The 1619 Project Controversy

By Wayne Hare

Greetings. Perhaps you’ve been following the NYT’s The 1619 Project. 1619 was the year that Africans were brought to the American British Colonies beginning a 246 year period of enslavement and a 400 year period of racial strife and inequity. The project links the era and practices of slavery to certain aspects of the society that we live in today. It’s definitely a different take on the residual effects of enslavement than anything I’d ever read before. I found it to be fascinating. I think I’m drawn to the side of history that we tend not to celebrate. Or teach. Probably because it’s usually more interesting. But I was drawn to this series for some unacknowledged something that I didn’t even realize was rolling around in my head.

The series created a lot of buzz, not all of it positive. When a group of five prominent historians wrote a letter to the editor challenging the veracity of some of the information and claiming that the Times had skewed or replaced history with ideology, the NYT Editor-in-chief wrote a very public and very astonishing response.  He held his ground...strongly.  I thought that the letter and the rebuttal both held water. And even if I didn’t, who am I to doubt what prominent historical scholars or the NYT Editor claim is true? Even if their truths are in conflict. But still…there was something below the surface that poked at my brain a bit, but that I couldn’t identify. It seemed like there was some unidentifiable thing that was about more than was this or that fact and interpretation of that fact legit and accurate.

Then just a couple of days ago The Atlantic got involved and wrote a piece about the letter and the controversy and bingo… the author, Adam Serwer, put his finger directly on what the controversy is likely all about. History is always written, or at least taught, from the perspective of the victors. We all learned about George Washington’s childhood integrity and cherry tree episode years before we learned that he owned humans and forced them into bondage in order to increase his net worth. We learned what a wonderful invention the cotton gin was in increasing cotton production. We didn’t learn that it directly resulted in increasing slavery from a ‘mere’ few hundred thousand tortured souls to some 6 million. If we’d learned history from the African American perspective, we’d likely have learned a different version.

Serwer’s point is that the historians – all white …I Googled them - who protested much of the 1619 project, weren’t so much questioning the veracity of the history as they were protesting the assault on The Great American Story. The story that portrays the country - although not yet perfect - as being led by great, insightful, trustworthy, patriotic, white men, guiding the country in an unwavering straight line towards eventually perfecting that union. All we have to do is wait. The centuries long fight for racial justice has always been sincere, and that under their guidance, we’ll get there…someday. America’s “arc of moral universe may be long, but it always bends towards justice.” The 1619 Project interrupts that questionable narrative.

Yeah...someday. Martin Luther King was skeptical of the good intent from outwardly well-meaning people. “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”

Serwer’s take on the project and hence the controversy is that what the authors actually object to is portraying the history of slavery and the Civil Rights movement that it spawned not from the white victor’s position, but from the point of view of African Americans. Those are never going to align. The project’s creators and writers question the sincerity of the white effort and the optimistic bend of the moral arc that Martin Luther King mentioned.

154 years after the end of the war that assured the end of forced labor – 150 years or so after the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments assuring  all people equal rights and equal citizenship –  63 years after Brown v Board of Education assuring equal education – and 53 years after the 1964 Civil Rights Act once again assuring all people equal rights and treatment – why is the country still struggling to achieve racial equality? The FBI and the Southern Poverty Law Center report that after four straight years of growth since the 2015 presidential campaign that hate crimes have reached a 16-year high.  A person - or a NYT editorial staff - might be forgiven for questioning the sincerity of the effort to achieve racial justice.

It’s rewarding to me that The 1619 Project is trying to do exactly what The Civil Conversations Project is trying to do and simply change the story that America tells itself about race by looking at history through the eyes of African Americans.  The Times must have a pretty smart editorial staff! No doubt there are those who will always find changing the national narrative offensive.