (and modern Coptic Egyptians like Sadat).
Cleopatra, however, was Greek.
Some ancient Egyptians were black, some were of Levantine/Phoenician complexion.
On Ramses II:
“Professor Ceccaldi determined that: “Hair, astonishingly preserved, showed some complementary data—especially about pigmentation: Ramses II was a ginger haired ‘cymnotriche leucoderma’.” The description given here refers to a fair-skinned person with wavy ginger hair.[74][75] Subsequent microscopic inspection of the roots of Ramesses II’s hair proved that the king’s hair originally was red, which suggests that he came from a family of redheads.[76] This has more than just cosmetic significance: in ancient Egypt people with red hair were associated with the deity Set, the slayer of Osiris, and the name of Ramesses II’s father, Seti I, means “follower of Seth.”[77]”
Given its location, my expectation would be lots of racial blending, in that Afro-Asiatic way that’s all over the Red Sea basin. I would also bet darker skin in the Upper Kingdom vs. the Lower.
That’s the most likely, given the respective trade routes.
The best part of afro-revisionism are claims like the black kings of England and France.
Also the deconstruction of various works of are and artifacts that reveal the “original” paintings below… which are minstrel-level caricature depictions.
I don’t understand how the “research” that reveals Louis XIV as actually Sambo aren’t seen as racist by the people who push the afrocentric theory
I’d say its the claim that Jesus, a Jew of course, was black. Sammy David Jr. would be proud.
Jesus Christ, with a lot of the leftist nonsense you can at least argue that, well, at least they meant well, but how the hell can you possibly claim this lying evil bullshit has any sort of good intentions behind it?
You have to learn that they never meant well to begin with.
Some conservative critics have overreached: Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called The 1619 Project “propaganda” and suggested that the Times was trying to brainwash readers. That line of attack goes too far, but there are valid criticisms of the project’s ideological slant.
How does this go ‘too far’?
This IS propaganda–it is incorrect information disseminated for the purpose of furthering an agenda
AND it is being put into our schools for the purpose of getting it into kids heads so early in their lives that it becomes nearly impossible to dislodge–brainwashing.
Gingrich didn’t go too far–he hit it dead on.
I don’t think the 1619 project is going to fool nearly as many people as both they and the critics think. The Russians I know didn’t believe Soviet propaganda — they didn’t know what the truth was, but the propaganda was so heavy handed, and changed so readily, that they knew what the truth wasn’t. The same thing will play out here.
Look at the backlash and resistance to AGW — when reality doubles energy prices, people pay attention. No matter what nonsense there is about 97% settled and 12 years to live, most people put AGW way down their list of worries. The lies are like Soviet propaganda, they keep changing their alarms so often and so much that they have no practical credibility. People may be brainwashed into thinking something will have to be done someday, but not now, and not in 12 years. It’s the politicians pushing it, and they have a lot of pushback.
So I think it will be with this. Kids will learn what they need to pass tests and forget it afterwards. Look at how many adults respond to surveys not knowing how many branches of government there are.
Kids will become adults, escape public schools, learn they’ve been lied to, and get on with their lives.
I think you are probably right about that. What it will mostly do is cause kids to find history boring and just ignore the whole subject. I am not sure how great that is. But I think it is a lot more likely to achieve that than it is to get kids to believe this bullshit.
The underlying problem, however, is that a lot of good history will also be ignored because of bad history.
Look at the media as a blueprint.
In my experience, the media lies as a matter of course. They’re about the narrative, which makes me mistrust literally everything in the legacy media. So even when they put out something that’s factual, researched, and well presented, I still find myself not believing a single word of it because of the obvious propaganda machine they’ve become.
Kids will become adults, escape public schools, learn they’ve been lied to, and get on with their lives.
Then why does Bernie get so much support?
Because nothing is absolute. Some kids grow up believing in the Bermuda Triangle, Yeti, and Sasquatch. Some adults latch on to them too.
For that matter, look at how many atheist kids end up religious, and how many religious kids end up atheist, and religion has -zero- facts behind it’ it is 100% faith.
This is an example of why this stuff can take root. Kids will eat up anything that lets them tell their parents that the old thinking is wrong. Be it religion, politics, whatever.
Where do you think “OK Boomer” comes from?
> Then why does Bernie get so much support?
I think he’s getting support from the younger millennials and older gen-Z kids. The older millennials are reaching their 40s, getting called racists by their former comrades, and under constant threat of having their peaceful neighborhoods turned into shit-stained dystopias by leftist busybodies. They are also learning the hard way that they are going to be expected to give up their newfound wealth to the left’s preferred victim groups. The rich will not end up funding redistribution as the Crockajaweas and AOCs of the world insist.
Totes.
Sowing racial consciousness and divisions at an early age never works!
If white kids aren’t ashamed for being white by the time they graduate, then the public school system did something wrong.
NOT propaganda?!?
It’s pure propaganda!
Some things really are wrong, Robby, 100% wrong.
‘Robby is weak and soft headed. This is the result.
1619. So it’s mostly about European countries?
the institution of slavery was so embedded in the country’s DNA that the country’s true founding could be said to have occurred in 1619, rather than in 1776
“The institution of sailing was so embedded in the country’s DNA that the country’s true founding could be said to have occurred in 1565, rather than in 1776.”
“The institution of walking was so embedded in the country’s DNA that the country’s true founding could be said to have occurred in 13,500 BCE, rather than in 1776.”
….
Come on, Rich. Only white people can own slaves, and only black people can be slaves. Any conflicting (you know, factual) information is alt-right propaganda and must be banned from the interwebs.
The institution of capitalism was so embedded in the country’s DNA that the country’s true founding could be said to have occurred in the Mediterranean in 800 BCE, which would obviously be wrong because capitalism had it’s founding in Southern slavery and slaves didn’t exist in the Middle East 2800 yrs. ago.
