Historian
James Oakes publishes a long attack on The New York Times' 1619 Project. This one, is well worth your time:
Not surprisingly, the 1619 Project was riddled with egregious factual errors. Yet, in some ways, the most startling thing about the project was the utter unoriginality of its claim to have discovered the historical significance of the year 1619. To anyone who earned a PhD in US history after 1965, this claim was almost risible.
Professor Oakes doesn't stop there:
Like every ideologue who ventures into the study of history, Silverstein reduces the current controversy over the 1619 Project to a conflict between those who posit a patriotic myth and “the best scholarship” that sees the American Revolution as “sordid, racist and divisive.” There you have it: Silverstein speaks for the truth, against the critics who cling to mythology. This is self-serving claptrap.
There's more:
So the 1619 Project begins with a cliché, a tiresome liberal trope, endlessly repeated: “Why weren’t we taught this? Why didn’t we know this?” To which the obvious answer is: You were taught this. Unless you didn’t bother to take a US history class, or you didn’t do the reading, or you weren’t paying attention to the lectures, or you forgot.
Here's a link to Professor Oakes' latest
book.
