I wrote the following as part of an end-of-the-year review for 2019, but since the controversy is still very much alive and this particular point has been widely missed, even by other critics of the 1619 Project, I thought it would be useful to pull it out as a separate, stand-along observation.—RWT
Nikole Hannah-Jones spearheaded the 1619 Project for the New York Times and wrote the lead essay summing the whole thing up. What her essay tries to establish is not just racial politics. It’s a theory of what can only be called African-American supremacy.
She starts with the usual bogus claims about slavery being responsible for American wealth, the origins of American capitalism, and even the rise of Wall Street. But then she moves on to a much more expansive claim.
But it would be historically inaccurate to reduce the contributions of black people to the vast material wealth created by our bondage. Black Americans have also been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom. More than any other group in this country’s history, we have served, generation after generation, in an overlooked but vital role: It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy….
Through centuries of black resistance and protest, we have helped the country live up to its founding ideals. And not only for ourselves—black rights struggles paved the way for every other rights struggle, including women’s and gay rights, immigrant and disability rights.
Without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy today would most likely look very different—it might not be a democracy at all….
The truth is that as much democracy as this nation has today, it has been borne on the backs of black resistance. Our founding fathers may not have actually believed in the ideals they espoused, but black people did.
This is the set-up for a bit of ethnic mythologizing.
They say our people were born on the water…. The teal eternity of the Atlantic Ocean had severed them so completely from what had once been their home that it was as if nothing had ever existed before, as if everything and everyone they cherished had simply vanished from the earth. They were no longer Mbundu or Akan or Fulani. These men and women from many different nations, all shackled together in the suffocating hull of the ship, they were one people now….
But as the sociologist Glenn Bracey wrote, “Out of the ashes of white denigration, we gave birth to ourselves.”… In the void, we forged a new culture all our own….
When the world listens to quintessential American music, it is our voice they hear. The sorrow songs we sang in the fields to soothe our physical pain and find hope in a freedom we did not expect to know until we died became American gospel. Amid the devastating violence and poverty of the Mississippi Delta, we birthed jazz and blues….
Out of our unique isolation, both from our native cultures and from white America, we forged this nation’s most significant original culture. In turn, “mainstream” society has coveted our style, our slang, and our song, seeking to appropriate the one truly American culture as its own….
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.
This is subtle at first, but it sure builds up. Note that this is not what it appears to be early in the article: a claim to an equal portion of American history and the American legacy. Instead, it is a claim to superiority. It is a claim on behalf of one ethnic group—not even a racial group, since it excludes black African immigrants who are not the descendants of slaves—that they are the true founders and guardians of the American system, the original source of American wealth, the creators of all “quintessential American music” and “this nation’s most significant original culture,” the “one truly American culture”—the people who are, in short, “the most American of all.”
It’s as if she looked at the pretensions of the white supremacists and decided that this was the model to follow—and just swapped in African-Americans as the dominant ethnic identity.
This includes, by the way, a bit of scolding at other ethnic minorities for failing to recognize the superior claim of African-Americans.
It is a truly American irony that some Asian-Americans, among the groups able to immigrate to the United States because of the black civil rights struggle, are now suing universities to end programs designed to help the descendants of the enslaved.
Those Asian kids really need to learn their place.
This is an odious idea, and not likely to catch on—but as Ayn Rand warned, “The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow.”