What’s odd about this framing is that we usually focus on 1776 because there is one fairly unique event that happened in 1776 – a group of people got together and decided that they had a right to free themselves of duty to their king due to that king’s unjust behavior, and to set up a democratic society without kings.
That was a major game-changer in history and in the philosophy of what citizens/subjects owe their kings and vice-versa. It’s also the moment our civilization stopped being colonies of Great Britain and became the United States of America.
What’s so unique about people having had slaves in 1619? How is that newsworthy? There was already slavery in the Americas in 1619, and there likely had been as long as there had been humans here.
There were also slaves in the Roman Republic. The Roman Republic tended to trace its foundation to the overthrow of the kings in the 6th century BC. Should they have traced it to the first time a Roman enslaved someone? And why would that define the Roman Republic?
C’mon
If you don’t prioritize race and complexion based relations, you’re racist.
It is known
To be fair, if ancient Rome had today’s feminists, they’d probably argue that the Rape of Sabine Women was the keystone that the entire nation’s history was built from.
That’s a really good foundational story.
Of course, modern day feminists would go a different way with it than the Romans did.
Roman women manned up much more than our modern beta boys and girls ever could
Get rid of public schools. problem solved.
“Some conservative critics have overreached: Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called The 1619 Project “propaganda” and suggested that the Times was trying to brainwash readers. That line of attack goes too far, but there are valid criticisms of the project’s ideological slant.”
Wow. This sentence is something I think only Robbie could write. What is “propaganda” if not information presented with an ideological slant? So, Robby admits that the characterization of it as Propaganda is valid in the same sentence that he claims the criticism went too far.
It gives me a headache to think of the extent to which Soave must twist his mind and thinking to write this kind of stuff. Soave is completely incapable of giving an honest and unqualified criticism of the right regardless of the circumstances. No matter how appalling the left’s position or actions are, Robby must find a way to equivocate and explain how the right is wrong as well, often just for the sin of pointing out the flaws of the left.
I can’t imagine living that way.
Dude, the word “propaganda” has a slant to it that takes away from the meaning of the word. Calling stuff “propaganda” tends to make some minds shut out whatever comes next. May as well call someone a communist. I agree that it is, by definition, propaganda. But sometimes calling a spade a spade will only result in people ignoring you.
So the clause “there are valid criticisms of the project’s ideological slant” is where the money’s at and Robby just included “Some conservative critics have overreached: Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called The 1619 Project “propaganda” and suggested that the Times was trying to brainwash readers. That line of attack goes too far,” as fluff to demonize Republicans?
Newt Gingrich wasn’t talking to Robby’s readers. Robby chose to put it in and chose how to put it in. If you think it’s too aggressive or askew for Robby’s readership, that’s pretty squarely Robby’s fault.
And his inclusion and characterization of it is also propaganda
will only result in people ignoring you.
Some people, sure. But those people aren’t reachable anyway so why lie for their benefit?
I for one refuse to countenance this sort of vicious racist slander that whites were so much superior to blacks that they could force black people to come here against their will and, not being a racist and believing firmly in the equality of all races, I can only conclude that if black people came to America it must have been of their own free will. If you are one of those white supremacists who believe that white people and their culture and their technology and their knowledge was so superior to the culture and the technology and the knowledge of black people that they could literally enforce their will on these proud, brave, noble and wise people, well, I can only conclude that you sir are literally worse than Hitler.
George Washington Carver!
Somehow African blacks are responsible for all of the great achievements in science and civilization but ended up being enslaved by the inferior white man. Funny that.
I listened to an interesting piece on slavery. I think it was a Ted Talk. The idea was that racism was an excuse to justify slavery. If blacks are considered inferior, then why shouldn’t they be slaves? That was contrasted with other cultures where people of the same race were put in chains, often after conquest. They weren’t considered inferior, just recipients of shit luck. I’d look it up if I wasn’t lazy and thought you’d actually listen to it.
There is definitely a lot too that. I really don’t see what difference it makes, however. How is it morally different to say it is okay to enslave you because you lost a war than it is to say it is okay to enslave you because of your color?
Beyond that, to the extent it is true, it is because Western Civilization moved beyond the idea that anyone who is weak can be enslaved but didn’t want to give up slavery. So, in one sense, the racism aspect of slavery in the West was a result of the West’s moral development and the first step to the West eliminating slavery altogether.
Another point in the piece was how racism against blacks is mostly unique to the Americas. Cultures that never treated black people as property are more likely to treat them as equals.
The worst slavers in Africa were Arabs. There is nothing unique about black slavery to the Americas. The Arabs enslaved blacks by the millions and treated their slaves even worse than they were treated in the Americas.
“mostly”
I’m just talking about something I heard that I thought was interesting. If you want to argue about what they said then find the person who made the piece and yell at them.
If you want to argue about what they said then find the person who made the piece and yell at them.
I can shoot the messenger for doing a shitty job, right?
You can definitely fuck off.
“I’m just talking about something I heard that I thought was interesting”
So is John.
He’s talking about something YOU brought up.
It’s oxymoronic. American racism is unique to the Americas, but racism, even anti-black racism, absolutely exists in Cultures that never treated black people like property.
It’s massive over-projection bordering on naivete. Like hearing White Americans talk about how they’d never hire African Americans and calling them out on their racism but when Norwegians or Japanese talk about how they’d never hire Africans but not African Americans, lauding them for having such a post-racial society.
Hell, we can’t even get neo-natal death numbers to jive across cultures and that’s a pretty objective artifact or event. To definitively or authoritatively say one culture is less racist because they didn’t have a history of slavery? Absolute garbage.
They did not say that every society that didn’t have black slaves treats blacks as equals. They did try to raise a correlation between slavery and racism, and I found that to be interesting.
The End.
“The End.”
Not how conversation works.
If you bring something up, be prepared for others to discuss it.
If you think the position you brought up has merit, defend it.
If you’re undecided, that’s fine.
