In August, the New York Times Magazine unveiled its 1619 Project, which dates the founding of the United States not to 1776, with the Declaration of Independence, but to 1619, with the arrival of the first African slave. Five prominent historians (Victoria Bynum, James McPherson, James Oakes, Sean Wilentz, and Gordon Wood) challenged the Project's thesis, first in interviews with a socialist website, then in a letter to the Times urging factual corrections. The paper responded dismissively, and the broader reaction among historians suggests that the profession isn't up to the challenge of defending factual accuracy—at least, not if doing so threatens what many scholars see as the ideological greater good.
The Project's thesis, as articulated by its creator, investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, is that “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.” In one of her essays, she promised to show that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.” Another contribution, by Matthew Desmond, portrayed slavery as integral to virtually all aspects of nineteenth-century American capitalism.
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