the funny thing about the recurring attention on the 1619 project is how it no longer really exists as a discrete package of arguments and observations and art from a variety of different writers and artists. it’s essentially a totem for “wokeness run amok” or some such thing.
one of the essays in the package is on the history of medical racism; another is on the relationship between race and the social safety net. seems strange, to me, to say that they are part of an “attack on the values and ideals of the Founding.”
but that’s the thing about taking the package on its own terms, versus as a stand-in for some battle in the culture wars. there are still plenty of places for critique and disagreement, but it’s also hard to sustain the idea that its some broad, revisionist attack on History.
you see a lot of this in the discourse. obsession with the idea of something but little discussion of the tangible and concrete.