But it’s weird that you’re being so defensive and desire to shut down counter points
I’m not making an argument. I’m just saying “Hey I thought this was interesting.” I didn’t expect to defend it because I’m not asserting it. So yeah I’m shutting down “discussion” because it amounts to attacks against something I’m not trying to defend.
No one is saying you have to defend it.
You could propose your own thoughts on it, like John and others have, or you could just read others while mulling it over for yourself.
It’s really weird that you want to shut down discussion of what you brought up
Japan kinda destroys the entire argument (not yours, the idiots who are saying racism is unique to to our history of slavery). To my knowledge, Japan never had slaves. It also did its best to stay the fuck out of international affairs up until it was forced to. Japan today is extremely racist to its neighbors China & South Korea (who aren’t fond of it either). The Japanese are fairly racist to everyone else though EXCEPT the USA. They like us in what I can only guess is some extreme variant of Stockholm Syndrome.
Fuhcka hyouh, gaijin!
Imperial Japan used slave labor in foreign territory.
That brings to mind what I have heard about black musicians who moved to France during the 30s and 50s to escape US racism. They found that as long as they were musicians, they were accepted. But they found just as much racist attitudes trying to buy houses in white neighborhoods, dealing with bankers, etc — unless they were famous enough to be recognized.
There is more racism in northern Europe than anyone wants to admit.
This piece didn’t mention that. Food for thought. Thanks for adding to the discussion.
There is more racism in northern Europe than anyone wants to admit.
I heard an interesting take on that in recent years to the effect that in the US we’ve actually crossed a boundary where racism is officially culturally taboo, which ironically means that we are prone to see it everywhere.
In Europe, where anyone who’s been there knows that casual racism is, from an American perspective, shockingly pervasive, they don’t think they have a racism problem. After all, it’s Americans who are constantly screaming about how racist their country is. Europe must be fine.
Some of us, for quite some time, have recognized that racism, privately, individually, and culturally cannot be obliterated and to attempt to do so is, itself, racist.
So, saying one country is more or less racist than another is like saying a dry gin martini is less sweet than a vodka martini or that the great taste is what makes really makes Miller Lite great. More signal vs. less noise.
Implicit bias can’t be eliminated. One can, however, choose to recognize it and overcome it. In this country, culturally, we encourage people to do that. Some other countries not so much.
Implicit bias can’t be eliminated. One can, however, choose to recognize it and overcome it.
Can’t be eliminated or can be overcome? Implicit or openly recognized?
“choose to recognize it and overcome it”
You do that by discounting, or ignoring, it.
Recognition perpetuates the recognized
Can’t be eliminated or can be overcome?
Can’t be eliminated, can be overcome. Reason had some articles about this recently, re: overstating the importance of “implicit bias,” which studies have shown is an immediate, lower-brain sort of function that can be quickly overcome by conscious thought.
Implicit or openly recognized?
Not sure what you mean.
But as an example, I have had lots of experience walking around Oakland at night. When I see a group of black males between 16-20 hanging out in an alleyway drinking beer and smoking weed, I don’t approach them and try to initiate conversation. This is because in my prior experience this does not lead to happy situations typically.
When a black job applicant strolls into my office I can say “oh, here’s one of those guys,” and show him the door, or I can say “I may have a spontaneous negative reaction, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this guy, I should give him a fair shot.”
Recent studies have shown that we’re actually really good at doing that latter thing, but we have to want to.
Ironically, despite the constant shrieking about racist AmeriKKKa, we have one of the few cultures in the world that does encourage that latter thing.
You do that by discounting, or ignoring, it.
Discounting or ignoring in the sense of flushing that knee-jerk reaction, yes. Discounting or ignoring in the sense of “pretend that knee-jerk reaction doesn’t exist and that I’m just seeing Objective Reality perfectly accurately at all times,” no.
Not sure what you mean.
It’s an oxymoron based on a heap of false assumptions. Key among them is that the bias can be fixed. Implied has two definitions, one is unstated, the other is essential.
The need for holes generates an implicit bias for drills. Recognizing your implicit bias in favor of drills and switching to plunge routers doesn’t solve your need for holes and, if the implicit bias favors rotary tools which the need for holes generates, switching between a drill and a router is a moot point.
Ultimately, you can never know because the bias is implicit, meaning arguably essential and doesn’t reveal itself. The studies are garbage and say as much about the people conducting the study as they do about anything real or intrinsic to human nature. Real people who aren’t racist don’t have to sit around going “Don’t be racist. Acknowledge that you are but, don’t be racist. Acknowledge that you are but, don’t be racist.” whenever a candidate walks through their door. Never having walked the streets of Oakland at night, I don’t have to overcome a knee-jerk reaction that I don’t have.
I think you can say that a nation is more or less racist based on whether or not there are legal sanctions or regulations in force that support race based discrimination.
As for the people, no one is without some biases and you’re right, comparison doesn’t get you anywhere.
I think you can say that a nation is more or less racist based on whether or not there are legal sanctions or regulations in force that support race based discrimination.
This is what I meant by ‘privately, individually, and culturally’. You can have racial equality before the law. Absolute racial equality throughout the culture is unattainable.
As Ken Schultz points out about religion, the brain is hard-wired for race/tribe, xenophobia, and pattern recognition/othering at much lower levels than even religion is programmed in. Similarly, you don’t give up a bias or racism, you simply trade it for another form.
As Ken Schultz points out about religion, the brain is hard-wired for race/tribe, xenophobia, and pattern recognition/othering at much lower levels than even religion is programmed in.
And the idea that you can’t overcome that with conscious thought is fundamental to identity politics and “anti-Racism.”
I don’t accept that paradigm.
“And the idea that you can’t overcome that with conscious thought is fundamental to identity politics and “anti-Racism.”
I don’t accept that paradigm.”
The move from tribalism to civilization is pretty much measured by the ascendance of conscious thought over ‘hard-wired’ responses.
