Hi Charlie - Big Bulwark fan here, but I have to take issue with today's piece on CRT. Yes, the Right is distorting and weaponizing their notion of CRT, but the complicating factor is that the Left is weaponizing it as well. Take, for example, the NY Times' 1619 project, a key piece of what most Americans understand to be CRT. At leas…
Hi Charlie - Big Bulwark fan here, but I have to take issue with today's piece on CRT. Yes, the Right is distorting and weaponizing their notion of CRT, but the complicating factor is that the Left is weaponizing it as well. Take, for example, the NY Times' 1619 project, a key piece of what most Americans understand to be CRT. At least some material in 1619 is demonstrably false and - like the Marxism of your comparison - is certainly ideologically pointed. Yet unlike Das Kapital, 1619 is being used to create lesson plans for K-12 students. I suspect that using Das Kapital as the basis for K-12 lesson plans might be seen as an attempt at ideological 'influencing'. No less should 1619 be seen as such.
This is certainly not a call for a return of 'Gone With the Wind' style social studies education. But let's not fool ourselves that both Left and Right are deeply engaged in the 'weaponization' of their favorite hobby horses. And in this fight, as in all warfare, truth is the first casualty.
The NYT has refused to address inaccuracies in the 1619 project. The fact that the likes of the Rufo Right may be morons or bigots does not preclude the same thing from being true of the Left. And if you think that average Americans are not going to support politicians who promise to prevent demonstrably false information from being taught to their kids, well, good luck with that.
The trouble, of course, is that we Americans generally seem incapable of perceiving and accepting the nuanced truth of our own history.
And yet even the NYPost and similar organs have articles about the NYT correcting the 1619 project. Since I refuse to click on links to NYP, heritage, pjmedia etc I can't actually tell you anything further. The only thing I was willing to click on was https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/magazine/criticism-1619-project.html.
But hey, feel free to both-sides with the 1619 and the 1776 projects.
Thanks for the link, Assad. Unless I missed it, the NYT editor failed to address anything regarding matters of factual error, including the claim that the American Revolution was waged to protect slavery.
As for rc4797's comment that local school districts should have the right to accept or decline 1619 teaching materials, I have to wonder why he considers citizens to be 'morons and bigots' when they decide to advocate for exactly that outcome.
This is them addressing that very issue. I'm not an expert on it, but they do present evidence that protection of slavery was likely on the minds of many southerners with regards to deciding for independence or not. Whether that raises to the level of a 'major cause' or not (or however it was presented in the project) is certainly up for debate, but the information presented does shed some light on the subject, and by extension onto the topic of Constitutional compromises around slavery.
Not sure I see the difference between a person involuntarily transported to work for a period of year to 'earn' their freedom and how slavery was often done in the Roman world. So while I see the difference between that and chattel slavery, the term: 'involuntary indentured servitude' sounds like a corpse flower by any other name still smelling as sweet.
If much of your moral outrage about the 1619 project is based on the fact that the Africans bought to America on slave ships were technically “indentured servants” and not “slaves” - well at least not until much later. I’m not sure why that matters at all to the larger points being made.
Have you actually read the essays? Did you have a problems when you read them? Or were all your issues with the project based on the fact that it seemed to be casting some doubt on the glorious myth of American exceptionalism and that made you uneasy so you sought out any criticism of it you could find so you could rationalize your feelings? Maybe that’s not true for you. But I wonder because it does seem to be the dominant pattern in people who are incensed about it.
Hi Charlie - Big Bulwark fan here, but I have to take issue with today's piece on CRT. Yes, the Right is distorting and weaponizing their notion of CRT, but the complicating factor is that the Left is weaponizing it as well. Take, for example, the NY Times' 1619 project, a key piece of what most Americans understand to be CRT. At least some material in 1619 is demonstrably false and - like the Marxism of your comparison - is certainly ideologically pointed. Yet unlike Das Kapital, 1619 is being used to create lesson plans for K-12 students. I suspect that using Das Kapital as the basis for K-12 lesson plans might be seen as an attempt at ideological 'influencing'. No less should 1619 be seen as such.
This is certainly not a call for a return of 'Gone With the Wind' style social studies education. But let's not fool ourselves that both Left and Right are deeply engaged in the 'weaponization' of their favorite hobby horses. And in this fight, as in all warfare, truth is the first casualty.
The NYT has refused to address inaccuracies in the 1619 project. The fact that the likes of the Rufo Right may be morons or bigots does not preclude the same thing from being true of the Left. And if you think that average Americans are not going to support politicians who promise to prevent demonstrably false information from being taught to their kids, well, good luck with that.
The trouble, of course, is that we Americans generally seem incapable of perceiving and accepting the nuanced truth of our own history.
And yet even the NYPost and similar organs have articles about the NYT correcting the 1619 project. Since I refuse to click on links to NYP, heritage, pjmedia etc I can't actually tell you anything further. The only thing I was willing to click on was https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/magazine/criticism-1619-project.html.
But hey, feel free to both-sides with the 1619 and the 1776 projects.
Thanks for the link, Assad. Unless I missed it, the NYT editor failed to address anything regarding matters of factual error, including the claim that the American Revolution was waged to protect slavery.
As for rc4797's comment that local school districts should have the right to accept or decline 1619 teaching materials, I have to wonder why he considers citizens to be 'morons and bigots' when they decide to advocate for exactly that outcome.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/magazine/we-respond-to-the-historians-who-critiqued-the-1619-project.html
This is them addressing that very issue. I'm not an expert on it, but they do present evidence that protection of slavery was likely on the minds of many southerners with regards to deciding for independence or not. Whether that raises to the level of a 'major cause' or not (or however it was presented in the project) is certainly up for debate, but the information presented does shed some light on the subject, and by extension onto the topic of Constitutional compromises around slavery.
Not sure I see the difference between a person involuntarily transported to work for a period of year to 'earn' their freedom and how slavery was often done in the Roman world. So while I see the difference between that and chattel slavery, the term: 'involuntary indentured servitude' sounds like a corpse flower by any other name still smelling as sweet.
If much of your moral outrage about the 1619 project is based on the fact that the Africans bought to America on slave ships were technically “indentured servants” and not “slaves” - well at least not until much later. I’m not sure why that matters at all to the larger points being made.
Have you actually read the essays? Did you have a problems when you read them? Or were all your issues with the project based on the fact that it seemed to be casting some doubt on the glorious myth of American exceptionalism and that made you uneasy so you sought out any criticism of it you could find so you could rationalize your feelings? Maybe that’s not true for you. But I wonder because it does seem to be the dominant pattern in people who are incensed about it.