The framing of the #1619Project remains the same today as when we published in Aug. 2019: We acknowledged 1776 as this nation’s official founding but asked readers to imagine what it would mean to consider 1619 as our birth year. That text hasn’t changed. https://t.co/w3tdtl9ZY5
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) September 24, 2020
It was obvious that the 1619 project didn’t just ask readers to consider this as an “alternate history” thought excercize, but rather to consider the proposition as a more legitimate and accurate characterization of the founding of the United States.
And the project argues, effectively I think, that IF 1619 were considered to be the birth year of the United States it would result in a conception of a country whose very existance is molded around an inextricable core of black subjugation. There would be, by this reckoning, “no way out” aside from a “refounding” of the USA (a la Evo Morale’s refounding of Republic of Bolivia as The Plurinational State of Bolivia in 2005). However, it appears now that Ms. Jones disavoys that her work claims that the founding SHOULD be considered to be 1619. So if her characterizations are predicated on the founding being considered to be 1619, and now she claims that she isn’t arguing that we should consider that founding date to be actual, but only hypothetical, than her characterizations are also obviously not actual either. Which makes me ask, why would a school curriculum be designed around them? What good are they at all?