‘Hard wired’ responses tell us we can’t fly.
And the idea that you can’t overcome that with conscious thought is fundamental to identity politics and “anti-Racism.”
Implicit in and more fundamental to the notion that it can/can’t be overcome is that it needs to be overcome.
Racism, despite cultural brainwashing to the contrary, is far from the worst thing in the world. Not that it’s good, it it’s certainly better than Marxism and things like that which are a million times more evil.
Here’s a practical test. Your choice of next door neighbors are:
A. Serial killing cannibal
B. Marxist mad bomber
C. Some guy with the sensibilities of Archie Bunker
Who do you pick?
Correct. Virtue signaling and shrill self righteousness from self loathing white people only makes things worse. And a lot of them know this.
Racism is not the issue so much as waning white guilt. They can’t have that. Tens of millions of people, the vast majority of whom don’t hate anyone, are tired of the notion that they have something to atone for. They voted for the guy who wasn’t apologizing.
Can’t have that.
Another point in the piece was how racism against blacks is mostly unique to the Americas. Cultures that never treated black people as property are more likely to treat them as equals.
And this is where it slips into fantasy.
The casual racism extant in the rest of the world–Europe included–makes the US appear wholly unracist in the bigger picture.
Even the near half millennium of slavery in the Americas id dwarfed by the thousands of years of slavery in the old world, Africa, the Middle East and the Far East.
As people casually talk about others treating people as property we tend to forget that so many cultures treated EVERYONE as property. Property of the king, or the emperor, of the tsar. God kings and sun kings and prima nocta.
Imagine being part of a culture where ‘people as property’ is not just something that happened in the bad old days–it’s something that one’s ancestors and one’s entire culture evolved under.
That was contrasted with other cultures where people of the same race were put in chains, often after conquest.
Put in chains, raped and slaughtered outright as part of the conquest, offered up as human sacrifices, knowingly sold into any of the above roles and worse… but, you know, other than that, respected as equals. House niggers and Mulattos were never even heard of in the Americas until the late 1960s. Both Arabic and Hindu caste systems and treatment of women as inherent inferiors didn’t exist until taught to them by the white man.
Just like Rousseau said when he came down from the mount with the stone tablets, all the noble savages were equal until the white man showed up.
Jesus what a fucked up conception of world history.
Don’t shoot the messenger.
The idea was that racism was an excuse to justify slavery. If blacks are considered inferior, then why shouldn’t they be slaves?
Well, obviously there was something to that. Just look at the Arab slave trade–Zanzibar was one of the largest slave markets in the world.
The Arabic name for Sub-Saharan Africa is “bilad as-Sudan” – “land of the blacks.”
The idea was that racism was an excuse to justify slavery. If blacks are considered inferior, then why shouldn’t they be slaves?
That’s true, but I would argue that that’s actually an ex post facto rationalization. The rhetoric of European colonialism was highly racialized, and the extreme whiteness of European skin helped reinforce that ‘us and them’ dynamic. But the Portuguese first got involved in the African slave trade when African slave traders would raid the coast of Portugal for slaves. When they went south and started buying their own slaves, it was more of a “when in Rome” spirit (to put it euphemistically). The racial paradigm arose once white Europeans were already getting involved in the slave trade.
It’s also true that there have been contexts, like Roman slavery, where the slavery wasn’t racialized, and where slavery was really a “but for the grace of God there go I” kind of situation.
But that seems to be more a function of degree of difference than anything else. When you read Mogul accounts of their conquest of India, for example, they definitely looked at native Indians as an inferior race of people with a backward religion who needed to be ruled by their betters. It’s in no way a uniquely European thing.
The idea was that it’s easier to enslave people who you consider to be inferior, or less than human. Slavery – racism, chicken – egg…. I dunno. That was contrasted with your description of Roman slavery. I’m not an authority on the topic, I was just bringing up something I thought was interesting. Thank you for discussing this instead of being a jerk.
I think an interesting point was made above that the very idea of it being easier or justifiable is tied to the evolving idea that it isnt OK to enslave people. So you do the mental gymnastics required to classify them as less than people because giving up slaves is harder.
Prior to the emergence of the idea that slavery was not OK, nobody bothered to justify it. You could enslave anybody who didn’t have the wherewithal to stop you. And that was Just how it worked.
Prior to the emergence of the idea that slavery was not OK, nobody bothered to justify it.
Bingo.
One of the key pieces to the ending of slavery across Europe was the belief you don’t enslave Christians. The primary exception to that was the Native American enslavement that was largely ended because it was destroying their population. Slavery didn’t have that effect on Africans – they had disease resistance to white man’s disease.
As long as the slaves were not Christians and they lived in a Holy Roman Empire, enslaving pagan africans was totes good. As the slaves became christianized and the HRE lost its hold on Europe, other justifications became necessary to justify the continued enslavement of a largely African slave population by this time.
Enter in the inferior/superior critical race theories used to justify continued slavery of christianized blacks. It was basically bad men justifying badness in the power vacuum of broken authority. I think it’s kinda critical that the majority of Catholic Europe had been moving away from slavery for about 100 years by 1619 and most had abolished it before England did.
Its existence in America prior to 1776 was mostly a byproduct of being largely English colonies.
Perhaps it’s because they were also *morally* superior?
That must be it. Everyone knows slavery and genocide were unheard of in Africa until the evil white man showed up.
The 1619 Project WILL be taught in classrooms! It is what is P C nowadays and the truthfulness of is not important.
Like the woman said, history is not objective.
Objectivity is inherently racist, apparently. As is anyone who questions her methodology or foregone conclusions.
“Objectivity is inherently racist, apparently”
Which is, ironically, an exceedingly racist perspective
The claim is also objective; internal contradictions by the bucket.
The claim is also objective; internal contradictions by the bucket.
^ This. Postmodern destabilization of Truth for thee, but not for me.
