Tom Cotton: no 1619 project in schools; Lost Cause statues are ok

[Millhouse]

(07-27-2020, 12:14 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: Every single author of my school's American History textbook has a PhD. I'd be surprised if there's a major textbook out there that doesn't fall into that category where most, if not all, do. 

History can be written by more than just those who seek a PhD in it. I think dismissing the ability for esteemed journalists, who it can be argued can be held to higher standards for truth, to write history is a mistake. 

I never said to dismiss them from writing about history. But teaching what they wrote, especially this 1619 oped pieces for the NY Times, should be left out of the classroom, and here is why.

We live in times where people will read fake crap off of Facebook and start to agree with it. QAnon crap, Covid conpsiracy theories, fake news from the right and the left, etc. It's scary how gullible people are out there, and younger.

So the ones in school should be taught by not only qualified teachers which has always been the goal of schools, but also by material by those most qualified in writing of it. In the age of social media, schools are the last line of defense in educating our youth, and should use the most reputable sources available. And a major reason for this is because of time limitations. There just isn't a lot of time to cover a particular subject in history as it probably deserves.

[Belsnickel]

(07-27-2020, 12:33 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: "If cats could write history, their history would be mostly about cats" Eugen Weber

It's a fundamental truth that the famed historian expresses in an easy to digest, and cute, way.

We tend to write history about ourselves or our people. Centuries of history by white men is centuries of history mostly about white men. It's centuries of "truths" that we have accepted from that perspective. Even the most "fact filled" is influenced by personal interpretation, opinion, and perspective, history often is. Even solely using primary sources results in our own personal interpretation, opinion, and perspective. 

I think historians may feel challenged by journalists getting involved in the field, hence the public letter that many others saw as an "unnecessary escalation". I think the fact that this project follows a journalistic approach also invites a different level of scrutiny of "facts only, no opinion", despite that not being a universal scrutiny applied to the discipline of history. 

I have some books on historical events that are written by journalists and they are some of the best, most well researched books I have read on topics. So I can definitely understand historians feeling challenged. On the other side of the coin, there is a site called The Conversation which melds academic and journalistic models to news. Academics are providing analysis on current events using journalistic standards for writing with academic rigor in research.

I also want to point something out that isn't a direct response to anything, but just to add on to the conversation. When a historian writes a history book, they have an editor and a publisher, but their freedom to write their book as they want to is pretty much wide open. It's not like when academics submit something for publication in a journal. There is no peer-review process, no necessary style guide for them to adhere to and use unbiased language/terminology, etc. It's something people should always keep in mind with textbooks on any subject. It may be written by someone considered an expert on the topic, but that isn't a guarantee that what is in the book is to the same standard as something they may write for another publication.

[BmorePat87]

(07-27-2020, 12:35 PM)Millhouse Wrote: I never said to dismiss them from writing about history. But teaching what they wrote, especially this 1619 oped pieces for the NY Times, should be left out of the classroom, and here is why.

We live in times where people will read fake crap off of Facebook and start to agree with it. QAnon crap, Covid conpsiracy theories, fake news from the right and the left, etc. It's scary how gullible people are out there, and younger.

So the ones in school should be taught by not only qualified teachers which has always been the goal of schools, but also by material by those most qualified in writing of it. In the age of social media, schools are the last line of defense in educating our youth, and should use the most reputable sources available. And a major reason for this is because of time limitations. There just isn't a lot of time to cover a particular subject in history as it probably deserves.

What makes something the most reputable? I'd argue as one of those teachers that being able to scrutinize sources is the skill you have to teach in order to confront the problems you listed. There are a number of sources provided that are not great and some I picked that have biases, but you address those.

Have you actually looked at any of the lessons from the 1619 Project. As I mentioned earlier, the lessons that uses the most criticized article, which was edited months ago, does not even have that line in it. 

[Dill]

(07-27-2020, 11:24 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: This is a really poor argument on your behalf. A historical series such as the 1619 Project absolutely can be a "cultural event" without sacrificing historical value or its identity as an academic study.

