Assuming that The 1619 Project and its associated school curriculum is merely an innocent — much less “patriotic” — program designed to teach us about the evils of slavery and America’s connection to the institution would be a dangerous assumption.
The goal of The 1619 Project is to reframe American history. The basic thrust of the 1619 Project is everything in American history is explained by slavery and race. The message is woven throughout the first publication of the project, an entire edition of the Times magazine.
According to the project, every single aspect of American society is tainted by slavery and racism: our institutions, capitalism, politics, prisons, food habits, sports, highways, education, and (if you can believe it) traffic patterns.
You name it, and it’s illegitimate. The Times plans to spread these ideas through every section of its paper leading up to the 2020 presidential election and to push for schools across the country to (further) change the way American history is taught.
The Times has two big plans. One would be big enough: to focus on the universe of racism accusations that increasingly surround the president at a time when he just happens to be running for reelection.
But the other is even bigger: to ‘reframe’ American history in accordance with the values of Times editors.
They hope by framing everything about America in racial terms, and portraying President Trump as a racist, they’ll get rid of him and the country in one fell swoop by electing a socialist in 2020 and finishing Barack Obama’s dream of “fundamentally transforming the USA
America was founded on the ideals within the Declaration of Independence, a document that freed current and future generations from oppression and slavery. Failing to live up to those ideals at times is simply a product of the human condition.
As Erick Erickson writes, “The 1619 Project … seeks to divide, not heal. It seeks to give power and primacy to those who think the nation’s founding was premised on evil and demands that those who disagree be silent.”
Erickson offers a foreboding conclusion, suggesting, “If the nation is founded on slavery and slavery is woven into the very fabric of our society, then our society is illegitimate. ...
....The only way to overcome it is to overturn it. That would take revolution. This is the path The New York Times goes down. Once it lights this fire, it will not be able to control it. But it wants to strike the match anyway.”
Sadly, that match has already been struck, but how will we respond? Each generation must fight for our nation’s founding principles, but the mass of misinformation being propagated today will pose a daunting challenge for our children and their children.
And the NY Times is just fine with that
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