November 20, 2021

"In the new book version, Nikole Hannah-Jones... cautions that the [1619] project is 'not the only origin story of this country — there must be many.'"

"Then, in the opening chapter, Hannah-Jones repeats the text of her original magazine essay and refers to Black Americans as the country’s 'true "founding fathers,"' as deserving of that designation 'as those men cast in alabaster in the nation’s capital.' Some 400-plus pages later, in a concluding chapter, she writes that the origin story in the 1619 Project is 'truer' than the one we’ve known. What might an assiduous reader conclude from all this? That 1619 is a thought experiment, or a metaphor, or the nation’s true origin, but definitely not its founding, yet possibly its inception, or just one origin story among many — but still the truer one? For all the controversy the project has elicited, this muddle over the starting point is an argument that the 1619 Project is also having with itself. These distinctions matter because, with this subject, framing is everything. History, Hannah-Jones writes in the new book, is not just about learning what happened. 'It is also, just as important, how we think about what happened.'... Reframing America’s start from July 1776 to August 1619 — from the 'wrong' date to the 'truer' story — and placing those landmarks in conversation with each other is what forces you to stop and think, to peer within competing frames...."

Remember, when you ask who are "The Founders," ask who are The Framers?

52 comments:

rhhardin said...

"is what forces you to stop and think"

Stop to think

gilbar said...

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

THAT is what it is all about

Amadeus 48 said...

I was framed, your honor.

There is nothing wrong with the framing hypothesis that Nikole Hannah-Jones is a lizard person planted by extra-terrestrials as an experiment to cause racial division and collapse in our great republic, but where is the proof? She could be just a random nutter given too large a platform by talent-starved "journalists" at NYT academics at Howard University, where Thomas Sowell reminds us people might be somber about intellectual work, they might be unctuous about it, they might be pompous about it, but they are not serious about it. (Sowell transferred to Harvard.)

Nikole Hannah-Jones: lizard person or over-promoted hack? You decide.

How do you like that framing, WaPoo?

Temujin said...

More mileage out of an outrageous and bizarre concept of the country that has made her a millionaire. I'm not playing, though I am sick to death of this entire race industry. They'd be nothing without their hate, so they perpetuate it and continue to make millions.

Loved the 'professional' media's reaction to the Kyle Rittenhouse case. It fits with Hannah-Jones' narrative.

We're all racists. We're all white supremacists. And the killing of the unarmed Jacob Blake, even if he wasn't actually killed or unarmed, shows it.

My mind cannot be stretched to this length that the Left is asking of me. To not believe the reality of my own eyes and mind, but to simply accept their fictions, even as they contradict what my eyes see and my mind knows. I'm not playing. Not now. Not ever. They are a disease. (PS- the NBA is an embarrassment)

Wince said...

Writes Carlos Lozada in "The 1619 Project started as history. Now it’s also a political program.

He spelled pogrom incorrectly.

Wilbur said...

Good one, Wince.

Wilbur said...

AA wrote: Remember, when you ask who are "The Founders," ask who are The Framers?

I suspect asking that question today may get you branded as something of a racist.

David Begley said...

NHJ is a graduate of Notre Dame. She was probably radicalized there and she probably learned her dishonest research methods there, I blame fucking Notre Dame for this radical.

Sebastian said...

'It is also, just as important, how we think about what happened.'

The one honest thing. The point is: Amerikkka = evil; only the progressive gospel can overcome its sins.

gilbar said...

Temujin said...
My mind cannot be stretched to this length that the Left is asking of me. To not believe the reality of my own eyes and mind, but to simply accept their fictions, even as they contradict what my eyes see and my mind knows.

Oh Yes It Can! That's WHY we've built a digital room 101*
How many fingers am i holding up Temujin?

digital room 101* coming Soon, to a phone near YOU.. Like it Or NOT

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

What might an assiduous reader conclude from all this? That 1619 is a thought experiment, or a metaphor, or the nation’s true origin, but definitely not its founding, yet possibly its inception, or just one origin story among many...

How about it's a piece of controversial dreck that was written to call attention to Nikole Hannah-Jones and get her a tenured position in academia? And that she's backing away from it so she won't end up being treated as a kook by future historians.

Josephbleau said...

“as those men cast in alabaster in the nation’s capital.”

That would be carved in alabaster, unless you fine ground and calcined it into plaster, and made a mould.

