As I read the critiques against the #1619Project, I'm struck by the barely-hidden implication that centering the "founding" of the US in the experience of the enslaved is somehow taking something away from whites, that the US's origin story is an either/or zero-sum game. /1
The fact that implication is nested in the scholars' attacks on the project ("What about white people who hated slavery? What about lower-class whites? What about the universality of the Declaration/Constitution?") is perhaps unsurprising but still demoralizing. /2
I'm more convinced than ever that some scholars are deeply invested in a teleological view of US history ("The Rise of American Democracy," "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," "Freedom National"), a linear conception of liberty slowly accreting over time. /3
Thus the #1619Project's challenge to this reassuring centrist liberal consensus has provoked a visceral, and very telling, response from these quarters. "If you have a founding narrative, that ruins ours." But history isn't zero-sum. And folks should know better. /fin
