B-Man Posted February 2 Posted February 2 Too long an article for most here, but I encourage you to read it. We Need a Reckoning on the 1619 Project By Peter Wood Editor's Note Like all revolutionary movements, the destructive Left cannot achieve its goals without convincing enough people that the old order is so evil it can only be destroyed. This is the purpose served by Critical Race Theory and, more specifically, by the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which cast slavery as the foundational principle of the United States. The project’s educational component has been hugely influential but, as Peter Wood points out, the actual numbers on its reach are unclear and even conflicting. Wood argues that a clear accounting of the propaganda’s reach in American schools will be a necessary, if difficult, step in any course correction. The New York Times launched its torpedo at American history on August 18, 2019. I speak, of course, of “The 1619 Project,” which first emerged as a special edition of the newspaper’s Sunday magazine. In the ensuing five years and five months, the 1619 Project outgrew its original 100 pages of newsprint. It became a somber 50 second television commercial on February 9, 2020, that aired during the Academy Awards and featured the singer, song-writer, and actress Janelle Monáe. In 2021, it ballooned into a 590-page hardback book, supertitled “A New Origin Story.” In 2023, Hulu turned it into a six-part “docu-series” with Oprah Winfrey as executive producer. During those five-plus years, the New York Times ran thousands of print advertisements for the “project.” It substantively revised the magazine text without any public acknowledgment, which means unless you saved the original copy, you can’t know exactly what it said. {snip} The faults in the 1619 Project are many and egregious. The shortest summary is that it collapses all of American history into a tale of racial oppression. Some of its claims are factually correct; many are not. But the overall claim is egregiously false, and the alarm it has occasioned arises principally from the authors’ aim of teaching this false narrative to American school-age children. Critics of all races, from Trumpian conservatives to Trotskyite socialists, have raised their voices, but seemingly to little effect. In 2021, legislators in Arkansas, Iowa, South Dakota, Texas, Missouri, Florida, and Mississippi introduced bills to ban the teaching of the 1619 Project in public schools. The Arkansas bill failed. Iowa passed a bill banning the teaching of “divisive concepts,” which did not explicitly mention the 1619 Project. South Dakota’s governor issued an executive order banning the state’s department of education from applying for federal grants tied to critical race theory. The Texas bill, which more broadly attacked “critical race theory,” passed. It said, “A teacher may not require an understanding of the 1619 Project.” The Missouri bill stalled and continues to be debated. In Florida, the state board of education banned the 1619 Project in 2021, and the legislature passed the Stop WOKE Act in 2022, effectively banning the 1619 Project. In Mississippi the bill failed. This is to say that public opposition to teaching the 1619 Project in schools has so far not yielded much in the way of results. Perhaps it has been eclipsed by concern over the active promotion of transgenderism in the schools. But repairing schools is a terribly difficult problem for those bent on reform. The unions stand in the way. The traditional autonomy of teachers stands in the way. School boards, usually aligned with the teachers unions, stand in the way. The progressive ideology, driven by schools of education, stands in the way. Above all, the opacity of American schools stands in the way. It is very difficult for parents, citizens, or political leaders to find out just what teachers are teaching. One thing the U.S. Department of Education could do is impose strict reporting requirements on schools to report what texts and teaching materials they use to teach history and social studies. As it is, no one knows how deeply institutionalized the 1619 Project has become. But we should find out https://tomklingenstein.com/we-need-a-reckoning-on-the-1619-project/ 1
Orlando Buffalo Posted February 2 Posted February 2 2 hours ago, B-Man said: Too long an article for most here, but I encourage you to read it. We Need a Reckoning on the 1619 Project By Peter Wood Editor's Note Like all revolutionary movements, the destructive Left cannot achieve its goals without convincing enough people that the old order is so evil it can only be destroyed. This is the purpose served by Critical Race Theory and, more specifically, by the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which cast slavery as the foundational principle of the United States. The project’s educational component has been hugely influential but, as Peter Wood points out, the actual numbers on its reach are unclear and even conflicting. Wood argues that a clear accounting of the propaganda’s reach in American schools will be a necessary, if difficult, step in any course correction. The New York Times launched its torpedo at American history on August 18, 2019. I speak, of course, of “The 1619 Project,” which first emerged as a special edition of the newspaper’s Sunday magazine. In the ensuing five years and five months, the 1619 Project outgrew its original 100 pages of newsprint. It became a somber 50 second television commercial on February 9, 2020, that aired during the Academy Awards and featured the singer, song-writer, and actress Janelle Monáe. In 2021, it ballooned into a 590-page hardback book, supertitled “A New Origin Story.” In 2023, Hulu turned it into a six-part “docu-series” with Oprah Winfrey as executive producer. During those five-plus years, the New York Times ran thousands of print advertisements for the “project.” It substantively revised the magazine text without any public acknowledgment, which means unless you saved the original copy, you can’t know exactly what it said. {snip} The faults in the 1619 Project are many and egregious. The shortest summary is that it collapses all of American history into a tale of racial oppression. Some of its claims are factually correct; many are not. But the overall claim is egregiously false, and the alarm it has occasioned arises principally from the authors’ aim of teaching this false narrative to American school-age children. Critics of all races, from Trumpian conservatives to Trotskyite socialists, have raised their voices, but seemingly to little effect. In 2021, legislators in Arkansas, Iowa, South Dakota, Texas, Missouri, Florida, and Mississippi introduced bills to ban the teaching of the 1619 Project in public schools. The Arkansas bill failed. Iowa passed a bill banning the teaching of “divisive concepts,” which did not explicitly mention the 1619 Project. South Dakota’s governor issued an executive order banning the state’s department of education from applying for federal grants tied to critical race theory. The Texas bill, which more broadly attacked “critical race theory,” passed. It said, “A teacher may not require an understanding of the 1619 Project.” The Missouri bill stalled and continues to be debated. In Florida, the state board of education banned the 1619 Project in 2021, and the legislature passed the Stop WOKE Act in 2022, effectively banning the 1619 Project. In Mississippi the bill failed. This is to say that public opposition to teaching the 1619 Project in schools has so far not yielded much in the way of results. Perhaps it has been eclipsed by concern over the active promotion of transgenderism in the schools. But repairing schools is a terribly difficult problem for those bent on reform. The unions stand in the way. The traditional autonomy of teachers stands in the way. School boards, usually aligned with the teachers unions, stand in the way. The progressive ideology, driven by schools of education, stands in the way. Above all, the opacity of American schools stands in the way. It is very difficult for parents, citizens, or political leaders to find out just what teachers are teaching. One thing the U.S. Department of Education could do is impose strict reporting requirements on schools to report what texts and teaching materials they use to teach history and social studies. As it is, no one knows how deeply institutionalized the 1619 Project has become. But we should find out https://tomklingenstein.com/we-need-a-reckoning-on-the-1619-project/ The 1619 project admitted it was not history, or factual, but a narrative. At that point it is creative writing and should be treated as such. Unfortunately those who most need the help in history are the least likely to get it 1
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