You almost exclusively cling to criticizing the project's claims that are challenged, specifically one claim, without acknowledging that the project responds to those challenges with either justifications or corrections, as one should expect them to. You're also ignoring actual historians who argue that differing interpretations of history are part of the discipline.

LOL you beat me to it. Of course ground breaking history can be history AND a "cultural event." That is more often the case than not. And the current debate is about the cultural impact of the project as much as revising a misleading factual record.

Time for serious people to start addressing the "corrections" now, not what was corrected.

(07-27-2020, 11:24 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: Take the woman you quote. She challenges the notion of using 1619 as a starting point of slavery since it involved indentured servants, but those 20 people were kidnapped and sold. While the terms may have been set up like indentured servitude as that was a practice already in place with some eventually being freed, it was slavery.

Ha ha "indentured servants"! Slavery had no legal foundation in England in 1619. For the next 150 years people kidnapped from Africa and brought to England were papered up as "indentured servants" as a precaution, so their masters could have legal recourse if they ran away or refused to work. There were a number of court cases brought against masters for beating "servants" and servants running away and the like, which nevertheless left slave status ambiguous in England.  E.g., 1677 Butts vs Penny ruled that non-christian slaves were "merchandise" and could be bought and sold; but in 1701, the Lord Chief Justice himself ruled (in Smith vs Gould) that "as soon as a negro comes into England, he becomes free, one may be a villein in England but not a slave."* Further, using the feudal concept of "villeinage," masters were prevented from taking such "servants" from England once they arrived. This ambiguity at the source of English law meant that it was difficult to sort Colonial cases until Colonies created their own, **derivative legal systems and incorporated statues regarding slavery (which they were allowed to do OFF English soil). In the case of Virginia that was not until 1662, and triggered by cases of black "indentured servants" trying to use English law to win their freedom. (E.g.,By assigning bondage to the status of the mother, not the father, it was assured that slaves with white fathers could not thereby claim to be free subjects of England with legal standing to bring suits.) 

Sorry for being longwinded. Just pointing out how odd and trivial it is to hear people argue that the first Africans brought to Virginia for a brutal life of slavery were really "indentured servants" not slaves etc.  White indentured servants served for 7 years and were freed. And REAL slaves were needed in the New World because so many indentured servants, once they got the lay of the land, simply left for another colony, creating labor shortages. Easy for them to invent a new name and escape the law. Not so for black servants. Every one of those 20 "indentured servants" brought to VA in 1619 was going to be whipped to work for the rest of his natural life.

(07-27-2020, 11:24 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: This is where critical analyzing history and not just accepting "the old textbooks" is important, especially as noted in the article, those old textbooks often promoted the Lost Cause as fact and did so for over a century. 

As someone who actually has a degree in history and uses it in their profession, I think I qualify as someone who "cares about history", which is why I reject this argument. 

Even where those old textbooks did not openly promote "the lost cause" version of history (that was mostly in VA and the Carolinas), they still left huge blanks in the discussion. The result is that many people who learned their US history back in the 70s and 80s use that as a kind of kneejerk baseline for judging new scholarship. LOL the new history is then "ideological" whereas what they had in HS and a little in college was just "the facts."

That said, I still think Hannah-Jones and Silverstein's initial defense have provided fodder for defenders of the status quo. Most people are not going to work through the project to sort out what is or is not of value (which is what you are calling for), once one person advancing the Project (a journalist, not a historian) says something unsupportable.  Think of how "riots" and Antifa have, for some, become what the Floyd protests are all about now.

*Miranda Kaufman has a brief review of these cases in The Encyclopedia of Blacks in Europrean History and Culture (2008) Vol I pp. 200-03. http://www.mirandakaufmann.com/common-law.html  Thomas D. Morris' Southern Slavery and the Law (1999), has an excellent overview of debates regarding the emergence of slavery in the colonies (based on English legal precedent or not), with Virginia setting the precedent for the remaining colonies. See Chapter 2, "The Sources of Southern Slave Law."

** LOL, difficult to sort LEGALLY. In practice, "indentured' black people were kidnapped and forced to work, breed more "servants" as directed, with no prospect of EVER becoming free or owning their own goods.