Slavery is a human issue. It existed long before this country and it exists today. As long we have human beings who want power over others and have the force to do it, it will happen.
Considering our kids are born into debt that was accrued by our parents, it’s readily arguable that slavery hasn’t gone anywhere even in this country.
Mandating the use of The 1619 Project in K-12 curricula is at best premature until these issues are resolved and the Times makes a good faith effort to answer its critics. While there is merit to some of the themes raised by The 1619 Project, it continues to be marred by its empirically debunked and explicitly anti-capitalist assessment of the economics of slavery.
The NYT material has simply not been vetted for historical accuracy. And we want to mandate this for our children to learn in schools? Why are we mandating this if we are not certain it is objectively true? I have a much bigger beef about that. It is subtle brainwashing of our children. This is where I personally draw the line.
We should critically examine the NYT material before mandating anything.
I’m not sure why anything out of a newspaper is taught in schools as valid curricula.
Yeah – the single thing that’s most pissed me off about my daughter’s school is them using CNN as a source on Climate Change.
Seriously. I get they want kids exposed to reading newspapers or news media, but my idea of doing that is to teach the kids to identify and distinguish between verifiable facts, opinions, and rhetorical flourishes, and identifying bias via tone.
That’s real critical thinking skills by using news sources.
associate superintendent for culturally and linguistically responsive initiatives
Holy shitballs, how is this a thing?
U Mich is paying $10M a year on that stuff. It is a real deal.
Why would mainstream educators be looking for tips from a conservative on educational policy in general or bigotry-based issues in particular?
Clingers nipping at the ankles of their betters should largely be disregarded. Mr. Soave, for example, should spend more time examining why his fellow conservatives tend to turn the campuses they control into fourth-tier (or unranked), censorship-shackled, dogma-enforcing, science-disdaining, nonsense teaching goober factories.
There really isn’t a single subject that you are not completely ignorant of is there? God forbid you actually defend this or have anything to say on the merits. Nope, that would require you knowing something. Instead, you just give the same boring ad hominem because that is all you are capable of.
I don’t believe the kind of pervasive ignorance you show on this board is by accident. You have to work to be as ignorant as you appear to be. And some day you need to explain what you find so attractive about being ignorant. Most people are repelled by ignorance. You seek it out and take pride in it. And that in a perverse way makes you a very unique person. Your mind is like the elephant man. It is so grotesque but oddly compelling.
John I’m just not sure about his guy, but I’m beginning to think maybe he went to some school like Bob Jones and was personally violated; it’s about the only thing that can possibly explain how f’d up he is.
That or he is just an especially uni dimensional and talent-less troll. Like an old .45RPM that just plays over, and over, and over….
That is not an unreasonable theory.
.45RPM
7+1 records in a single stack, a classic.
Artie IS a hick.
He’s from one of the backwaters he incessantly decries. He probably did a year or so at some low-level college in some tiny town that looked like an enormous metropolis to his eyes.
He fell in love with the idea of being ‘city folk’, with being a cosmopolitan denizen of a great city.
And then the money ran out.
And he had to go back.
And he blames the people back home for that. He treats them like they’re stupid and uncultured.
That’s Artie. It’s why he’s always sullenly saying the same things. They’re all he knows. His ‘smart, city words’.
So, you’re saying he’s essentially Joy Hopewell?
Yeah – that fits.
Well, he’s pretty fucking stupid. A tiny mind, with stunted dreams.
He is a parody. A more hostile version of OBL, dedicated to shining a light on the true ugliness of prog ideology. He’s actually pretty good!
Arthur L. Hicklib actually thought there was never any debate about world government in the post-WW2 era despite being shown direct evidence to the contrary, nor being aware of organizations like the World Federalist Movement, which had the explicit support of several members of the global elite during that same period.
That’s what separates an educated person from a slack-jawed, slope-foreheaded, dirt-eating hicklib.
You reckon he hi-jacks electricity for his double-wide from the pole?
Im pretty sure he’s a parody.
Correct.
“Why would mainstream educators be looking for tips from a conservative on educational policy in general or bigotry-based issues in particular?”
Because they’re too goddamned stupid to think it through themselves. Like you Arty.
“Matthew Desmond’s 1619 Project essay claimed that modern American capitalism has its roots in plantation slavery.”
Essays can claim lots of things. In this one, the only way to get to here from there is to ignore the entire history of New Amsterdam and its founding based on Dutch merchant principles via joint stock companies. But I suppose we should not expect writers in New York City to know about the history of New Amsterdam. It’s one of those things only taught in fourth-tier schools.
There is also the entire history of Plymouth Plantation and the Massachusetts Bay colony. Neither one of those were founded on slavery. Indeed, even Jamestown was not founded on slavery.
And while it is true slavery existed in the northern colonies, it was never widespread much less the basis of the economy The claim that the original colonies were based on slavery is a complete lie and totally counter to the known facts.
Right, which makes the claim “that modern American capitalism has its roots in plantation slavery” all the more ridiculous since there were no plantations in Plymouth, Mass Bay or NYC. NYC of course being the heart of modern American capitalism.
Modern capitalism allows you to leave your employer if you don’t like the job. It allows you to keep your money. You can go to another state and work and not have to worry about bounty hunters kidnapping you to take you back.
It’s nothing like plantations.
The claim that the original colonies were based on slavery is a complete lie and totally counter to the known facts.
Facts schmacts. It’s a religion that believes that, individually and culturally, we should treat other people, individually and culturally, the same even outside the law (or, maybe more appropriately, everywhere within their conception of the law’s dominion). Which is both and idiotic fantasy and oxymoronically racist.
This country was born of sin and until Black Jesus comes back to cleanse us of that sin, we must atone.
Well he did say “modern American capitalism”. By which he means “no true Scotsman”.
Ignoring that history is the entire point of this exercise. It’s being explicitly promoted by black and mixed-race Marxists who view the entire lens of history through the African-American experience, and only the African-American experience.
