The 1619 Project ed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein
When I was a lad, we always could tell which was the good stuff because that was the stuff they said we weren’t allowed to read. (Sneaky teachers would tell us we absolutely were not supposed to read a section, thereby assuring that we all would do extra reading that week, because we couldn’t not read the banned part. : – ) )
The 1619 Project has the distinction of inspiring condemnation, denial, and bans all across the US. You aren’t supposed to read it.
What does that tell you? You definitely have to read it, no?
The first ship full of African captives unloaded 1619 – before the Pilgrims landed in 1620. So, this book starts the story of America in 1619, not in 1620. (My Native American friends wouldprobably start this shameful story a whole lot earlier than that.)
(And then there is that whole Texas thing. And the genocidal wars. And the overseas colonies. And so on.)
From an academic point of view, I’m having trouble seeing why anyone would be so upset. This is all solid history, real stuff. None of it is new or invented here. Anyone who has actually learned American history already knows all this. All the stuff in this book is true, even though most of us wish it wasn’t.
But, of course, it’s not the history that’s the problem. As the subtitle says, this is “A New Origin Story”, or at least an alternative origin story. As Hannah-Jones makes clear, the origin stories we tell our selves “illuminate how a society wants to see itself”. (p. 452) And it’s the desire that’s the big problem. We hate this version of American history. We want it to not be true, and we wish it would go away.
The other reason why this book is so controversial is that there already was an origin story, one starting in 1620; a story about freedom, progress, virtue, and unity. The 1619 story is a story of violence, hatred, bondage, separation, and evil. (And, by the way, there are other stories to tell about this same history, e.g., a story of displacement, resistance, and conquest.)
The story in this volume is pretty aggressively revisionist. In this version, most of the heroes of the conventional (“1620”) myth are, at best, complicit in deeply wicked crimes. In some sections, the book seems to tell us that the only true heroes in this story are Black freedom fighters. Everyone else, especially including the US government, is guilty of deliberately or negligently supporting evil. We are told that, whatever we like to tell ourselves, “throughout our history, the most ardent, courageous, and consistent freedom fighters within this country have been Black Americans.” (p. 453)
This version of the story is pretty unpleasant, especially for anyone who is invested in the conventional myths. But it also hard to swallow for all of us who don’t happen to be heroic freedom fighters of any description. Which is pretty much everyone. So, ouch!
Is this then, a culture war, winner take all? Must it be? Clearly, many people think so. And cultural warriors always choose the story that they like better, one that makes them shine, one that morally justifies their own life. As we have seen, this loyalty may require distortion or suppression of actual history. These days it seems noone cares about facts anymore, anyway.
To be fair, this and similar hard lines are not the only views presented in the book. For instance, Kendi does give us a more dualist approach familiar from his own work. Neither origin story is the only story. The real history of America, he says, is dual, both virtuous and wicked advancing side by side.
“The long sweep of American has been defined by two forward motions: one force widening the embrace of Black Americans and another maintaining or widening their exclusion. The dual between these two forces represents the duel at the heart of America’s racial history.”
(Kendi, in [1], p. 439)
I’d push Kendi’s approach even farther. History is many stories, and individual people and events have meaning in more than one story at a time. We’re never going to see a pure 100% hero, and probably not a pure 100% villain, either. Policies are never perfect, motives are never perfect, decisions are never perfect. People are never perfect. History can’t possibly be perfect.
I also have a lot of sympathy for anyone who doesn’t want the past to dictate the future. Mythological stories, 1620 or 1619 (or 1491 / 1492), are fiction. If we are nothing more than these competing myths, and our only way forward is culture war to the death, then the future is bleak. I think most of us would like to build a world where this culture war is truly irrelevant.
From this point of view, aggressive myth making of any kind is not necessarily going to lead to a better world.
All that said, 1619 is yet another useful compilation of the history of racial relations in America. Everyone needs to know this stuff. And if there is some serious debunking of cherished myths, well, deal with it. And, by the way, see also Kendi, Gates, , Treuer, Saunt, Cozzens, Burrough et al, and many other read sources of history.
Look. If you don’t understand that the story of the US is the story of race, racism, and the fight against racism, then you don’t understand anything at all about America. Race isn’t the only story, but it’s always, always right there in front.
That’s simply the truth. I wish it weren’t, but it is.
- Caitlin Roper Nikole Hannah-Jones, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein, ed. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. One World: New York, 2021.
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