I am not sure why you are asking this question.
The 1619 Project which largely focuses on the founding ideologies and systems that built America and continue to exist today have very strong ties to slavery and the suppression of black people. It’s a reframing of our country’s history often through the perspective and voices of individuals who have been actively prevented from the retelling of our history. How are you going to skip to policy making if we’re still arguing over whether or not a country that constantly lies, in print and in the education system itself and yes up to and continues to do so today, about our history. And while of that is happening, while we know those lies are there, is outraged that a piece of rather remarkable work came to light with some exaggerations and some inaccuracies.
We’re not talking about adopting policies, we’re talking about trying to correct a world view, one that ignores and warps the roles of African Americans and race itself in our history in order to allow a white majority to own things that doesn’t just belong to them, to take possession if idea like equality and freedom and democracy while still practicing behaviors that undermine all of that. It’s an good but imperfect effort to correct history not get someone to vote on some politicians next pet project. Step 1 is not new policy, step 1 is going through the work, and it is work, to try and reconcile what’s been told, sold, printed and retold as a truth, and understanding it’s not. No one can even hope to create policy for anyone to adopt if that level of work is deemed… just too much.
We don’t need to vote on whether or not something like the Tulsa Race Massacre happened. We know it did. It might take awhile for the majority to accept that, longer to process it, and even longer than that to understand why it matters, but I don’t know what you think you can do to convince someone who looks at the and says… nope, not in America.
The majority didn’t even accept interracial marriage. The courts had to do tell them they had no choice but to accept it as a legal reality. So I am not sure what policy you think Project 1619 is actually pushing, but I believe Hannah-Jones is pushing for a more accurate understanding of our history by presenting a more comprehensive picture of it.
And yes, we’re talking past each other because there are what 90 posts here, talking about errors made, criticism of specific facts and links to the knee jerk response to the Critical Race Theory (came out in the 70s, like 50 years old not new at all)… and I am just sitting here thinking that there are clear statements in there that The Flag isn’t our flag, we have a Olympian who turned away from the national anthem just this week in part because we know, she knows liberty for all wasn’t literally true, and I think some of the population knows the White House was built by slaves and I just wonder… is this being internalized at all… or is this another one of those moments when someone raises their hand and says what about the solution moments instead of… help me understand this better moments.
When I was a child — I must
have been in fi fth or sixth grade — a
teacher gave our class an assignment
intended to celebrate the diversity
of the great American melting pot.
She instructed each of us to write a
short report on our ancestral land
and then draw that nation’s fl ag. As
she turned to write the assignment
on the board, the other black girl in
class locked eyes with me. Slavery
had erased any connection we had
to an African country, and even if we
tried to claim the whole continent,
there was no ‘‘African’’ fl ag. It was
hard enough being one of two black
kids in the class, and this assignment
would just be another reminder of
the distance between the white kids
and us. In the end, I walked over to
the globe near my teacher’s desk,
picked a random African country
and claimed it as my own.
I wish, now, that I could go back
to the younger me and tell her that
her people’s ancestry started here,
on these lands, and to boldly, proudly, draw the stars and those stripes
of the American fl ag.
We were told once, by virtue of
our bondage, that we could never
be American. But it was by virtue
of our bondage that we became the
most American of all.
I don’t understand how someone can read something like this and not have questions if they did not experience it themselves. I think skipping over this moment is how we get to bad policies, whether you can get the majority to vote on them or not.
