As you would expect, conservatives have been in the forefront of mocking the New York Times "1619 Project" that proposes that African slavery is the story and the meaning of America.
But I must say that it helped me think a bit more deeply about slavery.
Because it encouraged me to think instead: why should we, in the last two centuries, have been the ones to experience slavery as a scandal, and do something about it?
And it encouraged me to think up a counter-narrative, that we might call the left's "1848 Project" to reinvent slavery as socialism and to create the two biggest slave states in history.
Anyway, now the Wall Street Journal has published a pay-walled opinion piece "The '1619 Project' Gets Schooled," in which it takes the NYT to the wood-shed on the 1619 Project with the help of historians and Trotskyites.
But, in a way, it is helpful for The New York Times to front such a superficial project, because it makes people like me think about the issue. Why did we, the paragons of "whiteness," abolish slavery?
Was it because of moral superiority of our white patriarchal culture? Was it because of the moral fervor of Christian evangelism in the 18th century? Was it because slavery does not pay, compared to free labor? Was it because the North hated the South and cooked up the slavery issue in the 1850s as a club to beat the South?
Or was it because of popular literature like Frederick Douglass's 1845 autobiography and Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 Uncle Tom's Cabin? Or was it because of black Americans that, according to Hannah-Jones, "fought back alone" against racism?
Whatabout a Brit sailor like William Richardson in A Mariner of England that in 1790 joined a slaver bound for Guinea as Fourth Mate, and spent six months at anchor slowly buying slaves on the Bonny River from the local African chief?
Or whatabout the white slave trade in Circassian beauties from the NE coast of the Black Sea -- sold by their families into slavery -- that were trafficked to harems in the Middle East?
The truth is that, when we construct our historical narratives, whether as a credentialed historian or as a young journalist that "literally knows nothing," we are picking documents to tell a story. Some people want to celebrate the glorious arc of "white" progress; others want to "decenter whiteness." We all pick the items that help us tell the story we want to tell.
My own approach is the notion that slavery does not pay, compared to free labor. So no moral story. Just bottom-line thinking. Just as, in WWI and after, the Germans changed the basic organization of the battle by assigning responsibility downwards from commissioned officers to NCOs because, in the "lethal battlefield" of machine guns and artillery, there was no way for the higher officers to supervise every detail of the battle.
In other words, the world does not change from brilliant strategic thinking. It just reacts to the facts on the ground.
You could have the same argument about labor unions. Some people say that it was unions that raised the wages and benefits of workers; others that it was "productivity" and the simple action of supply and demand for labor. Some people say that it was unions that forced companies to treat their employees like human beings; others that unions make a company so inflexible and uncompetitive that unionized companies just can't survive in the global marketplace.
Hey, whatabout my argument about the welfare state being neo-feudalism? You can argue that the serfs of the old feudal system, abandoned by their lords in the agricultural revolution of the 16th century, voted for a resumption of feudalism in the modern administrative welfare state that tasks the ruling class with looking after the welfare of the workers. So you have the voters of Britain voting for a little more NHS from Boris Johnson rather than a lot more NHS from Jeremy Corbyn. But nobody is proposing to put the responsibility for health care on the shoulders of each individual citizen.
So, is the modern feudalism a step towards slavery? Or what? I doubt if the young journalists of The New York Times would have a clue about that, beyond what they had been carefully taught in our nation's schools and colleges.
But I must say that it helped me think a bit more deeply about slavery.
Because it encouraged me to think instead: why should we, in the last two centuries, have been the ones to experience slavery as a scandal, and do something about it?
And it encouraged me to think up a counter-narrative, that we might call the left's "1848 Project" to reinvent slavery as socialism and to create the two biggest slave states in history.
Anyway, now the Wall Street Journal has published a pay-walled opinion piece "The '1619 Project' Gets Schooled," in which it takes the NYT to the wood-shed on the 1619 Project with the help of historians and Trotskyites.
The project's creator, Mikole Hannah-Jones, is proud that it "decenters whiteness" and disdains its critics as "old, white male historians."It would be funny, if not so serious, that this woman, who has "an undergraduate degree in history and African-American studies and a master's in journalism", is so up-front and, dare I say, mindlessly racist.
But, in a way, it is helpful for The New York Times to front such a superficial project, because it makes people like me think about the issue. Why did we, the paragons of "whiteness," abolish slavery?
Was it because of moral superiority of our white patriarchal culture? Was it because of the moral fervor of Christian evangelism in the 18th century? Was it because slavery does not pay, compared to free labor? Was it because the North hated the South and cooked up the slavery issue in the 1850s as a club to beat the South?
Or was it because of popular literature like Frederick Douglass's 1845 autobiography and Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 Uncle Tom's Cabin? Or was it because of black Americans that, according to Hannah-Jones, "fought back alone" against racism?
Whatabout a Brit sailor like William Richardson in A Mariner of England that in 1790 joined a slaver bound for Guinea as Fourth Mate, and spent six months at anchor slowly buying slaves on the Bonny River from the local African chief?
Or whatabout the white slave trade in Circassian beauties from the NE coast of the Black Sea -- sold by their families into slavery -- that were trafficked to harems in the Middle East?
The truth is that, when we construct our historical narratives, whether as a credentialed historian or as a young journalist that "literally knows nothing," we are picking documents to tell a story. Some people want to celebrate the glorious arc of "white" progress; others want to "decenter whiteness." We all pick the items that help us tell the story we want to tell.
My own approach is the notion that slavery does not pay, compared to free labor. So no moral story. Just bottom-line thinking. Just as, in WWI and after, the Germans changed the basic organization of the battle by assigning responsibility downwards from commissioned officers to NCOs because, in the "lethal battlefield" of machine guns and artillery, there was no way for the higher officers to supervise every detail of the battle.
In other words, the world does not change from brilliant strategic thinking. It just reacts to the facts on the ground.
You could have the same argument about labor unions. Some people say that it was unions that raised the wages and benefits of workers; others that it was "productivity" and the simple action of supply and demand for labor. Some people say that it was unions that forced companies to treat their employees like human beings; others that unions make a company so inflexible and uncompetitive that unionized companies just can't survive in the global marketplace.
Hey, whatabout my argument about the welfare state being neo-feudalism? You can argue that the serfs of the old feudal system, abandoned by their lords in the agricultural revolution of the 16th century, voted for a resumption of feudalism in the modern administrative welfare state that tasks the ruling class with looking after the welfare of the workers. So you have the voters of Britain voting for a little more NHS from Boris Johnson rather than a lot more NHS from Jeremy Corbyn. But nobody is proposing to put the responsibility for health care on the shoulders of each individual citizen.
So, is the modern feudalism a step towards slavery? Or what? I doubt if the young journalists of The New York Times would have a clue about that, beyond what they had been carefully taught in our nation's schools and colleges.
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