Fernandinande said...

The US would've been a lot better off at every stage if the various European countries hadn't practiced slavery that introduced slaves into their colonies but not their own countries.

who-knew said...

I think Carlos Lozada was wrong (and quite possibly deliberately wrong) when he wrote "The 1619 Project started as history. Now it is also a political program". It was always a political program and never history.

J. Farmer said...

"The 1619 Project" was a dumb 2019 gimmick. The race issue has obviously been a propelling force in American history (e.g. constitutional compromises, westward expansion, the Civil War, Reconstruction. the Jim Crow regime, the Great Migration, desegregation, Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act). The mass enfranchisement of blacks in the mid-1960s kicked off a massive political realignment that more or less remains to this day.

The New Deal coalition reached its apex in 1964. LBJ scored a massive electoral victory over Goldwater, but of the few states Goldwater won, most had not voted Republican since the end of Reconstruction in 1877. That was also the last time the Democratic Party won the white vote. Conservative white southerners started voting Republican, and liberal black southerners started voting Democratic. This made the parties more ideologically sorted and more polarized. Republicans transformed from a northeastern WASP party to a southern evangelical party. This is how Bush family went from New England prep to Texas rancher good ol' boy in one generation.

Owen said...

This discussion of the 1619 Project —and the cute metaphor about different framings of history “having a conversation with each other” —is essentially aimless. It is mental masturbation. It allows these “scholars” and “critics” to indulge in endless meta-meta problematization and recycling of stuff that was never well defined, never tethered to the real world, that consists of just BS, rhetorical slop.

Somehow they get away with it; get rich from it; beat up their betters with it. I don’t know how to answer it except with contempt. And by the last withdrawal of intellectual or financial support from any institution that pays them even lip service. It all has to crash before we —or our successors— can start again.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Sounds like damage control now that even very liberal historians have dismissed the work as inaccurate. We have always been at war with Eastasia. Suddenly, it's not The True Reframing of American history, it is merely one of many, whose main goal is to cause us to ask questions. I suppose if she had started there it wouldn't have sold very well or made her famous, would it? Except it's those evil capitalists who are the ones who will lie and delude themselves for filthy lucre.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

If Mike Tyson came back as African American why would we pre-suppose the white America founders would not do the same?

It’s kind of racist, if you stop and think.

ga6 said...

And she will tell us about some of the "many" as soon as her assistants can decipher her handwritten notes made on her last mushroom trip.

Rollo said...

That is the paradox of postmodernism (or maybe poststructuralism). It abandons the earlier metanaratives of history in the name of "difference" and "otherness," only to construct a new metanarrative based on difference" and "otherness." It's as though we as humans can't get away from "the meaning of meaning."

Autocorrect doesn't recognize those four and five syllable word monstrosities, so one can still feel bold, rebellious, pathbreaking, and young when one types them out.

Critter said...

The 1619 project and the racism project more broadly are, and always have been, merely a tool of the Marxist movement. Anything that stands in the way of the long march to the glorious socialist/communist society must be destroyed. 1619 is focused on the noble founding principles and Founding Fathers of the United States. Racism is focused on the melting pot and equality principles of the United States. America’s elites are focused on the maintenance of a social group that controls the national narrative to distract from their program of self-interested aggrandizement at the expense of the majority of Americans. Just like Marxism works for the elites as a misdirection play.

The elites are degenerate rapists of the American project of citizen self rule. I would hate them but for the fact that there will always be such people in an open society. The so-called elites are just the current occupants of the position. As a Christian I also hate the sin and not the sinner. The so-called elites are among those who have fallen the most from God’s desire that people choose good over evil. Only by seeing things clearly for what they are can we preserve the American project which appeals to us to choose good in life.

Conrad said...

The obvious problem with her "framing" is that slavery, let alone slaves, had virtually nothing to do with the movement to split off from England. By the time of independence and the Constitution (about 150 years after 1619), slavery was recognized as a problem that would need to be confronted in the future; but it wasn't a sufficiently monumental issue in that time to scuttle the project of birthing the new nation. Slavery wasn't even that economically important in America until after the cotton gin. Therefore, placing so much focus on 1619 as a defining moment is silly and tendentious. The struggle to end slavery and elevate the social and political standing of blacks is a big part of American history, but that story really starts several decades into the 19th Century.

Rollo said...