You’ll hear these same people praise the service of the Buffalo Soldiers, while explicitly glossing over the fact that these same units were instrumental in completing the subjugation of the Comanches and Apaches in the southwest, for example. These guys weren’t forced to enlist–they were volunteers that signed up knowing they were going to be ordered to kill Indians, because fighting the red man beat a life of sharecropping and lynch mobs in the South, or risking being a victim of race riots in the north by white immigrants that they were competing with for jobs.
New York may have been founded based on Dutch merchant principles, but it also had a surprisingly large slave population in colonial times.
“but it also had a surprisingly large slave population in colonial times.”
You mean the Irish?
“New York may have been founded based on Dutch merchant principles, but it also had a surprisingly large slave population in colonial times.”
Cite missing. Wonder why?
“Despite the pretense of establishing the United States’ “true” foundation, the 1619 Project is a politically motivated falsification of history. Its aim is to create a historical narrative that legitimizes the effort of the Democratic Party to construct an electoral coalition based on the prioritizing of personal “identities”—i.e., gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, and, above all, race.”
“The New York Times’s 1619 Project: A racialist falsification of American and world history”
—World Socialist Website
International Committee of the Fourth International
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/09/06/1619-s06.html
The 1619 Project is so embarrassing, real socialists are afraid the general public will associate them with it.
That’s why it needs to be taught in school.
I like the trope that was being repeated uncritically in the 90s about shark migration patterns permanently changed because there were so many slaves thrown into the sea across the Atlantic. I heard that one on a PBS documentary that had me howling with laughter.
Great. Now I feel bad about choosing the dark meat on the Thanksgiving platter.
The 1619 Project is teaching religion in public schools.
Our neocortex evolved to accommodate the advantages conferred by religion, and our brains have not fundamentally changed for 100,000 years, never mind since the end of the 20th century, when some average people first started to think of themselves as atheists. If we don’t believe in the old stories about creationism and the flood anymore because of scientific observations, our brains are still hardwired to seek out new myths to believe in that explain who we are and from whence we came.
Before Darwin, when more people believed in some form of creationism, it was because the data they had informed their views. You can find sea shells on the top of mountains, and why is there anything if there could have been nothing–without the intention of a higher mind? Introduce Darwin, and people don’t suddenly become enlightened. They just go with other explanations. Most people still don’t know that survival of the fittest is half the story of evolution (at most), with the lion’s share attributable to genetic drift.
It’s the same thing with history. It’s religious thinking without a God.
The worst of it is the willful ignorance of basic economics, the forces of which that are also driving evolution. The 1619 Project people seem to imagine that if they teach the next generation not to believe in economic forces, then they won’t be influenced by those forces when they build the government and public policy of tomorrow. That’s worse than the church trying to bury heliocentric theory. That’s what they did in the Soviet Union. That’s what they did in Venezuela. They want to repeat those experiments in the United States, and they think it will end differently if Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren are in charge–because they care about people.
Changing the migration patterns of sharks is like the new Jesus walking on the water.
It’s the same thing with history. It’s religious thinking without a God.
Environmentalism.
*drops mic*
I think environmentalism should be a religion!
You want to have a religion with an apocalypse, with sacrifices of your standard of living for a greater cause, etc., that’s fine by men.
But I also believe in the separation of church and state. Believe in Gaia if you want, but don’t make me contribute to your church.
“if they teach the next generation not to believe in economic forces, then they won’t be influenced by those forces”
Hit the nail on the head. That explains everything behind their rationale. The moment you start talking about economics and human behavior these robots shut down. They literally don’t believe it can affect them the same way someone who didn’t understand gravity may have felt 2,000 years ago. Or like how a child is confused by the question, “What weighs more, 100 lbs of feathers or 100 lbs of rocks?”
And just like gravity doesn’t care about whether you believe in it, neither do economic forces.
We saw this during the the Great Leap Forward. We saw it in the USSR. Economic forces starved millions to death and tore the Soviet Union apart–regardless of what they taught their children.
It’s magical thinking!
If we don’t believe in it, then it can’t hurt us.
Our neocortex evolved to accommodate the advantages conferred by religion, and our brains have not fundamentally changed for 100,000 years, never mind since the end of the 20th century, when some average people first started to think of themselves as atheists. If we don’t believe in the old stories about creationism and the flood anymore because of scientific observations, our brains are still hardwired to seek out new myths to believe in that explain who we are and from whence we came.
I said this above but it’s more relevant here; similarly, we don’t and can’t rid ourselves of biases, unconscious prejudices, and racism. The best we can do is trade one for another.
I think it fundamentally stems from scientific optimism. All things are knowable and there’s no limit to things the brain can comprehend. Both of which may be true, but not for one specific brain and certainly not for a brain that exists today and possibly not even the way we conceptualize it.
Like a computer who knows why it was created and can know it’s creator or have a reasonable conceptualization of him, it’s fully capable of acting conscious and claiming a human soul but will never really be human; similarly, we can envision ourselves and act like we understand and can control the globe, even on a moral plane, but we’re, at best, pretending.
They’re intentionally mis-educating children because they believe it will result in political outcomes they prefer. There is no greater betrayal of education or these children and they should all be fired.
Newt Gingrich called The 1619 Project “propaganda” and suggested that the Times was trying to brainwash readers. That line of attack goes too far,
Of course it is exactly propaganda and Soave is only disputing it because he doesn’t assert anything which might interfere with the Weigel Career Plan.
“They’re intentionally mis-educating children because they believe it will result in political outcomes they prefer. “
It’s a religious education.
Does the 1619 Project have anything to say about indentured servitude or why the South was so Scottish?
“I think my point was that history is not objective,” said Hannah-Jones. “And that people who write history are not simply objective arbiters of facts, and that white scholars are no more objective than any other scholars, and that they can object to the framing and we can object to their framing as well.”
