The ‘1619 Project’ Gets Schooled

The New York Times tries to rewrite U.S. history, but its falsehoods are exposed by surprising sources.

By Elliot Kaufman of The WSJ. Excerpts: 

"‘So wrong in so many ways” is how Gordon Wood, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American Revolution, characterized the New York Times’s “1619 Project.” James McPherson, dean of Civil War historians and another Pulitzer winner, said the Times presented an “unbalanced, one-sided account” that “left most of the history out.” Even more surprising than the criticism from these generally liberal historians was where the interviews appeared: on the World Socialist Web Site, run by the Trotskyist Socialist Equality Party."

"“I wish my books would have this kind of reaction,” Mr. Wood says in an email. “It still strikes me as amazing why the NY Times would put its authority behind a project that has such weak scholarly support.” He adds that fellow historians have privately expressed their agreement. Mr. McPherson coolly describes the project’s “implicit position that there have never been any good white people, thereby ignoring white radicals and even liberals who have supported racial equality.”"

"The American Revolution didn’t found a “slavocracy,” as Ms. Hannah-Jones puts it. Instead, in Mr. Mackaman’s telling, it “brought slavery in for questioning in a way that had never been done before” by “raising universal human equality as a fundamental principle.” Nor was protecting slavery “one of the primary reasons” the colonists declared independence, as Ms. Hannah-Jones claims. It’s no coincidence the abolitionists rapidly won votes to end slavery in five of the original 13 states, along with Vermont and the new states of the Midwest."

"Mr. Mackaman also protests Ms. Hannah-Jones’s “cherry-picking” of quotes to present Lincoln as a “garden-variety racist.” He attributes the misleading picture to her “totally racialist interpretation.” If whites and blacks are supposed to be “diametrically opposed to each other,” he says, “then you have to disregard all the history that runs contrary to that—and there’s an awful lot.”"

"Sociologist Matthew Desmond marshals substantially discredited research to tar the whole of American capitalism as a legacy of slavery."