[Dill]

(07-27-2020, 12:43 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I also want to point something out that isn't a direct response to anything, but just to add on to the conversation. When a historian writes a history book, they have an editor and a publisher, but their freedom to write their book as they want to is pretty much wide open. It's not like when academics submit something for publication in a journal. There is no peer-review process, no necessary style guide for them to adhere to and use unbiased language/terminology, etc. It's something people should always keep in mind with textbooks on any subject. It may be written by someone considered an expert on the topic, but that isn't a guarantee that what is in the book is to the same standard as something they may write for another publication.

Actually, I'd like to tweak this a bit.

Historians do have a great deal of freedom, but manuscripts submitted to scholarly/academic publishers are pretty rigorously vetted. Unless a manuscript is solicited on some ground from an already famous historian, there is very much a peer-review process. Often authors are required to make stylistic revisions, and often they are outright rejected, though not necessarily for writing bad history. The question of publication often depends on whether and to what degree a work is making a contribution to a field. (Remember, for many such books, the audience may only be 1,000 or so competent readers world wide.) Publishers don't necessarily present style guides as journals sometimes do, but manuscripts are frequently sent back for revision with all manner of stylistic "corrections."  Publishers pay people to read and revise and comment on manuscripts (often 3-4), then make publication decisions based feedback from their readers.

That's one reason why the publisher matters so much when people are assessing academic publications.

PS Regarding "unbiased language"--a lot of that is weeded out through training. Generic academic style, if there is such, is pretty free of name-calling and ad hominem.

[Dill]

(07-27-2020, 12:35 PM)Millhouse Wrote: I never said to dismiss them from writing about history. But teaching what they wrote, especially this 1619 oped pieces for the NY Times, should be left out of the classroom, and here is why.

We live in times where people will read fake crap off of Facebook and start to agree with it. QAnon crap, Covid conpsiracy theories, fake news from the right and the left, etc. It's scary how gullible people are out there, and younger.

So the ones in school should be taught by not only qualified teachers which has always been the goal of schools, but also by material by those most qualified in writing of it. In the age of social media, schools are the last line of defense in educating our youth, and should use the most reputable sources available. And a major reason for this is because of time limitations. There just isn't a lot of time to cover a particular subject in history as it probably deserves.

You do make excellent points here, Mill.  Frequently young folks even garble "good" history and sociology.

Students do need some kind of base historical record from which to work, and for the majority of our population if they don't get that in HS then the don't get it. So what is taught in HSs, and by whom, is critical to the health of the republic--especially now in the post-truth Trump era.

Everything about Bpat's posts, though, screams "qualified teacher," here and on the old list. I don't see him throwing unvetted propaganda at students, but reviewing debates and historical questions with his classes, while also providing that base-line historical record. The curriculum probably limits the time he has to work through such issues, and he is learning semester by semester how to improve his "yield." I imagine that is a pretty difficult job, but he is managing to generate student interest and discussion, without which they cannot learn to think critically about history and politics. 

So I can see him introducing sections of the 1619 Project for class discussion that enhance their historical understanding.  Not sure every teacher can do it well, though. But the alternative is not necessarily better, if that means teaching "facts" Sunday school style, sans assessment of sources.

[Dill]

(07-27-2020, 11:48 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Quote:You almost exclusively cling to criticizing the project's claims that are challenged, specifically one claim, without acknowledging that the project responds to those challenges with either justifications or corrections, as one should expect them to. You're also ignoring actual historians who argue that differing interpretations of history are part of the discipline.

I would generally agree, but when your starting assertion, the very foundation of your entire "project" is blatantly false how can it not taint every interpretation and assertion you make subsequently?

I understood "the very foundation of the entire project" was to initiate a review of US history with an eye to how our laws and institutions accommodated slavery and then segregation, and still remain beholden to those accommodations in unacknowledged ways .

So the "entire project" is not about proving that protection of slavery was the moving force of the revolution.  You keep referring to an excessive statement by one journalist, not endorsed by all contributors to the project. That's why that one claim doesn't make "the very foundation of the entire project" blatantly false.

(07-27-2020, 11:48 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Which honestly concerns me.  How could you take anything seriously that makes a demonstrably false claim such as the revolution was started to protect the institution of slavery?  This when it is historical fact that the abolitionist movement had much more momentum in the colonies than it did in the UK.

