There are many flawed, but nonetheless admirable, people; so it is with nations.
The 1619 Project is Junk Journalism
By: George Noga – October 16, 2022
To believe America was founded on slavery requires historical ignorance of the first magnitude. America was founded on ideals: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” America was and remains a beacon of liberty to the rest of the world. Millions of immigrants spent their life’s savings and risked death to come here. The 1619 project indoctrinates our children that America’s history is nothing but a phantasmagoria of horrors for which we must be shameful and pay reparations.
We do not want to sanitize history. Slavery existed in America, and it is condemnable. It is proper for schools to teach the history and evils of slavery. The problem is lack of context. We need to understand America the same way we regard flawed, even deeply flawed, people who nonetheless accomplish great things and are worthy of our admiration, even love, despite their flaws. What makes America unique is not slavery; it’s emancipation and how quickly we went from slavery to a black president.
Can anyone imagine South Africa electing a white president?
Aside from its predicate being totally wrong, the 1619 Project is chock full of flaws. It is based on the work of Nikole Hannah-Jones, a New York Times reporter without any academic credentials. Her work is disputed by serious historians who have studied slavery in America. Following are some of the major errors in the 1619 Project.
Slavery was at the center of America’s founding. Slavery is as old as recorded history and still exists today in Ghana, Nigeria, Mauritania, South Sudan and in scores of other countries. The United Nations estimates there are 50 million slaves today, including forced labor, forced marriage and human trafficking. As noted supra, America’s founding was based on the ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
America prospered due to slavery. Although individual slave owners may have benefitted, the nation as a whole did not. Many black Americans who could afford them also owned slaves. The parts of America with slavery were the poorest parts.
The 1619 Project’s Four “R”s: Reading, ‘Riting, ‘Rithmatic and Race
Slavery created economic prosperity. Brazil imported more slaves than the US and it was concentrated in the poorest regions. The same pattern happened in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, throughout the Caribbean and, of course, in America.
Black Americans fought alone. Quakers and other abolitionists in the eighteenth century were instrumental in the fight against slavery as was the Republican Party in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, the NAACP was cofounded by blacks and whites and the civil rights movement included many whites, Jews and Catholics.
All racial inequality today is attributable to slavery. Everything is blamed on slavery: poor academic performance, worse jobs, lower incomes, more incarceration, etc. Culture and personal responsibility are rejected as contributing to these problems.
The slave trade was mostly American. Five million more slaves were sent east to the Ottoman Empire than were sent to the Americas. Most slaves were sold by other Africans, even by their own families – making them complicit; the slave trade could not have existed without the support of African elites. There are no descendants of the slaves sent east because they all were castrated and then killed when their usefulness ended. Over one million Europeans were enslaved by Barbary pirates.
The 1619 project is the product of junk journalism; it is not serious academic work. Its premise is fatally flawed as are all its underpinnings. Every historian knows this, but most remain silent to avoid being called racist and jeopardizing their careers. Worst of all, it teaches our children that America’s past is nothing but a parade of horrors.
America remains that shining city on a hill. It is like a priceless jewel whose setting becomes tarnished from time to time – but the jewel itself is unaffected.
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Liberals believe the darndest things is the subject of our next post.
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