The 1619 Project vs. the 1776 Project
America Is Both Exceptional and Exploitative
“Authorial intent” is an academic term that refers to what an author (or any artist) has as a goal for a text (or another piece of art). The intent influences the art, and there may even be something the artist intends for you, the reader, to think, feel, or do.
Accessing authorial intent, some claim, is impossible, while others believe accessing and honoring it is a moral issue.
This discussion surfaces in the recent, continuing, and vitriolic chatter about the New York Time’s 1619 Project, an initiative from journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones to emphasize the year 1619, the year Africans were first forcibly brought over to what would later become the Thirteen Colonies, as equivalent in importance to 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed.
You have people, both Black and white, queuing up on both sides to support their year of choice. The 1776 Project, a group of Black scholars refuting the 1619 Project’s thesis, was also created out of this debate.