The bolded surprises me. Wondering what the historical foundation for that claim is, given that in the entire Anglo world it is only in the colonies that slavery gets actual legal articulation and foundation. In the post-colonial period, the UK fully outlaws slavery in 1833, thirty years before the Emancipation Proclamation and without need of a Civil War.

[Dill]

(07-27-2020, 12:24 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: People have points of view that color their teaching and writing. Whether that person have a PhD in a topic, they are an investigative journalist, or a high school history teacher. This is just the nature of things. History taught with just facts is pointless and boring. Understanding context and how past events play into modern society requires more subjectivity than people are ready to admit. I'm not disparaging people writing these books, teaching the topic, or writing articles about it. We need these points of view out there. However, I have never seen a book about history written in such a way that didn't take some interpretive liberties with the subject matter. I have books about local history written 100 years ago by a local PhD in history that are the most deadpan and fact-filled books on history I have ever read, yet they still contain the writer's point of view in several places because of what they chose to focus on, their opinions on the Civil War, and certain segments of the local population (specifically their views on the anabaptist members of the community). It's just how these things work.

Excellent points here.

I might add that perspective, cultural, and scholarly norms are usually "builit in" to factual presentation, not just individual writers' points of view. One way to see this is in which "facts" are selected for presentation and which are excluded.

When you compare ancient historians with early modern, for example, and then both with 21st century histories, you can see quite a difference in this factual selection when they are talking about the same things (e.g., economy of the Greek polis). When you grow up inside a culture/time period learning at the foot of teachers, you are always also learning  what counts and what doesn't for your generation/culture.

It is because we are self-concious of these "natural" limitations that we tend to value works which "re-select" what is to included in the factual record, and force us to make new inferences about the course and meaning of history we had previously taken for granted.

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(07-27-2020, 11:54 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: So if there's one error, even if it is fixed, all subsequent work is scrutinized as being invalid? That's an awful position.

If that error is the foundation for your whole argument, absolutely.

Quote:Because there are many demonstrably false claims being made about history, and some are stored in "old textbooks". You are able to find value and worth in parts of work while disagreeing with others. And I want to point out that you are continuing to focus your criticism on one specific claim that was corrected months ago as justification to discredit a much larger project, which isn't a great argument. 


and yet you called for us going back to old history book that do the same. I wish we had an ounce of this passion from the 1619 Project's detractors for the Lost Cause as we do for a single claim about slavery impacting the revolution. 

You're taking seriously a tongue in cheek statement, my apologies if that was not clear.  I learned far more about history reading on my own time then I did from any school textbook, college or otherwise.

After some thought I do realize my major objection to the 1619 project (the aforementioned errors aside), and after explaining I think you'll realize why I find this so unacceptable.  This study absolutely reeks of one in which they started with a conclusion and then tried to find evidence to support that conclusion. This, to me, is the absolutely opposite of responsible academia, where evidence should lead you to a conclusion.  If one were so inclined you could start a study with the conclusion that France is responsible for World War 2, and then write a paper using only examples that support that conclusion.  Would that be an academically sound study?

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(07-27-2020, 02:12 PM)Dill Wrote: I understood "the very foundation of the entire project" was to initiate a review of US history with an eye to how our laws and institutions accommodated slavery and then segregation, and still remain beholden to those accommodations in unacknowledged ways .

So the "entire project" is not about proving that protection of slavery was the moving force of the revolution.  You keep referring to an excessive statement by one journalist, not endorsed by all contributors to the project. That's why that one claim doesn't make "the very foundation of the entire project" blatantly false.

If I am in error in this regard then maybe the project shouldn't allow the media to make the "one journalist" the face of the project?

Quote:The bolded surprises me. Wondering what the historical foundation for that claim is, given that in the entire Anglo world it is only in the colonies that slavery gets actual legal articulation and foundation. In the post-colonial period, the UK fully outlaws slavery in 1833, thirty years before the Emancipation Proclamation and without need of a Civil War.

It's from the article I linked.  You're always asking for links, I provided one.  Since we're talking about slavery in the era of the revolution what happened around sixty years later doesn't seem entirely germain. 

