Great thread on the 1619 Project and the politics of interpretation, by a scholar of Native American history. It reminded me of the revew Gordon Wood wrote of Alan Taylor's American Revolution book in September of 2016.
Taylor's account of the Revolution foregrounds the divisions amongst North Americans in that era, centering the various, often sordid motivations that inspired people to fight. Wood ends his review by asking, "ok, this is all true, but can this story hold a nation together?" 
Here's the full review. nytimes.com/2016/09/11/boo…
History as a discipline emerged alongside the nation-state as a political formation. Emerging nation-states needed histories to give them a sense of permanence and legitimacy, and the historians of the 19th century gladly complied.
Modern historians have a more ambivalent relationship to the nations about which they write. Jill Lepore has made the case that historians should not abandon "the nation" as a focus for their histories. foreignaffairs.com/articles/unite…
I think it's safe to say that most of the critics of the 1619 Project would generally agree with Lepore on this. To persist, nations need citizens who feel connected to that nation's story, who can see themselves in it and are, to some extent or another, motivated to act by it.
But here's the problem. As innumerable dissenters in American history have pointed out, the nation's foundational myths have not rung as true to many millions of Americans, especially those who have felt the sharp edge of American nationalism.
How do we tell a story of America that includes the 20% of Americans who were enslaved in 1776, or includes the innumerable American nations that were systematically dispossessed as the USA expanded (as depicted brilliantly in this time-lapse map)? arcgis.com/apps/webappvie…
Do we want to tell as true and as inclusive a human history of North America as we can? If so, then this means we can't simply tell a happy story about things getting gradually and inevitably always better. Because that's not how large numbers of Americans experienced it.
To tell such an open-eyed, rigorously inclusive story about America is not an act of hatred, not an attempt to "destroy" America as conservative critics of the 1619 Project claimed. It's an act of critical patriotism. nymag.com/intelligencer/…
The stories nations tell themselves about themselves always change over time. It's a sign of a nation's vibrancy that it can sustain an argument about its origin, its failings, its achievements, and its future promise.
To say that the US "can't handle" the truth about its past (as Wood seems to be saying in that NYTimes review) is to give up the game...to admit that the gap between American ideal and American reality can't sustain our critical gaze.
The line from the 1619 Project that sticks foremost in my mind is @nhannahjones's point that African-American critics and activists have been "the perfecters of American democracy." They have fiercely fought for the country to live up to the ideals stated in the Declaration.
@nhannahjones How someone could read that as "an attack" on America is beyond me. It's a challenge to America to continue to reassess what it stands for. We need to pay heed to as many voices as possible to do this well. The 1619 Project was one such voice, not the last one, but just one.
@nhannahjones To my mind, it was a very forceful and compelling voice. As with all voices, there will be counterpoint and contestation, which is all to the good. But the tremendous backlash they've encountered seems hugely out of proportion...if also totally predictable.