In the nineties, Southern paleocons were complaining that America's true founding was 1607, not 1620, and now we have this. Stick with the buckled-hat Pilgrims and enjoy your turkey.

Leora said...

The history I was taught in school did start with the Jamestown settlement in 1619 and the Pilgrims in 1620. Very big deal about Thanksgiving and the story of Pocahantas. We also learned about the slave ships but we weren't told they were our fault. Maybe because our local history was strongly abolitionist - local stops on the Underground Railroad and a town called Freeville where former slaves settled though they had all moved on by then.

mikee said...

Which interpretation of history produces the fastest advance to successful life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the largest number of us? Use that one.

(Hint: It isn't the 1619 Project's version.)

The Crack Emcee said...

Blacks did realize we're humans before it occurred to many of the Founding Fathers - simply by default - and that has to count for something, ideologically, when it comes to making us who we are. Our view of America IS closer to the truth that what we've been told. Americans are still cowards about the truth. Say MLK was a rapist and they freak. How long will it be before we can speak honestly about that? JFK and RFK and Marilyn? Harvey Milk's crimes? Bill Clinton's rapes?

I HATE living in this MATRIX of lies you guys won't let me out of.

Yers, I say "you guys" because I know THEY won't do it. It has to come from outside, and it doesn't. That's what I'm not used to.

And it's my upbringing, amongst blacks, that made me this way: I want the truth. And I want it now.

dbp said...

“as those men cast in alabaster in the nation’s capital.”

I had the usual question with NHJ: Stupid or evil? The above is moving the needle toward stupid.

LA_Bob said...

Crack said, "I HATE living in this MATRIX of lies you guys won't let me out of."

Crack! Unlike the southern states in 1861, no one will stop you from leaving!

"I want the truth."

You can't handle the truth!

Mikey NTH said...

Sounds to me that she's trying the Way of the Weasel in order to keep her theory going in the face of criticism she can't answer.

Skippy Tisdale said...

"Blacks did realize we're humans before it occurred to many of the Founding Fathers"

As if Cracker Emcee know the first thing about black realization. Go troll somewhere else. BTW, Emcee is an abbreviation of melanin con.

Joe Smith said...

'Hannah-Jones repeats the text of her original magazine essay and refers to Black Americans as the country’s 'true "founding fathers,...'

Hilarious.

Africans in the 1600s had no idea how to build a boat to sail across the Atlantic.

Unless they were Wakandans...

mccullough said...

Slavery was always difficult to reconcile with Christianity.

Combination of Christianity with the Enlightenment eventually ended slavery in the West.

As the US has become less White it has not become more Black.

Mexican-Americans outnumber Blacks in the US nowadays.

The WASPs have been outnumbered for a long time and their power has waned. They still have a lot of wealth. But not much cultural pull. Trump finished off the Bush family.

Jewish-Americans have also lost a lot of cultural pull.

This is causing a lot of the upheaval. It’s actually more Democratic now. Lacking the Noblesse Oblige of the WASPs, large institutions such as Universities and National Media are declining in influence. The Ivy League just doesn’t have the same cachet. The Washington Post is a shell.

Hannah-Jones is a social climber. She’s managed to ingratiate herself into the formerly WASP institutions. But since their prestige has waned, she’s pissed.

No fun to finally get into The Club. It’s dead and gone.

Chris Lopes said...

"By the time of independence and the Constitution (about 150 years after 1619), slavery was recognized as a problem that would need to be confronted in the future; but it wasn't a sufficiently monumental issue in that time to scuttle the project of birthing the new nation."

It wasn't a monumental issue unless you happened to be a slave. Then it became the defining issue in your life. I think that qualifies as white privilege.

Smilin' Jack said...

I haven’t paid any attention to the 1619 project, but I gather that’s the date when the ancient African custom of slavery was imported to America (or perhaps you believe the pyramids were built with union labor?) Anyway, some years later a weird sect of white Christians in New England got it into their heads that slavery was somehow un-Christian (which is odd, since Christ lived in the Roman Empire, would have been surrounded by slaves, and never said boo about it) and started agitating against it. This led to white people abolishing the trans-Atlantic slave trade, largely through the efforts of the British and American navies. Still not satisfied, white people then waged an extremely bloody civil war to end slavery entirely in America . I think that pretty much covers the relevant history.
As for present-day African Americans, if they doubt that slavery is the best thing that ever happened to them, they should visit Africa.

