I'd read bits and pieces from the New York Times' ongoing project to claim that 1619, not 1776, is the real beginnings of America. It hadn't really interested me at the time, because I thought it was too much into identity politics to lack nuance, among other things.
That said, I don't need the likes of Conor Friedersdorf to lead the opposition.
Neocentrist mush-pulper Friedersdorf of the Atlantic is the latest to call out the old black lady, citing "enemy of my enemy" support such as World Socialist (who are generally Trots) and Ibram X. Kendi, who bats around something like the black nationalist world. (Contra what you might think on the X, though, he's not a black Muslim.) They can't agree with one another why the 1619 Project is wrong, just that it is. I could tell the others are wrong from reading; I'd read snippets of 1619 pieces and knew it was less than fully right at the time it was breathlessly announced.
So, they're ALL wrong, at least to some degree. Wrong enough to set off a Tweetstorm on my part which I will expand into a blog post.
Let's start!
I just lost respect for Gordon Wood as a historian. (I didn't have much respect to lose for .@conor64) as a journo.— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020
Many slaveholders were aware of 1774 Somerset ruling. It may not have been FOREMOST in their minds, but ONE cause for backing revolt? Yes. https://t.co/VV0M7cBbNM
As for .@WSWS_Updates calling out the #1619Project, I understand why. Ppl like it, Adolph Reed, etc., believe that race issues inevitably reduce to class issues. (This is the same Reed who a few years ago laughingly said New Mexico was one of the whitest states in the nation 2/x— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020
Does the #1619Project have problems? Hell yes. Its take on Abraham Lincoln is especially ridiculous. To the degree it works off Jill Lepore, I knew that, too. I wrote the top, AND top critical, review of "These Truths." 3/x https://t.co/I4ZCiwJ9Dn— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020
But, when it stops attacking the #1619Project as capitalist and uses Lincoln as a cudgel for that, .@WSWS_Updates & .@WSWSMedia will surely attack Lincoln elsewhere as a capitalist. 4/x— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020
As for Adolph Reed? Dave Garrow also had a nice vignette about his time with Obama — and with Alice Palmer. https://t.co/2vl4YbEIAS— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020
Re Ibram X. Kendi criticizing #1619Project? He's got wrongs himself. There was no pre-Colombian visit to America fr Africa. Claims there were by whites OR blacks are racist, based on a racist belief American Indians couldn't build temples or pyramids. 6/x https://t.co/WNItnKfqEw— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020
As for Friedersdorf's plaint re the #1619Project? A boatful of wrongs (Shock)— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020
1. By focusing on July 4, 1776, he focuses on a snapshot, undermining all else he says about other non-1619 issues.
2. He ignores California's anti-Chinese racism while talking abt growing up there 7A/x
Friedersdorf re #1619Project also:— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020
3. Doesn't discuss American Indian and other racial issues that, if he lived in NM beyond being born there, he should have seen
4. Re his ancestry, ignores that the multitude of Second Klan lynchings were north of the Mason-Dixon. 7B/x
It's not just Trots, though. Jacobin, whose editorial content sprawls the gamut between DSA Democrats and Sovietskis of some sort, of not necessarily Trotskysts, does the same as Reed and WSWS on capitalism and antisemitism.
I will give Reed credit for cooking the goose of both Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
I will also say that Reed is almost certainly right in thinking there's an element of capitalist career-hiking here. Certainly with the 1619 Project writers themselves and almost certainly with Kendi. Probably with Coates. I am reminded of the allegedly environmentalist SJW Instagram influencers last year who played High Country News for fools. (Actually, it was about 50-50 between that and a self-own by HCN, which was one of several reasons I quit subscribing.)
And, when all is said and done, it burns least stupid, by a decent margin with Reed, but only for calling out the capitalist motives. Setting that said, it's a tie for the bottom between him, WSWS in general, 1619 folks, and the likes of Kendi.
No, it's a tie for second-bottom. Friedersdorf's gelatinous crap is still at the bottom.
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Now, what do the opponents get right? Even more, opponents that Friedersdorf mentions but that get less airplay?
First is that the first blacks, arriving in 1619, like certain whites, were indentured servants, not slaves. Related to that is that a majority of Virginians at that time were indentured servants but that the majority was white. Nell Irvin Painter, author of "The History of White People" and other books, is one pointing this out. But, all Friedersdorf can do is attack her for not signing the letter against the project, then attack her for why she didn't sign, when instead, it's a reason plausible and logical.
If one wants a "turning point" year or years and bases it on Virginia, per Painter's piece, it would be 1676-77 and Bacon's Rebellion. The ruling class, after eventually putting it down, hardened slavery and made it more race focused, to break the ties between indentured servants, more and more of them white, and slaves, mainly black.
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Let's tie this back to Adolph Reed's one comment to tie this to media issues more, to differentiate from my original posting.
The New York Times has already admitted, re Bret Stephens' column of Ashkenazi racism, that it doesn't edit or fact-check its op-ed staff. Given that the 1619 Project is, if not op-ed, news analysis as much as news, maybe it wasn't fact-checked or copy-edited that much, either? Maybe that was even a precondition of Ida Bae Wells and others?
Or maybe the old gray lady, with its hoary motto of "all the news that's fit to print," in its repeated whackings of editorial staff over the years, doesn't have the resources to do serious checking on something like this?
In that case, that's kind of sad. Even before reading Painter's comment that the development of a race basis for black slavery was a process, but one that accelerated shortly before 1700, I was already thinking of Bacon's Rebellion.
And, in turn, these issues turn back to the issue of capitalism. Even without opposing Marxism to capitalism, beyond career advancement issues for Kendi, Wells (and Coates), one can smell the stench of money in the morning, to rift on Apocalypse Now, coming from this whole project.
One can also whiff it coming from Atlantic Monthly; why else would it run the gelatinous crap of Friedersdorf?
So, this is ultimately bad journalism as well as bad history.