Ironically, they disproved themselves by writing this garbage in the first place. Nobody would have questioned this statement if they just kept their mouths shut, but as a matter of fact, these black scholars are far less objective than other scholars.
“I think my point was that history is not objective,”
Which, you’ll note, has to be accepted as an objective statement to be valid.
The lack of self-awareness here is, well, about normal for the left.
OK, so that covers the US since 1619.
What is the excuse for the rest of the planet and the rest of recorded history?
The US must always be the whipping boy for the progtarded world. Because they love evil, and hate anything good and decent.
From now on every edition of the NYT will publish the date as Juneteenth 1619.
The worst part about all of this is the knowledge that some day sooner rather than later, these people will almost certainly win. Not because it’s right, but because it’ll be racist to think any other way.
It already is; did you notice how the definition of racism has changed recently? After Obama was elected [and chattering class started tossing around living in a “post racial society], and re-elected, we started hearing about white privilege, about which you can do nothing but submit. And any question of the 1619 Project is just prima facie evidence of your crimes.
The definition of racism is whatever they need it to be. Institutional racism is the fish/water thing where, see, you as a white man can’t even grasp how pervasive and oppressive racism is within our culture so you’re just going to have to trust us that it’s there. “It’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand”. Just try turning that around though.
Institutional racism is the fish/water thing where, see, you as a white man can’t even grasp how pervasive and oppressive racism is within our culture so you’re just going to have to trust us that it’s there.
Which is symptomatic of the fact that most people don’t understand what the term “institutional/structural racism” means, and think it means that institutions are full of secret, invisible racists.
Defense/enforcement of the regnant ahistorical Holocaust narrative is also institutional/structural. Just try questioning it (as I expect this comment will never see the light of day).
The ‘light of day’ is accorded all scumbag bigots, scumbag bigot.
My tax dollars at work…..
Time to “go galt” and stop supporting this stuff.
I think 1619 is a good reason why the DoE needs to be torn down.
Like fast.
This is not good because the job of deprogramming a generation of kids will be hard and ugly.
As we’ve already seen…
“…Jonathan Chait hailed The 1619 Project as a valuable corrective…”
I’m confused. If the 1619 Project is inaccurate, what exactly is it correcting? Our unenlightened thoughts? This will correct our historical racism?
Is this a case where two wrongs make a right?
Revisionism.
They want to mould history into their image.
Problem is, when truth and reality is pushed aside, it eventually frees itself and comes back into the picture with a vengeance.
These deceivers are destroying students and minds based on lies.
Also. Using the word ‘corrective’ is problematic and even troubling.
Go fuck yourself Chait.
The also-mandated Holocaust desperately requires correction. What would/does Chait have to say about THAT one?
Jett Rucker
January.28.2020 at 7:05 pm
“The also-mandated Holocaust desperately requires correction.”
No, it doesn’t, scumbag bigot.
LMAO…. So the party that wants to tax (i.e. steal) ALL and EVERYONE’S earned wealth from their labors is going to pretend they are against slavery??!!??!! That’s way too ironically rich for me.
The [WE] Mob of Slavers (the very origin of slavery) is going to cleanse the world of their own kind…. 🙂 lol… that’s just WAY too funny. How about mandating the 1919.truth project – How National Socialism and Democrats are the very ideology the founded the concept of slavery.
It’s no different from mandating Holocaust education. It’s just that historians won’t/don’t dare offending the Holocaust’s lobby.
>History is written by the victors.
Bzzt then how come lost cause historiography is still prominent why are Vikings demonized in the historical record, a more accurate statement is history is written by those who write.
History is written by the victors is a great aphorism because it’s true.
This is annoying to me because it’s not true. There is an element of truth in it, but it is not True.
“…Dr. Fatima Morrell, associate superintendent for culturally and linguistically responsive initiatives for Buffalo Public Schools…”
So it’s already too late then, we’re doomed.
Way too late.
Peter Hitchens talks about what happened to the educational establishment in the West in regards to a revolution. But the kind of revolution where all the buildings are left standing. There was a revolution in society, and when you look at stuff like this, it’s obvious who won.
I wonder how much the “cultural and linguistic director” at Buffalo Public Schools is paid? Another woke from the educational cartel. Honestly we need to just shut down schools of “mis” education. Get a real degree and then learn to teach. As for this..I have found people that are obsessed with the past to the point where they have to engage in speculative “re writing” to have low self esteem and whose deepest fear is what their critics say about them is true. Yep let’s replace reading, writing, and math with this stuff…because well…you can’t really test this and therefore have equal results..again see the self esteem thing. another reason to get out of large public school districts and home school.
“People that are obsessed with the past……”
Ironically, they call themselves “progressive”. Haha.
And history will strongly suggest the north won due to it’s industrial base and higher standard of living…last time I checked the folks working in those factories were of german or irish or english background. Paid laborers have always been much more productive than slaves (of any ethnicity or background). Again the need for self esteem and attention seems to be driving this. Buffalo would be better to spend their money on reading, writing, and math with programs on family and abstinence if they really want to help the kids…
We need a separation of school and state.
Coincidentally it seems modern day “school” is teaching liberal religion.
I’d also propose ‘no representation without taxation’.
Hi Budddy…………………
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Probably more accurate to call it European tradition, considering America wasn’t America in 1619.
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The fundamental game is King of the Mountain, and since the beginning of human existance history is rewritten by those a the top or anticipating that achievement in the near future. The writing of this era’s “PC” is a post WWII development starting with the onset of the Civil Rights movement. As momentum grew and the culture improved, the mood of celebration grew. Now the questions are, (a) is the current rewriting of history based on fact; (b) is it based on the opinions of those who have gained so much, or (c) is is based on the self-serving imaginations of the bureaucrats and other fist pumping remoras who feed off of those whose success they are driven to take credit (and the cash) for?
