I wrote this piece on Christmas day in 2019. With a bit of revision, it seems more relevant today than two and a half years ago. I wish it weren’t.
Perhaps you followed the NYT’s The 1619 Project, published in August 2019. 1619 was the year that Africans were brought to the American British Colonies beginning a 246 year period of enslavement and a 403 year period of racial strife and inequity. The project links the era and practices of slavery to aspects of the society that we live in today. It’s definitely a different take on the residual effects of enslavement than anything I’d ever read before. I found it to be fascinating. I think I’m drawn to the side of history that we tend not to celebrate. Or teach. Probably because it’s usually more interesting. And more honest. But I was drawn to this series for some unacknowledged something that I didn’t even realize was rolling around in my head.
The series created a lot of buzz, not all of it positive. When a group of five prominent historians (all white… I Googled them) wrote a letter to the editor claiming that the Times had skewed or replaced history with ideology, the NYT Editor-in-chief wrote a very public and very astonishing response. He wasn’t having it. I thought that the letter and the rebuttal both held water. And even if I didn’t, who am I to doubt what prominent historical scholars or the NYT Editor claim is true? Even if their truths are in conflict. But still…there was something below the surface that poked at my brain a bit, but that I couldn’t identify. It seemed like there was some unidentifiable thing that was about more than this or that fact or interpretation.
Then a few Months later The Atlantic got involved and wrote a piece about the letter and the controversy and bingo… the author, Adam Serwer, put his finger directly on what the controversy is all about. History is always written from the perspective of the victors. But it’s more than just a slant on history. The 1619 Project calls into question our sacred white origin story.
Every country has their origin story. If you Google ‘Master Narrative’, you’ll find that ours is a story of great white men creating an ever more perfect union. A union that was to be a beacon of light to the rest of the world. A union where “All people are created equal and entitled to the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” – enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and penned by Thomas Jefferson, an enslaver. A country where there is “Liberty and justice for all” – inserted into our Pledge of Allegiance and commissioned by President Benjamin Harrison, an enslaver, as he set aside a day to honor Christopher Columbus, a murderer and enslaver.
“O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave” – our national anthem written by Francis Scott Key, an enslaver so committed to the cause he tried to have a man hung in Washington DC for being in possession of abolitionist literature.
“We the people in order to form a more perfect union… and secure the blessings of liberty…” – penned by James Madison, an enslaver and inserted into the Constitution of the United States of America.
Those of us above the age of 25 or so, were all taught the lie about George Washington’s childhood cherry tree episode years before we learned – usually on our own, not from a teacher - that he owned humans and forced them into bondage in order to increase his net worth. The myth portrays him as an always-great person. The slave story…well that’s a different, less admirable side of George.
We honor another great white man, Andrew Jackson, on our $20 bill. An enslaver so cruel that when his slaves ran away, in addition to the traditional reward of $50 for the return of the slave, Andy would offer another $30 for up to 300 lashings of the human who was seeking the freedom guaranteed in our founding rhetoric. He paid extra for the return of a Black corpse. Yet we seem unable to remove his likeness from the $20 bill, and replace it with Harriet Tubman, an actual hero and enslaved human.
We learned what a wonderful invention the cotton gin was in increasing cotton production and southern wealth in this country of divine capitalism where the only thing between you and wealth is hard work. We didn’t learn that it directly resulted in increasing slavery from a ‘mere’ few hundred thousand tortured souls to some 6 million.
If you tour the U.S Capitol Building in Washington DC, the tour will end in the rotunda and your senatorial aid will proudly point skyward at the 6,500 square-foot mural of significant events in the birth and early childhood of the United States of America. You’ll see great white men astride great white horses. You’ll see noble looking Native Americans. You’ll see Chinese laborers constructing the great railroad connecting one coast to the other. But what you will not see while you are gazing skyward in this building built by Black enslaved people, is one single depiction of a Black American. No Frederick Douglass. No Malcolm X. No Reverend Martin Luther King. No enslaved person.
When I was in Marine Corps Boot Camp at Paris Island in South Carolina, a Black drill instructor took me aside. I don’t know what he had seen in me, but I do know what he told me. “I know you’re from the north and not used to the way things are down here, son. Down here if you’re white, you’re all right. If your brown you can stick around. But if you’re Black, get back.” I didn’t really understand at the time what he meant. But I do now.
If we had learned history from the perspective of Black Americans, descended from enslaved people, we’d likely have learned a different, more complete version. The opposition to teaching what has come to be known as Critical Race Theory is actually opposition to teaching full, honest, enlightening, and interesting American history. I’m not even sure what CRT actually is anymore. But I know what it’s become. It’s become code talk for any teaching of race that doesn’t support our Master Narrative. Somehow white people seem to know this intuitively and some fear that if they cannot be portrayed as the great white people that they’ve always been portrayed as, then they object. Vigorously. Better to perpetuate the myths….the cherry tree.
But what an honest incorporation of teaching about the deep foundation of race in this country would do is it would lead us to come together. Instead of fighting with each other, we could fight for each other. Instead of just playing at being a great nation on television, we could actually become one. As Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of The 1619 Project has said, “Our founding ideals were great and powerful. Had we in fact built a country based on those founding ideals, then we would have the most amazing country the earth has ever seen.” Instead of being divided by race, we could be united by race.
Martin Luther King was skeptical of the good intent from outwardly well-meaning people. “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”
All people of good will should wonder when that more convenient season will happen. If we can put a man on the moon in less than one generation and in just a few generations go from horse and buggy to jet travel…eradicate smallpox, measles, polio, and diphtheria; go from the start of manned flight to walking on the moon in 66 years and develop a vaccine to a deadly pandemic in less than a year - then we know that ending racism doesn't really need to take hundreds of years. That’s just a pretense…a stalling action that represents a country that isn't serious about it. I’m tired of racism withholding the promise of America. 58 years after the Civil Rights Act, a person might be forgiven for questioning the sincerity of the effort to achieve racial justice.
And totally unrelated, but I just gotta say this: Go KBJ! Congratulations Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson. All but three Republican Senators should struggle to look in the mirror this morning and realize how far they’ve drifted from supporting the ideals and values this country was founded on.