The history of slavery is a significant element but not the totality of racism in U.S. history. As I mentioned in the latter part of my last response, there is a through-line of racism in the sequence of historical events post-slavery: the collapse of Reconstruction; Jim Crow; and the continuation of raced-based segregation and privilege in commerce, education, due process, etc., with vestiges still extant. That through-line of racism is not “magical ‘DNA’”, it was the actual, documentable race-based social and political order. Dismissing the 1619 Project as “us[ing] the concept of slavery to justify a modern identity politics” conveniently ignores that the historical record clearly, indisputably indicates that a regime of identity politics has already been in force for 400 or so years. The 1619 Project’s calling out of racism is merely a response to four centuries of that prevailing identity politics.
Invocation of Germany and “magical ‘DNA’” indicates that what really sticks in Pluralus’ craw is the implication of essentialism—that the U.S. is permanently stained and dishonored by even mentioning all of the obvious and indisputable history of racism, and that all our nation’s other achievements and ideals are somehow obliterated by 1619’s supposed implication of essential or foundational racism. Interestingly, Germany has an official policy of confronting its past, which does not rely on spurious essentialist ideas, but does openly address the excesses of the Holocaust and WW2. If there is better alternative to the vilified 1619 Project approach that simultaneously accepts the facts of slavery, separate but equal, Jim Crow, lynching, literacy tests, housing and lending discrimination, violent opposition to desegregation, and all the rest, maybe Pluralus can put if forward to supplant 1619. If we Americans don’t want racism to be our permanent legacy, we have to start by facing up to it and changing the way we go forward. But if we don’t face up to the preponderance of the historical record, we risk confirming Pluralus’ fear.