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Is Anyone Here.....

OK, so there's no opportunity for me to read for myself and judge how "glowing" Tom's comments were. For the sake of discussion, I'll simply assume they were glowing.

And the basis for your declaring the 1619 Project to be garbage? I'm asking here rather than debating, as I just read about it for the first time roughly twenty minutes ago. Prior to that, all I had read were sporadic and brief criticisms of it in posts from conservatives on the Test Board.

Laf, as Engineer says, this is probably more suited to the Test Board. But a quick comment here that hopefully avoids overt partisan politics. There are some overwhelming problems with the 1619 Project, and they've been identified and critiqued by prestigious nonpartisan historians.

One such person is Princeton Professor of History Sean Wilentz, one of the leading academic authorities in the country, who wrote a devastating rebuttal to the premises of the project. Other famous critics include James McPherson, John McWhorter, James Oakes, and Gordon Woods...to name just a few. Google any of these guys with the term 1619 project, and you'll find material galore.

Two huge issues overarch all the others: A) The premise that American history has no significant meaning apart from the institution of slavery; and B) The assertion that the main objective of the Revolutionary War and real reason for the founding of our country was to preserve the institution of slavery.

Both of these premises are egregiously, provably wrong. Moreover, they originate not in scholarship but rather in ideology: the determination to see every fact and event through an ideological lens and outlandishly shoehorn reality into the theory rather than shaping the theory around reality.
 
Lord McA turned out to be quite the snake in the grass. I let him know this Sunday so he deleted the post then blacklisted me from the board. Guess the reset Monday let me out of “jail.”
He probably had some sort of legal agreement about the move to ON3.
 
Laf, as Engineer says, this is probably more suited to the Test Board. But a quick comment here that hopefully avoids overt partisan politics. There are some overwhelming problems with the 1619 Project, and they've been identified and critiqued by prestigious nonpartisan historians.

One such person is Princeton Professor of History Sean Wilentz, one of the leading academic authorities in the country, who wrote a devastating rebuttal to the premises of the project. Other famous critics include James McPherson, John McWhorter, James Oakes, and Gordon Woods...to name just a few. Google any of these guys with the term 1619 project, and you'll find material galore.

Two huge issues overarch all the others: A) The premise that American history has no significant meaning apart from the institution of slavery; and B) The assertion that the main objective of the Revolutionary War and real reason for the founding of our country was to preserve the institution of slavery.

Both of these premises are egregiously, provably wrong. Moreover, they originate not in scholarship but rather in ideology: the determination to see every fact and event through an ideological lens and outlandishly shoehorn reality into the theory rather than shaping the theory around reality.
Also, there were no slaves in Virginia in 1619 but a few indentured servants that were eventually awarded their freedom. Virginia made slavery legal around 1680 or so. Plus slavery was on every continent except Antarctica. Plus it existed through human history. And the vast majority of African slaves brought to the new world never set foot in the colonies or America. Brazil alone took in more than ten times what the colonies or US took in.
 
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Laf, as Engineer says, this is probably more suited to the Test Board. But a quick comment here that hopefully avoids overt partisan politics. There are some overwhelming problems with the 1619 Project, and they've been identified and critiqued by prestigious nonpartisan historians.

One such person is Princeton Professor of History Sean Wilentz, one of the leading academic authorities in the country, who wrote a devastating rebuttal to the premises of the project. Other famous critics include James McPherson, John McWhorter, James Oakes, and Gordon Woods...to name just a few. Google any of these guys with the term 1619 project, and you'll find material galore.

Two huge issues overarch all the others: A) The premise that American history has no significant meaning apart from the institution of slavery; and B) The assertion that the main objective of the Revolutionary War and real reason for the founding of our country was to preserve the institution of slavery.

Both of these premises are egregiously, provably wrong. Moreover, they originate not in scholarship but rather in ideology: the determination to see every fact and event through an ideological lens and outlandishly shoehorn reality into the theory rather than shaping the theory around reality.
The 5 historians you mention don’t seem as opposed to the 1619 Project as you make them out to be according to this lengthy - and very interesting - article from the Daily Princetonian: https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/a...letter-requesting-corrections-to-1619-project
 
The 5 historians you mention don’t seem as opposed to the 1619 Project as you make them out to be according to this lengthy - and very interesting - article from the Daily Princetonian: https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/a...letter-requesting-corrections-to-1619-project

I think a careful reading of the piece you linked absolutely supports my comment.

The critique of Wilentz and the other signatories of their letter taking issue with the 1619 Project is of course couched in the language of academic tactfulness. It has to be. I mean, if you bluntly call Nikole Hannah-Jones an idiot (which she is), you will be promptly accused of racism and disinvited from the Cool Kids' cocktail parties.

Therefore, instead you must delicately say how important her work is...but oh by the way, she got key facts and evidence wrong...and oh by the way, such facts and evidence are central to her entire thesis...which oh by the way, means her entire thesis is, well, wrong.