[BmorePat87]

(07-27-2020, 04:04 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: If that error is the foundation for your whole argument, absolutely.

But it isn't... it was one point of many made nearly halfway through an essay.

Quote:You're taking seriously a tongue in cheek statement, my apologies if that was not clear.  I learned far more about history reading on my own time then I did from any school textbook, college or otherwise.

After some thought I do realize my major objection to the 1619 project (the aforementioned errors aside), and after explaining I think you'll realize why I find this so unacceptable.  This study absolutely reeks of one in which they started with a conclusion and then tried to find evidence to support that conclusion. This, to me, is the absolutely opposite of responsible academia, where evidence should lead you to a conclusion.  If one were so inclined you could start a study with the conclusion that France is responsible for World War 2, and then write a paper using only examples that support that conclusion.  Would that be an academically sound study?

The difference is France did not start WWII but the legacy of slavery is still seen in institutions in the US. Theres already existing academic work on that. 

[BmorePat87]

I just want to add that I respect the dissenting opinions here and I appreciate the mutual respect that everyone is showing.

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(07-27-2020, 04:18 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: But it isn't... it was one point of many made nearly halfway through an essay.

I just can't take something seriously that contains that gross a mischaracterization in it.  As you say this was not a work completed by one person.  How peer review didn't catch this and decide that including it would be a poor idea is beyond me.

Quote:The difference is France did not start WWII but the legacy of slavery is still seen in institutions in the US. Theres already existing academic work on that. 

Au contraire (see what I did there?), one could make a very compelling argument that Frances actions post WW1 were the driving factor of the rise of National Socialism and the subsequent fall out of that.  That is, one could make such an argument if you started with that as your conclusion and then only included evidence that supported such a conclusion. 

I don't know any people, personally, who don't agree that slavery still has an impact on our society to this date.  There will always be disagreements as to what degree this is true but I don't know anyone who outright denies it.  Along the same lines, for purposes of this argument only, there isn't a serious student of WW2 who wouldn't state that France's actions post WW1 definitely contributed to causing WW2, just, again, the level of degree would be the subject of debate.

You kind of glossed over (I don't think intentionally) what I thought was a very troubling statement I quoted earlier from the Princeton professor;

"I felt that if I signed on to that, I would be signing on to the white guy's attack of something that has given a lot of black journalists and writers a chance to speak up in a really big way."

I can't understand how anyone doesn't see how wrong this statement is.  The ethnicity of the people with issues with the project or those in support or just discussing it is utterly irrelevant to criticisms of the study's validity or findings.  You simply cannot make value judgments on the merits of any scholarship based on the skin color, genitalia, preferred pronouns, religion or sexual orientation of the person creating or criticizing it.  I think of you as an intelligent guy and it honestly troubles me that a statement like this doesn't set off alarm bells in your head.

[Dill]

(07-27-2020, 04:08 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: If I am in error in this regard then maybe the project shouldn't allow the media to make the "one journalist" the face of the project?

I think the NYT allowed one journalist to write an introduction to the project and speak for it. One way to prevent "one journalist" from becoming the face of the project is to move on from a statement no one agrees with and consider what else the project advances. Start by considering the goal of the project as a whole.

Since you refer to Adam Server's Atlantic essay in your link, what do you make of his representation of the signatories of Sean Wilentz' letter to the Times?

The letter’s signatories recognize the problem the Times aimed to remedy, Wilentz told me. “Each of us, all of us, think that the idea of the 1619 Project is fantastic. I mean, it's just urgently needed. The idea of bringing to light not only scholarship but all sorts of things that have to do with the centrality of slavery and of racism to American history is a wonderful idea,” he said. In a subsequent interview, he said, “Far from an attempt to discredit the 1619 Project, our letter is intended to help it.”

(07-27-2020, 04:08 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Which honestly concerns me.  How could you take anything seriously that makes a demonstrably false claim such as the revolution was started to protect the institution of slavery?  [b]This when it is historical fact that the abolitionist movement had much more momentum in the colonies than it did in the UK.

