A friend of mine who is following the New York Times 1619 Project sent me a link to an article that I can access if I click on it. My friend tells me not to confuse it with Catalyst Magazine, which is pure woo! Catalyst seems to be mostly socialist and anti- capitalist, but you shouldn't dismiss anything they say simply because of that. Its mission is stated on its website.
Discussion of capitalism is still on the table. The aim of the journal is to promote and deepen the conversation. Our focus is to develop a theory and strategy with capitalism in both the North and the Global South. This is a good time to think big.
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Catalyst is supported by over 7,500 individual subscribers and institutional readers.
This explains the comments made at the end of the critique by James Oakes. If you are interested in the 1619 Project, its implications, its benefits, or its dangers, you should read it. Both afford free access if you click on the screenshot.
Below are his credentials from Bookreporter. You can see his impressive list of books on the issues of slavery and race on his website. One can not dismiss his critique on the basis of his credentials.
I asked my friend if I could use his take on Oakes's piece to introduce the article, and he agreed. It is between the two lines. I give a few quotes from Oakes.
The beating heart of wokeness is racial guilt, which is amplified by BLM advocates who want to convince the liberals that they and their ancestors have always been racist. The demand for repentance and compensation is made without expectation that the original sin will be wiped out. Whiteness is seen as a sign of racism.
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The New York Times is an impressive publication, but it has become trendy in other places. The paper has lent its prestige to the woke world. The only significant motive in "the white mind" from the 17th century until today is racial domination. The result is a simplification of the issues.
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The work of historians themselves is one of the reasons why one of the distortions has to do with them. The experts whitewashed the record according to The 1619 Project. The first British slave ship landed in the Colonies in 1619, but they minimized the importance. The economic development of the country was powered by slave labor, which is said to have been misinterpreted by them.
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James Oakes is the author of The Scorpion's Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War. He shows them to be libels of studies by liberals. You will wonder if the New York Times will apologize to its readers and stop recommending the Project to schools and colleges in the future. Don't wait for it.
Here are a few quotes from Oakes.
Why the controversy if the 1619 Project was not actually introducing Americans to an aspect of their history they were never taught in school? Why the complaints if all the Times was doing was restating what we already knew? The Times presented the history that caused so much trouble. The egregious factual errors are not the only thing that went wrong. The ideological and political framework of the project led to the inaccuracies and distortions. The 1619 Project is written from a black nationalist perspective and it erases evidence that white Americans were important allies of the black freedom struggle. It is written with an eye toward justifying the idea that all white people have always been the beneficiaries of slavery and racism. The second proposition is based on the idea that slavery fueled America's economic development.
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. The defense of slavery was one of the primary reasons for the American Revolution. The claim is derived from a syllogism. The jury isn't out on the question because they deliberate. The Times changed its wording to say that protecting slavery was the main reason some Americans rebelled. There is more evidence that some Americans rebelled so they could undermine slavery. The rewording will destroy the intellectual architecture of the project if it is found that the revolution was not driven primarily by the defense of slavery and racism.
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The political goal of the 1619 Project is to pay back people. If you read the whole project, you will understand the project is an argument for reparations. If the case is based on distorted history, it can't be a good case. The 1619 Project is significant on the subject of slavery. The slaveholders have the same wealth as the United States. The growth of the Northern economy was fueled by slavery. It betrays a lack of knowledge about cotton farming. The expansion of the cotton economy is emphasized but the decline in the national economy is not. Slavery left generations of Southerners to poverty and economic backwardness. Its legacy is hardship and misery.
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Matthew Desmond's essay distorts the history of the slave economy and is filled with factual errors, which is what the 1619 Project has to say about Southern slavery.
I thank my friend for calling it to my attention because it is the most powerful takedown of the 1619 Project I have seen.
