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by markoman 1517 days ago
The '1619 Project' is peddled clearly as an essay project -- quite clearly differentiated from a pure news orientation. The essays were pretty light fare and nothing like overly sympathetic eyewitness reporting from the deck of a slave ship. Perhaps the NYT thinks that the country that unwaveringly holds itself out as the greatest country in the history of history (and the bastion and promise of liberty and democracy, still) can look inward and assess the legacy of slavery and the impacts felt today. One essay touched on whether race had a bearing on why the U.S. never adopted universal healthcare, which at least seems to be a worthwhile question.

American introspection is a notoriously unwelcome commodity by a people much more at home shouting 'USA USA USA!', often as a means to drown out any opposing speech.
1 comments
Ourgon 1517 days ago
There is a big difference between "introspection" and "revisionism". The '1619 Project' clearly falls in the latter category and as such deserves to be denounced for the fraud it is, as does its author. As to it being published as an "essay project", the NYT themselves presented it as [The 1619 project is] a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American Slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding.

The gray old lady would never have published this. The current incarnation of the NYT is related to its predecessor in name only.

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markoman 1516 days ago
The stories are in the NY Times Magazine and not the mainline NY Times and are a 'reframing' of historical events viewed in the context of slavery. I get that this is a sensitive topic and often is interpreted as an attempt to make Americans feel guilty about their nation's past. How Germany approaches study of their Nazi history in schools is surprisingly less problematic, apparently because of this history's unequivocal evil.

Still, you suggest that the NY Times is revising history and you call it a 'fraud'. I suppose you wouldn't mind offering some examples of the misstatements made in the 1619 Project stories?

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