Dill:[/b]The bolded surprises me. Wondering what the historical foundation for that claim is, given that in the entire Anglo world it is only in the colonies that slavery gets actual legal articulation and foundation. In the post-colonial period, the UK fully outlaws slavery in 1833, thirty years before the Emancipation Proclamation and without need of a Civil War.

It's from the article I linked.  You're always asking for links, I provided one.  Since we're talking about slavery in the era of the revolution what happened around sixty years later doesn't seem entirely germain. 

So the historical foundation, for you, is a Wilentz quote in Server's Atlantic essay?  I was looking more for historical evidence--Germantown Quaker documents, legal challenges, satutes and the like. Seems to me anti-slavery movements got some traction in PA and MA but were crushed or successfully suppressed in other colonies after anti-slavery foundings (e.g., Georgia, RI). Is there a source which compares pre-colonial American with Great Britain sufficient to infer "much more momentum" in the (comparatively) lightly populated colonies?

Could indeed be that the legal foundation of slavery in the colonies produced more agitation there. I'm just wondering what the indicators could be so I can consider them.

PS the post Revolutionary banning of slave Trade in Britain is an indicator of abolitionist sentiment there strong enough to end the practice everywhere in the Empire, sentiment which did not appear suddenly only after the American Revolution, but long before it, funding legal challenges to the trade, publishing books which could not get publishers in the US, etc.

[BmorePat87]

(07-27-2020, 05:05 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I just can't take something seriously that contains that gross a mischaracterization in it.  As you say this was not a work completed by one person.  How peer review didn't catch this and decide that including it would be a poor idea is beyond me.

I understand your argument, but that's not the same argument from your last post.

Quote:Au contraire (see what I did there?), one could make a very compelling argument that Frances actions post WW1 were the driving factor of the rise of National Socialism and the subsequent fall out of that.  That is, one could make such an argument if you started with that as your conclusion and then only included evidence that supported such a conclusion. 

I don't know any people, personally, who don't agree that slavery still has an impact on our society to this date.  There will always be disagreements as to what degree this is true but I don't know anyone who outright denies it.  Along the same lines, for purposes of this argument only, there isn't a serious student of WW2 who wouldn't state that France's actions post WW1 definitely contributed to causing WW2, just, again, the level of degree would be the subject of debate.

I disagree with this comparison but I don't want this to be a debate of WWII. You feel like 1619 worked backwards from a premise, though I'd disagree and say that they worked forward from 1619 and highlighted a trajectory. 

Quote:You kind of glossed over (I don't think intentionally) what I thought was a very troubling statement I quoted earlier from the Princeton professor;


"I felt that if I signed on to that, I would be signing on to the white guy's attack of something that has given a lot of black journalists and writers a chance to speak up in a really big way."

I can't understand how anyone doesn't see how wrong this statement is.  The ethnicity of the people with issues with the project or those in support or just discussing it is utterly irrelevant to criticisms of the study's validity or findings.  You simply cannot make value judgments on the merits of any scholarship based on the skin color, genitalia, preferred pronouns, religion or sexual orientation of the person creating or criticizing it. 

I stressed the second part of the quote where she says that the opposition made her feel like it was us versus them, so she supported 1619, noting that the opposition presented it as "true history is how they would write it", and she disagreed with the premise, even if she had some disagreements with arguments made by 1619, though I pointed out why I absolutely disagree with her calling captured and sold humans "laborers" not "slaves". Dill did an excellent job expounding on that. 

So I hope you can understand why I see the issue arising not from 1619, but from detractors who sought public support from people as an "us versus them".

Quote: I think of you as an intelligent guy and it honestly troubles me that a statement like this doesn't set off alarm bells in your head.

Likewise, I respect your intelligence. I think phrases like this, though, are not good, though I was a bit cheeky in some of my responses only because I trust the respect we have for each other. I think we both provided plenty of reason for us to support our views on this specific part of the dialogue. I don't think intelligence dictates that one should trump the other here. 

[*bfine32*]

What's the big deal? It was written by a journalist to "commemorate" they beginning of Slavery in America. It's like most pieces bias forms your point. As long as they corrected the ignorance of the Reason for the America Revolution; I see no issue with teaching in private institutions.

