Commonsense & Wonder

Racist America? Countering the 1619 Project’s False Narrative 

“1776 Unites” initiative corrects New York Times’ lies about slavery and race in America. 

by ZIVA DAHL

Agroup of predominantly black scholars, journalists, entrepreneurs, clergy, and community leaders, led by Robert Woodson Sr., a respected anti-poverty activist, have launched “1776 Unites” to counter the false and harmful narrative promoted by the New York Times’ “1619 Project.”

The Times rolled out its woke narrative of America the racist nation as a Sunday magazine in August. Then it swiftly disseminated the collection of essays, along with teacher guides, lesson plans, and other educational aids, to thousands of classrooms nationwide, according to the Pulitzer Center, which crafted the curricular materials.

Woodson and his colleagues are very concerned about the “lethal” impact of this race grievance ideology on children who are being taught that blacks are forever second-class American citizens, lacking agency to improve their lives.

The 1619 Project postulates that the actual founding of America occurred not in 1776 with our independence from Britain, but rather in 1619 when the first slaves arrived on our shores. Distorting the historical record, it argues that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery and characterizes Lincoln as a racist who “opposed black equality” and believed that free blacks “were a ‘troublesome presence’ incompatible with a democracy intended only for white people.” The project promotes the idea that America’s success, politically, economically, and culturally, happened on the backs of subjugated blacks. Despite the abolitionist movement, the more than 360,000 Union deaths in the Civil War, more than 50 years of affirmative action, white participation in the civil rights movement, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the election of a black president, 1619 Project authors claim that African Americans have fought against racism basically alone. The Times accuses whites of sole responsibility for the condition of blacks today. Worse yet, the 1619 Project asserts that the United States today is a nation where all whites are powerful victimizers and all black people are powerless victims, and is therefore hopelessly racist.

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