“Our focus is on solving problems,”
a new group's mission statement reads. “We do this in the spirit of 1776, the
date of America’s true founding.” (Photo illustration: Getty Images)
An initiative featuring the writings
of black Americans will counter and rebut a New York Times Magazine project
that “reframes” all of U.S. history around slavery and racism.
The Woodson Center last week
announced sponsorship of “1776,” a
collection of essays and other material mostly written by black scholars and
community and business leaders, among other backgrounds.
Their goal is to tell “the complete
history of America and black Americans from 1776 to present.”
The “1776” initiative directly
rebuts the so-called 1619 Project introduced in August by The New York Times
Magazine. The purpose of the 1619 Project, according to an initial mission
statement, is “to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true
founding.
The creators chose the year 1619
because it is when African slaves first were brought to Britain’s Virginia
colony in America.
The 1776 project will take an entirely
different track.
“Our focus is on solving problems,”
the mission statement reads. “We do this in the spirit of 1776, the date of
America’s true founding.”
Bob Woodson Sr., founder and
president of the Washington-based Woodson Center, said that at the very least
the 1619 Project has stimulated “a much-needed debate in the black community.”
The problem “is that it defines
America as being racist,” Woodson said of the Times’ endeavor. “Simply put, all
white people are beneficiaries of privilege and are victimizers and all blacks
are victims.”
That message, he said, is dangerous
for the future of the country because it teaches Americans to make excuses for
failure. Worse, it defines America as an “evil empire” with fundamental
principles that are “corrupt and hypocritical.”
Woodson, 82, who has worked for decades
to lift black neighborhoods out of dysfunction, said the “1776” essays would be
an “aspirational and inspirational” alternative to the Times’ project,
embracing the Founders and their ideas rather than rebuking them.
Robert
Woodson Sr., president of the Washington-based Woodson Center, arrives Nov. 19,
2016, to meet with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump International Golf
Club in Bedminster Township, New Jersey. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Other contributors noted their
criticisms of the 1619 Project at a Friday event at the National Press Club
announcing “1776.”
Coleman Hughes, an undergraduate
student at Columbia University, said the prevailing attitude at American
universities is that oppression and racism is in our country’s DNA, that they
are essential elements of what we are.
“Today, we are challenging that
false narrative,” Hughes said. “Any argument that says the institution of
slavery is what makes America unique must grapple with the fact that slavery
was practiced in almost every society on earth until just a few centuries ago,
as well as the fact that most of those societies have done far less to
acknowledge and atone for it.”
“To point to America’s worst sins,”
Hughes said, “is to point out what is least unique about us.”
Other “1776” contributors were
critical of the way the 1619 Project connects the institution of slavery with
the lives of black Americans today.
“The 1619 Project offers a very
crippling message to our children,” said Carol Swain, an author and former
professor at Princeton and Vanderbilt universities who is host of the “Be the
People” podcast.
“I was spared from having that
message brought to me,” Swain said. “And I believe that if I had been exposed to
that, if I had internalized that negative message, I don’t believe I would have
been able to do the things I’ve done in life.”
Swain said white children are being
shamed for their skin color and black children are being taught that they can’t
accomplish things because of discrimination. She said “1776” will help counter
those destructive messages.
“The idea that the specter of
slavery still determines the character of life among African Americans is an
affront to me,” said Glenn C. Loury, an economics professor at Brown University
and “1776” contributor. “We have shown, and will continue to show, that we are
not merely bobbles at the end of a historical string, being pushed this way and
that by forces beyond our control.”
The 1619 Project has
partnered with the Pulitzer Center to push its material in high school
classrooms around the country as many high school districts are now
considering how to use it as a part of their curriculum. This despite the fact
that
historians—from highly diverse political backgrounds—have criticized it for
inaccuracies and distortions.
Allen Guelzo, a historian and
visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, called the Times’ project a
“conspiracy theory” used to tarnish the concept of capitalism.
Gordon Wood, a historian and author
of numerous books on early American history, said in an interview last year
with the World Socialist Web Site that he was surprised the 1619 Project could
be “so wrong in so many ways.”
And an editorial on the same
socialist website said the Times’ project was “a racialist falsification of
American and world history.”
Nicole Hannah-Jones, a New York
Times writer who wrote the first essay for the 1619 Project, had this response
to “1776” on Twitter.
Hannah-Jones’ disrespect aside,
“1776” represents an important addition to Americans’ understanding of our
history and how to think about it.
This work is essential in an age in
which young Americans have worryingly little grasp of history or the
foundational ideas and institutions that the country was founded on.
Worse, they are being fed a steady
diet of distortions about America’s past, as I highlight in my book “The
War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past.”
“1776” resources and essays are
available at 1776unites.com
Jarrett
Stepman is a contributor to The Daily Signal and co-host of The Right Side of
History podcast. Send an email to Jarrett. He is also the author of the new
book, "The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past."
_________________
To gain a more comprehensive
knowledge about the first blacks in Congress, acquire and read the ebook,
“Black History 1619-2019: Revealing and Counteracting Revisionist
African-American History” that is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082868WWY/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=Ebook+Black+History+1619+to+2019&qid=1575311799&s=books&sr=1-1-fkmr0
