>we are not in the end bound by a single ethnic background or historical memory. History is never going to provide a single, stable source of unity for the American people. We just have to accept that pluralism and even a certain degree of conflict are the inevitable price of living in our democratic society.
“But I think everyone knows that the controversy is really about the ideological and symbolic foundation point of the nation rather than the factual details.”
Actually, no. Some historians I know who are perfectly happy acknowledging the deep racist foundations of the US were very upset by the shoddy history. Ideological and symbolic foundations are buttressed by empirical claims. In this case the claims seem false. Moreover, the whole 1619 project was developed by the NYT for political reasons, as Banquet made clear. It was developed after the Russia gate fiasco was finally acknowledged and was IN PART motivated by the desire to hit Trump (and his racist working class voters) over the head. None of this means that the US does not have deep racist roots. It does, but facts matter, which is why it was good that Jones and the NYT was called out on their distortions.
Last point: slavery was/is a sin. But it is not the original sin. The ground for slavery was prepared by a concerted campaign of genocide agains the original inhabitants. This sin seems to have disappeared from all reckoning of the early history of the country. And though we can find some founding fathers who were better and worse as regards the slavery question, there were zero heroes with regard to Indian genocide. This policy was supported by everyone consistently and vigorously.
The reaction to the 1619 Project certainly is a case study in the kind of history conservatives do not find salutary for reasons mostly misinformed or disingenuous. There’s a vision of ‘Americana’ that they cannot let go of--of Old Glory, white picket fences, apple pie, ma and pop, baseball, hot rods, diners, Ford & Chevrolet, Route 66, the factory assembly line, the morning newspaper, church sociables, and the like---that partially defines them, even if its ultimately rooted in nostalgia for a way that never was. And to the extent that it’s disappearing in popular culture, they’re losing their minds.
It's interesting to note that last year the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary on the Vietnam War was released to much acclaim and, yes, some criticism from many of the same conservative outlets that rushed to criticize the New York Times 1619 project. But their critiques were largely muted in comparison, despite how utterly unsparing and brutally relentless their indictment of the United States's actions in the Vietnam War. Why? Because Ken Burns is adroit at genuflecting to conservative visions of Americana for the sake of ensuring that his documentaries have well-nigh universal appeal. He's so good at doing 'Americana' (see the entire PBS American Experience series for other examples) that he may as well have invented it. For every PTSD-suffering veteran's account of war crimes at My Lai, for every slow zoom-in still of Vietnamese villages ablaze with napalm, Burns dutifully pays the conservative piper with stories of American innocence, sacrifice and heroism--most notably Denton "Mogie" Crocker's death in 1966 at the painfully young age of nineteen, and the suffering it wrought upon his mother and sister. In Ken Burns's history, the U.S. is always both villain and hero, innocent and guilty, perpetrator and victim; we the audience are allowed to see the incarnation we most want to believe in--the nemesis or the redeemer.
Whatever its merits or flaws, the 1619 project doesn't genuflect. It has heroes, though, as the lead essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones lyrically, patriotically makes plain. But its heroes are black. That ain't Americana. Black people don't live there.
>we are not in the end bound by a single ethnic background or historical memory. History is never going to provide a single, stable source of unity for the American people. We just have to accept that pluralism and even a certain degree of conflict are the inevitable price of living in our democratic society.
Yeah
“But I think everyone knows that the controversy is really about the ideological and symbolic foundation point of the nation rather than the factual details.”
Actually, no. Some historians I know who are perfectly happy acknowledging the deep racist foundations of the US were very upset by the shoddy history. Ideological and symbolic foundations are buttressed by empirical claims. In this case the claims seem false. Moreover, the whole 1619 project was developed by the NYT for political reasons, as Banquet made clear. It was developed after the Russia gate fiasco was finally acknowledged and was IN PART motivated by the desire to hit Trump (and his racist working class voters) over the head. None of this means that the US does not have deep racist roots. It does, but facts matter, which is why it was good that Jones and the NYT was called out on their distortions.
Last point: slavery was/is a sin. But it is not the original sin. The ground for slavery was prepared by a concerted campaign of genocide agains the original inhabitants. This sin seems to have disappeared from all reckoning of the early history of the country. And though we can find some founding fathers who were better and worse as regards the slavery question, there were zero heroes with regard to Indian genocide. This policy was supported by everyone consistently and vigorously.
The reaction to the 1619 Project certainly is a case study in the kind of history conservatives do not find salutary for reasons mostly misinformed or disingenuous. There’s a vision of ‘Americana’ that they cannot let go of--of Old Glory, white picket fences, apple pie, ma and pop, baseball, hot rods, diners, Ford & Chevrolet, Route 66, the factory assembly line, the morning newspaper, church sociables, and the like---that partially defines them, even if its ultimately rooted in nostalgia for a way that never was. And to the extent that it’s disappearing in popular culture, they’re losing their minds.
It's interesting to note that last year the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary on the Vietnam War was released to much acclaim and, yes, some criticism from many of the same conservative outlets that rushed to criticize the New York Times 1619 project. But their critiques were largely muted in comparison, despite how utterly unsparing and brutally relentless their indictment of the United States's actions in the Vietnam War. Why? Because Ken Burns is adroit at genuflecting to conservative visions of Americana for the sake of ensuring that his documentaries have well-nigh universal appeal. He's so good at doing 'Americana' (see the entire PBS American Experience series for other examples) that he may as well have invented it. For every PTSD-suffering veteran's account of war crimes at My Lai, for every slow zoom-in still of Vietnamese villages ablaze with napalm, Burns dutifully pays the conservative piper with stories of American innocence, sacrifice and heroism--most notably Denton "Mogie" Crocker's death in 1966 at the painfully young age of nineteen, and the suffering it wrought upon his mother and sister. In Ken Burns's history, the U.S. is always both villain and hero, innocent and guilty, perpetrator and victim; we the audience are allowed to see the incarnation we most want to believe in--the nemesis or the redeemer.
Whatever its merits or flaws, the 1619 project doesn't genuflect. It has heroes, though, as the lead essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones lyrically, patriotically makes plain. But its heroes are black. That ain't Americana. Black people don't live there.