Joe Smith said...

'As for present-day African Americans, if they doubt that slavery is the best thing that ever happened to them, they should visit Africa.'

Slavery was terrible for anyone who was actually a slave.

But the ancestors of American slaves should thank God every day that they now live here and not there...

Chris Lopes said...

"Crack! Unlike the southern states in 1861, no one will stop you from leaving!"

He's right Crack. You are free to go wherever you wish in this fine country of ours. No overseer will flog you. No bounty hunter will come looking for you. You go anywhere without the least bit notice. Unless you ask "where the white women at?". :)

Drago said...

Cracked Emcee: "I HATE living in this MATRIX of lies you guys won't let me out of."

Can someone post the Keep Crack Emcee Trapped In The Matrix Duty Schedule?

I've misplaced mine and I am pretty sure I have the Midwatch but I want to be sure.

gpm said...

>>"is what forces you to stop and think"/Stop to think

I hear you and still find it a bit grating, but that ship has not only sailed, but reached port and sailed many times thereafter.

--gpm

gpm said...

>>Slavery was always difficult to reconcile with Christianity.

In the recent Angle/Angeli exchanges, it's been noted that there was allegedly a slave market in Rome attended by the Pope, involving white Germaanic slaves (and the word "slave" derives from "Slav"), in the late Sixth Century. So they apparently didn't have too much difficulty reconciling it with Christianity.

--gpm

Lurker21 said...

The Ivy League just doesn’t have the same cachet.

It's not what it once was -- the old scholarly and humanistic traditions (assuming they were ever real) have weakened and faded -- but it's still a way to make connections, and now they're made on a global level, so the Ivies may be as powerful and significant as ever. They just aren't the property of one ethnic group anymore, though they are still the property of one class or elite.

Race and American history: Some of what's said now reflects a change that's already happened. We don't feel as close to the Founders and Framers, settlers and pioneers as we once did. As the country grew less homogenous we became more alienated from them. One doesn't have to go as far as NHJ and the 1619 project in one's thoughts and feelings, but the change has already happened.

effinayright said...

Chris Lopes said...
"By the time of independence and the Constitution (about 150 years after 1619), slavery was recognized as a problem that would need to be confronted in the future; but it wasn't a sufficiently monumental issue in that time to scuttle the project of birthing the new nation."

It wasn't a monumental issue unless you happened to be a slave. Then it became the defining issue in your life. I think that qualifies as white privilege.
***************

Why the SNOT???

It wasn't a monumental issue because the main task was to make sure the Revolution succeeded. Once that happened, northern states in the new country began abolishing slavery soon after:

http://blackusa.com/first-state-to-abolish-slavery-1774

FIRST STATES TO ABOLISH SLAVERY
Rhode Island was the first state to abolish slavery in 1774.

Followed by:

Vermont in 1777
Pennsylvania in 1780
Massachusetts in 1781
New Hampshire in 1783
Connecticut in 1784
New York in 1799
New Jersey in 1804

These new states never allowed slavery within their borders:

Maine
Michigan
Wisconsin
Ohio
Indiana
Kansas
Oregon
California
Illinois

***************
So how the fuck can you assert that the nation was founded on "white privilege" because SOME states held slaves, while EIGHT of the original THIRTEEN colonies abolished slavery???

It takes a real dickweed to mindlessly fling poo and comment on matters you know NOTHING about.

The Crack Emcee said...

So I'm the only person who recoils when I see the nation flogging MLK, knowing he raped his parishioners, and orchestrated orgies?

You guys LIKE living in Hell on Earth.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

The Crack Emcee said...
So I'm the only person who recoils when I see the nation flogging MLK, knowing he raped his parishioners, and orchestrated orgies?

Were teh principles pushed by MLK right, or wrong.

I don't give a fuck about what he did, I want to know about whether you agree or disagree with the principles he pushed.

If you agree with them, then all those "diversity" based on skin color bullshit is evil and wrong

If you disagree with them, the 60's Civil Rights movement was worthless bullshit, and we need to toss out everything they did.

Pick one

Greg The Class Traitor said...

