1619 Project Admits Fatal Flaw

Timothy Birdnow

The New York Times has admitted a major flaw in the 1619 Project and has altered two words - and demolished the basic thesis entirely!

From the Federalist:

In a tweet Hannah-Jones says that sometimes journalists (note she did not say historians) trying to "summarize” and "streamline” can lose important context. So what was the context lost here? In the original she said that maintaining slavery was a primary motivation of colonists in revolting against England. That was one of the most bashed claims in the whole project. Now it reads, that it was a primary motivation for "some of” the colonists.

The clarification is small — just two words –but important. We add tht slavery was one of the primary motivations for "some of" the colonists to declare independence. As written, it appears that I am saying this was a universal motivation of ALL colonists. I wasn't clear enough

— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) March 12, 2020

It is hard to overstate just how massively this correction undermines the entire project. The purpose of this historian-free history of America was to refocus the American story by centering it on slavery. The idea was that 1619, the year the first chattel slaves arrived is the date of America’s founding, not the traditional 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

This re-dating of the founding of the United States only makes sense if we accept an ahistorical claim that slavery was a major reason colonists split with England. That is exactly why Hannah-Jones made the claim. It is also why the Times has dragged its feet while a deluge of virtual failed peer reviews poured in from actual historians.

Undermines indeed!  Slavery was always seen as something a bit unsavory at best and nobody was proud of it. As Robert E. Lee said of the "peculiar institution" it was rather like holding a wolf by the ears; you didn't like it but were afraid to let go. Once established the slave economy was hard to shed, because 1.non-slave farms couldn't compete with free labor 2.slave labor made farming less productive, forcing the slave master to double down on his slaveholdings to make out 3.slaves were a sizable investment - up to a hundred thousand dollars in antebellum money - and a slaveholder could ill afford to lose so much capital. In fact, the big sticking point in ending slavery in the U.S. was this very thing; slaveholders wnated compensation and abolitionists wanted to punish them so refused any compensation. Plans were floated that suggested fifty cents on the dollar but the abolitionists were having none of it; they argued it was the South who committed the evil and they should pay for it all.

But that's not how it was done in the United Kingdom (BTW slavery didn't end in all the empire until well into the 19th century); they phased it out, with slaveholders being compensated, and with a number of reforms (such as educating the slaves, paying them while in bondage, and allowing them to purchase their own freedom.) In the end the Americans just ended it by fiat (and victory in war) and no provisions were made for either the slaves themselves nor the masters who lost huge amounts of money.

So what do you do when you are a slave and someone tells you you're free? You have no education, no experience outside of the grunt work of the plantation, no experience with initiative or work ethic (why would you?), no place to go and no hope of getting a job since lots of white people were coming home and taking what jobs were available. You either stay on the plantation as a hand, living exactly as you did before, or you turn to crime.

Which was the genesis of the Ku Klux Klan. It was originally a crime-stopping organization. The Union wasn't allowing Southerners to police their own territory, and the military refused to act as a way to punish the white Southerners. So the Southernors formed a militia, and wore hoods to hide their identitites from the Army. But it was often directed against freed blacks, who had little choice but steal to survive.

It morphed into a racial supremacist organization later.

At any rate, America was hardly the last country to ban slavery; the Dutch and the Spanish kept the institution going after America banned it. Nor were we the first to institute it.

In fact, Native Americans generally kept slaves and that was why a number of Indian tribes allied with the Confederacy; it was no big deal  to them.

Slavery still exists in Africa and Asia, I might add.

The 1619 Project was always a lie designed to brainwash the young. It is evil.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:54 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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