If you read what Sean Wilentz and some others have said and written on this subject, it's difficult to come away with any other conclusion than that they think the 1619 Project, though "well-intentioned," is egregiously, provably wrong. Here's a piece Wilentz wrote for the flagship liberal publication The Atlantic, for example:

 
Laf, as Engineer says, this is probably more suited to the Test Board. But a quick comment here that hopefully avoids overt partisan politics. There are some overwhelming problems with the 1619 Project, and they've been identified and critiqued by prestigious nonpartisan historians.

One such person is Princeton Professor of History Sean Wilentz, one of the leading academic authorities in the country, who wrote a devastating rebuttal to the premises of the project. Other famous critics include James McPherson, John McWhorter, James Oakes, and Gordon Woods...to name just a few. Google any of these guys with the term 1619 project, and you'll find material galore.

Two huge issues overarch all the others: A) The premise that American history has no significant meaning apart from the institution of slavery; and B) The assertion that the main objective of the Revolutionary War and real reason for the founding of our country was to preserve the institution of slavery.

Both of these premises are egregiously, provably wrong. Moreover, they originate not in scholarship but rather in ideology: the determination to see every fact and event through an ideological lens and outlandishly shoehorn reality into the theory rather than shaping the theory around reality.
Jerry: I have not read sufficient detail concerning the 1619 Project to confirm whether your statements (bolded above) accurately characterize the organizing premises of the 1619 Project. But if they DO, no reasonable person could give them credit. Just re-read the sentence "The premise that American history has no significant meaning apart from the institution of slavery." That statement is objectively preposterous, even from the perspective of an African American. What kind of idiot would come out with a statement like that? It makes me wonder if you might just have stretched a bit in characterizing the stated premise.
 
Jerry: I have not read sufficient detail concerning the 1619 Project to confirm whether your statements (bolded above) accurately characterize the organizing premises of the 1619 Project. But if they DO, no reasonable person could give them credit. Just re-read the sentence "The premise that American history has no significant meaning apart from the institution of slavery." That statement is objectively preposterous, even from the perspective of an African American. What kind of idiot would come out with a statement like that? It makes me wonder if you might just have stretched a bit in characterizing the stated premise.

Laf, (B) in my post above is expressly, stridently, and repeatedly stated by the 1619 Project.

(A) is what I believe to be an entirely fair summation of the Project's clear implications and logical ends.

I mean, for God's sakes, why did they name it the 1619 Project? Because that's when slaves came to these shores. For them, the introduction of slavery marks the real beginning of the United States...and slavery and racism are the fulcrum of American history.

I honestly don't think it's a stretch to describe their thesis that way.
 
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Also, there were no slaves in Virginia in 1619 but a few indentured servants that were eventually awarded their freedom. Virginia made slavery legal around 1680 or so. Plus slavery was on every continent except Antarctica. Plus it existed through human history. And the vast majority of African slaves brought to the new world never set foot in the colonies or America. Brazil alone took in more than ten times what the colonies or US took in.
And let's not forget that people were sold to slave traders in Africa by other tribes.
 
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And let's not forget that people were sold to slave traders in Africa by other tribes.
And they were sold to Europeans that bought the slaves, took them to the new world, and sold them for huge profits. Mostly British, Dutch, Spainish, and Portuguese ships making huge profits for their countries. They would sell slaves in the new world, buy goods like furs, timber, gold, gems and take those to their home countries in Europe for more profit, then take clothes, weapons, and more to Africa to use to buy more slaves.

If there are reparations to be paid it should be paid by those countries that brought them here. And the dem party that kept them in chains for centuries, instituted Jim Crow laws to keep,them powerless, and started the KKK to intimidate them.
 
Also, there were no slaves in Virginia in 1619 but a few indentured servants that were eventually awarded their freedom. Virginia made slavery legal around 1680 or so. Plus slavery was on every continent except Antarctica. Plus it existed through human history. And the vast majority of African slaves brought to the new world never set foot in the colonies or America. Brazil alone took in more than ten times what the colonies or US took in.
Late to this thread. I took a few history classes focused on slavery, including a fascinating African history class where I was the only white male. One time in that class, we had a guest speaker who had created a PBS doc called the “Africans” - interesting guy, but he kept staring me down in class. Anyway, he noted something very interesting about the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

As you mentioned @The Spin Meister, there was a far greater amount of slaves who headed to Brazil and such. One of the reasons was that the systems in those areas were far more wasteful of the resource (so to speak). That is, they kept having to replenish their numbers due to illness, malnutrition, unspeakable brutality, etc. While slavery sucks anywhere, the Brazilian system, for example, was particularly brutal. In the US South, there was far more of an attempt to preserve the resource. In contrast, in systems like the one in Brazil, they often just worked them to death and replaced them with fresh slaves.

Given that, you’d think the US system would be more inclined to view miscegenation more liberally than the more savage Brazilian system since it seems like the former was more humanistic. Just the opposite, however. In the more brutal systems, race intermixing was not as taboo.
This guy’s theory was that since South American colonial powers were Spanish and Portuguese in the main, they brought their more relaxed views on race mixing to the New World (these views being a product of centuries of the practice due to greater contact with black Africa than colonial powers like the English and Dutch). You would think that would translate to better treatment of their servants, but just the opposite.
 
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