Cliff Notes on the 1619 Project
And the white supremacy behind “patriotic education”
I first heard of the 1619 Project when Senator Tom Cotton objected to it being taught in public schools. The Project investigates the impact that slavery had on the United States, and Cotton objected so strongly to its message that he suggested defunding any school that taught it. That was intriguing. So I looked it up.
Then I wrote a story about what I read, and shortly thereafter got the “15 minutes of fame” that Andy Warhol promised.
When I promoted the story on Twitter, Nikole Hannah-Jones — the New York Times journalist, 2017 MacArthur fellow, and Pulitzer Prize winner who conceived of the Project in the first place — retweeted me!
I felt well and truly blessed by the gods of Journalism.
Pumped by the mention and the consequent views and reads, I set out to read the 1619 Project in its entirety. But here’s the thing: It’s long. It’s complicated. It’s not one story, but 14 essays written by an array of historians on a variety of topics, plus a podcast. This was going to take time. This was going to take commitment. So I put it on…
