Bret Stephens / 1619

Are you under the impression the NYT appointed him to do it? I’m not.

 

They certainly didn't tell him not to or spike his column. So that's tacit approval to me.

 

Right. But when you suggest Bret Stephens is the wrong person to write this, I wondered if you thought if someone else - not Bret - should have.

Do you agree with the premise of his argument?

 

I honestly don't care that much. I haven't read the project or Stephens' rebuttal. I have only so much bandwidth in my life and this has not been a part of it.

I was just commenting on the optics of having their whiter-than-white Republican columnist rebut a project on slavery.

 

But to further answer your question, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with any of their op-ed people tackling this. If the NYT wanted this rebuttal, they could have farmed it out.

 

Historians argue with historians about history, as Stephens points out here:

In a pair of lengthy editor’s notes, Silverstein has defended much of the scholarship in the project by citing another slate of historians to back him up. That’s one way of justifying the final product.

Yes. Yes it is.

 

I have not read the 1619 project but suspect that the writers overemphasized the contributions of the people their subjects, in this case blacks. Historians often do this, as do feature writers in newspapers.

What makes the 1619 Project unusual is that it tends to overstate the contribution of blacks in American history. And this has not happened very much.

There has been a lot of history written that trys to justify the Civil War. The people condemning the 1619 project seem to have no qualms about Jefferson Davis being more highly regarded in American history than the Radical Republicans.

 

The 1619 Project is a thesis in search of evidence, not the other way around.

I confess I haven't read the 1619 Project ... I think I have a pretty good grasp of the wrongs done to minorities in the U.S. If what I gathered glancing at Stephens' critique is true - some scholars refuting the content, resistance to a 360-degree examination of the history of the topic - my suspicions about the the genesis of the project seem confirmed.
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On the whole it’s pretty interesting and pretty good. The victory lap stuff - particularly pushing it to be curriculum - is part of what got the project in greater trouble than the material would suggest.

 

the Stephens piece is well done, as is the ben smith piece (An Arrest in Canada Casts a Shadow on a New York Times Star, and The Times) on Callimachi's reporting. together, the two of them point to an ever-dangerous trend at the NYT: reporting tailored to fit a predetermined thesis/theme/narrative. that ain't journalism. it's advocacy at best, fiction at worst. and using the NYT brand to flog such a piece, in the case of 1619, into the educational system is absolutely NOT the job of journalism. it's the opposite.

want to make the case for 1619 vs. 1776? fine. it's an ambitious and worthy topic. just label it as an argument, and let academics, pundits, grad students try to punch it full of holes. if it survives serious scrutiny? THEN, it enters into the curriculum.

 

I believe the current curriculum in American schools was that Reconstruction was a bad thing. A bunch of crooked Yankees and illiterate blacks governed. On the 1870's, after federal troops were withdrawn the carpetbaggers were driven from office ad a bunch of incorruptible, wise leaders were elected.

The facts that the black population in the former Southern states were deprived of the vote and systematically discriminated against is ignored. And did you really believe that the Democrats who succeeded the carpetbaggers were incorruptible when you were exposed to this?

What is strange about Civil War history is that it is generally the propaganda of the losers, rather than the winners. So don't blather on about the damage to the minds of high school students if they are exposed to an alternative version of history.