Thread by @Neoavatara

This may be the best thing I've ever read from Stephens.

"If there’s one word admirers and critics alike can agree on when it comes to NYT award-winning 1619 Project, it’s ambition. Ambition to reframe America’s conversation about race."

nytimes.com/2020/10/09/opi…

"In some ways, this ambition succeeded. The 1619 Project introduced a date, previously obscure to most Americans...offered fresh reminders of the extent to which Black freedom was a victory gained by courageous Black Americans, and not just a gift obtained from benevolent whites"

"Those concerns came to light when a longstanding critic, Phillip W. Magness, noted in the online magazine Quillette that references to 1619 as the country’s “true founding” or “moment [America] began” had disappeared from the digital display copy without explanation."

It is finally time to tell our story truthfully,” magazine declares on 1619 cover page. Finally? Truthfully? Is Times suggesting that distinguished historians like the ones who have seriously disputed aspects of the project, had previously been telling half-truths or falsehoods?"

Kudos to @nytimes for having the honesty to publish this:

"For obvious reasons, I’ve thought long and hard about the ethics of writing this...it’s bad practice to openly criticize the work of one’s colleagues. We bat for the same team and owe one another collegial respect."

"...has become, partly by its design and partly because of mistakes, a focal point of the kind of intense national debate that columnists are supposed to cover..To avoid writing about it on account of the first scruple is to be derelict in our responsibility toward the second."

"All the more so as journalists...come under relentless political assault from critics who accuse us of being fake, biased, and an arm of the radical left. Many of these attacks are baseless. Some are not. Through its overreach, 1619 Project has given critics of NYT a gift."