What the 1619 project leaves out is that the Africans who landed on US soil in 1619 were indentured servants, not slaves.
https://unrealfacts.com/the-first-american-slave-owner-was-black/

The first American slave owner was a black former indentured servant:

In 1621 a black man by the name of Anthony Johnson arrived from Africa to Virginia to be an indentured servant, not a slave. He was captured by Arab traders in his native Angola and sold as a slave. By 1635 he had completed his service contract, and by the late 1640’s he had acquired 250 acres of land. As a land owner he started using indentured servants himself, acquiring five. In 1654 one of his servants, a black man by the name of John Casor was due for release from his service. Johnson decided to extend his service and Casor left to work for Robert Parker who was a free white man. That year Johnson sued Parker in Northampton Court, and in 1655 the court ruled that Johnson could hold Cason indefinitely. The court gave sanction for blacks to hold slaves of their own race. This made Anthony Johnson the first American slave owner and John Cason the first slave in the American colonies. It was another 15 years before the colonial assembly granted free whites, blacks and Indians permission to own black slaves.

So the fact that it's not the "1655 Project" just shows the complete dishonesty of its pushers

The Crack Emcee said...

Greg The Class Traitor said...

"Pick one"

Life is not a "pick one" deal - the man raped multiple women and forced many others into sexual nightmares.

I'm not gonna forget that because he led a damn march.

The Crack Emcee said...

I'm not gonna forget Bill Clinton's rapes because he protected abortion either.

Or must I "pick one"?

The Crack Emcee said...

Jimmy Saville was a beloved entertainer in the UK. Then he died and everyone discovered he was a pedophile. Guess what? He ain't so beloved anymore. Does that mean he didn't entertain in his day? No. But he's not looked at the same.

That needs to happen to MLK.

Con artists are con artists, and we MUST destroy their gig.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Chris Lopes said...
It wasn't a monumental issue unless you happened to be a slave. Then it became the defining issue in your life. I think that qualifies as white privilege.

Not all blacks in America were slaves.

Not all, or even most, whites owned slaves.

So it "qualifies as white privilege" only if you're a moron.

Esp. since I expect that most "white" people in America today have more ancestors who came to America after 1865 than before.

And most blacks in America have at least one slave owning ancestor.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

I'm going to ask it again, Crack:

Were the principles pushed by MLK right, or wrong.

I don't give a fuck about what he did, I want to know about whether you agree or disagree with the principles he pushed.

If you agree with them, then all those "diversity" based on skin color bullshit is evil and wrong

If you disagree with them, the 60's Civil Rights movement was worthless bullshit, and we need to toss out everything they did.

Pick one

The thing about principles is that they're not tied to an individual. A shitty person can push a good principle, and good person can push a shitty one.

Were the civil rights principles pushed by MLK right or wrong?

Joanne Jacobs said...

The 1619 Project started as a distortion of history for political ends, and remains so.

Gospace said...

Greg The Class Traitor said not all, or even most, whites owned slaves. Which is true. Not only is it true, but it’s also true that some blacks owned black slaves, as did many Indians from more than one tribe. Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole Indian nations all contributed troops to fight for the Confederacy. Ironically they are referred to as the Five Civilized tribes.

As far as the numbers of people who owned slaves, there are pretty reliable numbers out there, and it’s a far smaller percentage of the population than you would think. And that number is simultaneously a truth and a lie. In the 1850 and 1860 censuses, 2 sets of my 2g grandparents owned slaves. 6 didn’t. 3 of them weren’t in the USA at the time. One 2g fought for the North, another for the South. Now of the two sets of 2g slave owning grandparents, there were 2, not 4, official slave owners- the head of the household. Between the two a dozen or so household members. Smaller families as many of the children were already in their own households. So two official slave owners, but a dozen in reality. And I can find some census tracts with over 20 listed in a single household. Based on that, what’s the real number? Nobody actually knows.

The founders of the 1619 project like to pretend that only the USA had slaves. In 1800 slavery was legal, well, on Earth. 24 years after we got started. In 1804 Haiti became the first nation to outlaw slavery. It was a few years later before the first country in Europe did. And interestingly enough our civil war wasn’t the first anti slavery war the USA fought. The first was the Barbary Wars where Muslim pirates were capturing American merchant ships and selling the crew into slavery. Merchant crews of the time were often mixed race. There were of course other reasons for the Barbary Wars, but that was part of them.

Despite the worldwide ban on slavery today it still exists in Sharialand, compete with open slave markets. And in some of the former Barbary States areas….

Joanne Jacobs said...

The 1619 Project started as a distortion of history for political ends, and remains so.