Thread by @SethCotlar

Thread unpacking the conservative position vis a vis the #1619Project. Their beef seems to be w/ the entire project of studying & writing history in a manner that doesn't simply confirm their own politics. When this happens they point fingers and say YOU'RE politicizing history.

There's an aspect of conservative history culture that is profoundly anti-democratic and elitist. It's captured best by this gif.

Conservative intellectuals will cursorily acknowledge that "slavery was terrible," "settlers treated Native Americans unfairly," but "we" shouldn't dwell on those parts of "our history" because "we" as a people can not handle staring directly into these truths.

Part of the problem here is how these conservatives implicitly define "we" and "our history." The history of slavery and racism is not a history that African-Americans can choose to live outside of, because that history lives on and impinges upon their lives in a host of ways.

The history of Native American dispossession is not a history that Native American people can choose to live outside of, because the legacy of that history shapes innumerable aspects of their lives. Native Americans and African-Americans have no choice but to "handle the truth."

When conservatives clutch their pearls about how America will unravel if we talk about the founders as slaveholders, as torturers of humans for profit, as domineering patriarchs, as genocidal stealers of land; they're saying that white citizens can't handle truthful history.

What they're saying is "nation's need self-affirming stories that citizens can rally around so as to feel as if they are one people engaged in a common project." I think most historians (including the folks who produced the #1619Project) would agree that this is true.

So the issue conservatives have with the #1619Project is not that it uses empirical historical data to weave a mythic story of the American past, because they're totally cool with mythic history. The problem is that this mythic history centers black people.

The #1619Project speaks to all Americans in 2019 and invites them to see this history as "our history" as something that belongs to all of us though we are differently situated in relation to it because of the way that history continues to reverberate in the present.

Ultimately, this is about our capacity to see ourselves as historically constituted subjects. It's probably not a coincidence that conservatives who see Jefferson, et. al. as demigods who spoke "timeless truths" are unable to see themselves as historically constituted subjects.

They want to keep wholly separate Jefferson's political writings and his lifelong ownership of human beings. Those two things have nothing to do with each other, they'll say. And if you bring slavery up, then you must hate Jefferson's political ideas!

Much like they would point at the almost entirely white and overwhelmingly male composition of the GOP and say "that has nothing to do with our ideals which are totally colorblind and gender neutral. We just dig [name your favorite free market economist here]."

They respond hysterically to critiques that bring up race or gender because they assume they are coming from a reductive and disqualifying place, as if *the only* thing that mattered about Jefferson is that he owned humans and hence he is cancelled in his entirety.

That is 100% NOT what professional historians have said, nor is that the approach that the #1619Project takes. It is, however, what conservatives defensively hear...and therein lay the rub.

A black person says "I'd like to be listened to and treated justly," and a white conservative hears "I hate America."

A Native American person says "I'd like for the history of my ancestors to be taught in a respectful manner in public schools" and the conservative hears "I hate America."

Young people say "this statue of Robert E. Lee or John C. Calhoun celebrates my negation as a legitimate citizen, therefore I would like it removed from public places of honor" and conservatives hear "I hate all white people."

One way to narrate the history of race in America is as a long refusal on the part of white ppl to listen in good faith. Bracket your own perceptions of "the truth" for a minute & listen to "our truths, which are not unconnected to yours but are distinct."

The basic narrative framework of the #1619Project is as traditionally American as apple pie. In 1972 the patrician Yale professor Edmund Morgan argued that the central paradox of America was that the language of American freedom in 1776 was voiced by slaveholders.

Gunnar Myrdal's 1944 book "An American Dilemma" identified race as one of the central contradictions in American life.

In 1903 W.E.B. DuBois noted that “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line."

The idea that racial discrimination and exploitation are a central part of American history that we (meant inclusively) must reckon with in order to live up to the aspirational ideals articulated in "our" founding documents is not some wacky, woke idea.

It is, however, an idea that many people have fought *against.* Like Robert E. Lee. And Nathan Bedford Forrest. And John C. Calhoun. And now we can add Steven Miller, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and a host of other key figures in MAGA-ville.

The political "agenda" behind the #1619Project is as old as America itself...it's an agenda that says the truths of what happened in the past matter, and if we are to become the inclusive democracy to which we aspire then we must speak openly about those truths. That's it.

The conservative response, from what I can tell, has not been to jump into that conversation, but rather to say that conversation itself is illegitimate, dangerous even. It may be true, but America can't handle the truth. And they think *they're* the ones who respect America.

For such conservatives, I'd recommend they read two books, just two, by the great historian @agordonreed. First, read her mutli-generational biography of the Hemings family, the book that definitively established the Sally Hemings/TJ relationship. amazon.com/Hemingses-Mont…

Then, read the intellectual history of Jefferson she wrote with Peter Onuf. There is nothing reductive or "anti-American" about their history of Jefferson's political thought. It's neither hagiography, nor a take down. It's just good history. amazon.com/Most-Blessed-P…

Though it will not be easy or conflict free, we can handle these complex truths, these paradoxes, these dilemmas. It is an insult to the intelligence and moral capacity of our fellow citizens to suggest otherwise.