Slavery is free labor (although it cost owners money to house and feed them) but the south wasn’t richer than free industrial states.
There exists more evidence that the legacy of antisemitism lingers on today, and the origins of that is as old humanity itself. People literally kill Jews in the modern world acting on some trope that started from the days of the bible. The left is only happy to perpetuate that.
These people may strain REAL hard to say that a worker who gets mistreated or underpaid at a KFC is a legacy of slavery, but say nothing when the “squad” accuse pro Israel activists of harboring dual loyalties and characterize Israel as some controller of currency. There were pogroms that were launched under those pretexts.
The country is not even 400 years old. Slavery was legal here for about 100 years and almost no one owned slaves. Some nations are centuries old and the conflict and strife that marked their history is embedded into their DNA. In American people sort of revisit the Civil War or the Great depression as a hobby or to address a larger academic discourse.
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A central problem is the notion of “public” education and “federal” intrusion into it. No issue is as important as this one. It’s a colossal problem and it’s public education itself. Public schools are in fact government schools, indoctrination centers if you will. Currently, the Education Savings Account (ESA) is a viable solution but Florida’s “universal” education savings account program promises to replace all other alternatives that are being tried all over the nation.
In spite of the recent Supreme Court ruling that unions no longer may force public employees to pay fees, they remain a major underpinning of this problem. Government continues to dominate education in spite of reduced monetary support by unions. They still transfer almost all the teacher contributions to democrats. Democrats take from the union and give to the teachers such entitlements as tenure, favorable salaries, short work schedules, etc. Taxpayers, parents and students are totally excluded from the political equation.
Public teaching has been fundamentally transformed into an enormous entitlement, and dispensing entitlements is the heart of the democrat strategy. It cannot be said too many times: the absence of competition is the problem. According to a recent study, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program, now being made universally available, increased college enrollment rates by about six percentage points for students who participated, even minimally.
According to an EdChoice report, “2019 Schooling in America,” an all-time high 15 percent
of all parents would prefer to home school their kids instead of private, public, or charter schools. EdChoice is an organization dedicated to advancing unencumbered educational choice. By comparison, this figure was only 5 percent in 2012. Fifty-six percent of Americans believe public education is going the wrong way. Only a third believe it is going in the right direction.
Regardless, 82 percent are enrolled in traditional government schools while another 5 percent attend charter schools. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, homeschooling doubled between 1999 and 2016. According to The National Home Education Research Institute, the government’s data may be underestimated because some states don’t track it. Bottom line, approximately 2.5 million American children are being home-schooled.
A free enterprise education system eliminates the ability to trample one civil right by supporting an opposing civil right. Perhaps more importantly, it precludes indoctrination of students to unwelcome political agendas. For these immature minds, public education suggests a powerful preference for a system that’s totally alien to a constitutional republic. The public school system is very persuasive with its mandatory system. Currently, it feeds the masses at food courts that would make any commercial mall proud — with really bad food that kids hate and few would buy.
It transports everyone to everywhere on the largest mass transit system in the world consisting of half a million buses, that cost about $50 billion. By the way, due to rising costs, a number of schools now charge $300-$500 per pupil, annually to ride on these “taxpayer funded” vehicles. It funds exotic musical instruments used only by a handful of kids who often already have plenty of private money. It provides expert and very expensive facilities and training for the professional sports industry that later employs only an infinitesimally small percentage of students who often don’t graduate.
Expelled students currently have nothing to lose because the cost is assessed whether they learn, graduate or ever return. The primary problem with our current system is it faces no competition. It’s a monopoly in a nation where monopoly is considered a criminal enterprise for everyone else. In America, pupils are forced to attend at the point of a gun but are not protected with equivalent force. Parents, non-parents and businesses are forced to pay or lose their homes and businesses. Additionally all are required by the state to pay forever, long after their kids are grown and even if they had no children, and none are allowed to opine on the system chosen by the federal government.
School taxes, based on per-student allocations, should be awarded to parents in the form of a state credit or voucher, spendable in any accredited school by parents according to their choice. Every student would receive the same amount regardless of school taxes paid. Such a system would remove the tyranny, drugs, crime, bullying and bias because no business would survive if it tolerated such behavior. Florida’s Universal ESA looks like America’s future system.
The solution is privatization, school choice if you will. Not the teachers’ idea of choice and certainly not the union’s idea. Most know what’s needed is a robust free market filled with all kinds of accredited schools, able to deliver general subjects as well as all kinds of specialties, including athletics and the arts. Bottom line, it’s a very bad idea for any government to educate its children.
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Slavery is the worst thing that ever happened to this country… And no, not because people owned slaves. That’s shitty and all, but everybody has done it.
No. Mainly because it is why we have always had an incredibly problematic, shitty, trouble making minority group here, and all the bullshit freedom ruining crap that came along with it.
Half of the worst things that have happened in the USA have been because we had a large black population. The Civil War for one. Likely never would have happened without slaves. An end to freedom of association? Probably wouldn’t have happened without black people here who DEMANDED that people let them in spaces where they weren’t wanted. The crap ton of violent crime and rapes that black people overwhelmingly are responsible for, yeah, that’s the excuse they use to take away our second amendment rights and pass tons of other shitty laws on the books and abridgements of our rights. The drug war? Largely because white people didn’t like the drug of choice that black people chose back in the day. All the accusations of racism and bullshit just for pointing out valid reasons for things, like immigration laws, etc.
I could go on forever. Black people in and of themselves are somewhat problematic, but mainly it’s all the shit that has swirled around their presence here in great numbers that has fucked this country up massively. Usually at the hands of retarded white leftists, sometimes because of agitation from blacks themselves.
This kind of brainwashing is just one more example. Completely fabricating history to make the people who built the greatest civilization in history seem like the bad guys for doing the same thing everybody else always did… And they’re still bad, even though they ended slavery world wide. Yeah, white people are HORRIBLE.