I'd hope those that rejected it during peer review are given a voice if they ever decide to bring this into public education.

FWIW, isn't bringing attention to our period of slavery something many want to move focus from?

[Dill]

(07-27-2020, 05:05 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: "I felt that if I signed on to that, I would be signing on to the white guy's attack of something that has given a lot of black journalists and writers a chance to speak up in a really big way."

I can't understand how anyone doesn't see how wrong this statement is.  The ethnicity of the people with issues with the project or those in support or just discussing it is utterly irrelevant to criticisms of the study's validity or findings.  You simply cannot make value judgments on the merits of any scholarship based on the skin color, genitalia, preferred pronouns, religion or sexual orientation of the person creating or criticizing it.  I think of you as an intelligent guy and it honestly troubles me that a statement like this doesn't set off alarm bells in your head.

What if I agree that scholarly merit should not be based on skin color, genitalia, religion or sexual orientation of the person creating or criticizing it,

but go on to ask if it is your view that the "ethnicity" of US historians between 1870 and 1980 has therefore been "utterly irrelevant" to their "findings"?

[Dill]

(07-27-2020, 07:43 PM)bfine32 Wrote: What's the big deal? It was written by a journalist to "commemorate" they beginning of Slavery in America. It's like most pieces bias forms your point. As long as they corrected the ignorance of the Reason for the America Revolution; I see no issue with teaching in private institutions.

Well, the 1619 Project was written by a number of people. People are upset because it included curricular material for public schools

(07-27-2020, 07:43 PM)bfine32 Wrote: FWIW, isn't bringing attention to our period of slavery something many want to move focus from?

Sure, starting with Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Newt Gingrich and Erik Erikson (quoted below). They are tired of "activist" journalism.

The New York Times Embraces a Neo-Confederate World View For Its 1619 Project
https://theresurgent.com/2019/08/19/the-new-york-times-embraces-a-neo-confederate-world-view-for-its-1619-project/

The 1619 Project by the New York Times is as flawed as it would have you believe the country’s founding was. It seeks to divide, not heal. It seeks to give power and primacy to those who think the nation’s founding was premised on evil and demands that those who disagree be silent. It seeks to embrace the Neo-Confederate world view of a South that actually won the Civil War by weaving itself into the fabric of post war society so it can then discredit the entire American enterprise.

Capitalism itself comes under assault with claims that “in order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.”

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(07-27-2020, 07:48 PM)Dill Wrote: What if I agree that scholarly merit should not be based on skin color, genitalia, religion or sexual orientation of the person creating or criticizing it,

but go on to ask if it is your view that the "ethnicity" of US historians between 1870 and 1980 has therefore been "utterly irrelevant" to their "findings"?

I'd reply that truth is truth and solid scholarship is solid scholarship.  I understand what you're driving at and I don't disagree with the basic premise.  However, that being said, is it still relevant to what is written and discussed today?  Is anything written by a white academic (especially a straight male one) tainted by their whiteness henceforth?  Or should we attempt to discuss the works of scholars, or how about everyone, based on the quality of their work itself?  That would certainly be my preference.

[BmorePat87]

Trump's 1776 commission, headed by a man who once referred to students of color at his college as "the dark ones" and a woman who said Islam "poses an absolute danger to us and our children unless it is monitored", picked MLK Jr Day to release their report.

They trashed equity programs created in the wake of the Civil Rights movement as creating a class of citizens with unequal advantages, stating it created a "system of explicit group privilege that, in the name of 'social justice,' demands equal results and explicitly sorts citizens into 'protected classes' based on race and other demographic categories. Eventually this regime of formal inequality would come to be known as 'identity politics.' "

It attacked feminism as a "radical Women's liberation movement" that, along with Black power movements, taught other minority groups to identify as "Asian American" and "Hispanic" which it credits with creating division that it describes as akin to the division of the Civil War. It suggests that while this new system of identity politics isn't as "brutal" as slavery, it's as unjust as the antebellum South.

It attacked all of this as running counter to the beliefs of MLK Jr and suggested that progressives made a “fourth branch of government” or “shadow government” and compared liberals to Mussolini...