'The 1619 Project' shows how the legacy of slavery continues to keep us divided
I just finished "The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning collaboration by multiple academics and historians on the history of slavery and its impact on America. I labored through the book, not because it is poorly written; it is compelling, exhaustively researched and documented with extensive footnotes.
"The 1619 Project” is a difficult read because the account is so harrowing. To dehumanize an entire race required legalizing unbelievable savagery. An estimated one-third of those kidnapped from Africa died in passage. There are multiple accounts of enslaved families being torn asunder, husbands separated from wives, children sold away from parents.
Torture was used to enforce the hard labor and slaves who escaped were brutally hunted down. To keep the enslaved powerless, many states made it illegal for those in bondage to marry, travel, worship, be educated or own land.
To maintain slavery necessitated a serial betrayal of our proclaimed values, even as the Founding Fathers, many of them slave owners, were crafting those lofty words establishing our “more perfect union” and then for nearly 200 years after.
The book documents how the need to compromise with slave states, in order to form our country and keep it intact, led to the corruption of governing bodies and to laws, policies and court decisions that supported slavery, years after it was formally abolished.
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"The 1619 Project” examines America through a number of different lenses including capitalism, church, self-defense and punishment. A central tenet of the book is that much of the inequality in our society today can be traced, directly or indirectly, to the institution of slavery.
What kind of inequality? On average Black workers, even in comparable jobs, earn 25% less, have one-tenth the accumulated wealth of white people and are five times more likely to be arrested and incarcerated. Blacks are five times more likely to live in a “food desert,” and three times more likely to live near a toxic waste site.
Despite these devastating figures, some contend that minorities have as much chance as anyone else to succeed in America. In fact a majority of white Americans reportedly believe they are being discriminated against by any measure that attempts to address these inequalities.
Any historical works can be subject to criticism. I simultaneously read some of the criticisms of "The 1619 Project.” Some writers are critical of specific parts of the work, questioning the expertise of certain authors to address specific topics, others drawing differing interpretations of the record.
Wouldn’t it present a valuable lesson for students to be able to read both "The 1619 Project” and some of the counterclaims and learn to weigh differing opinions so as to learn how to come to their own conclusions? But they will not, thanks to politicians such as Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature, who have legislated a denial of historical literacy to school children.
Their rationale against an honest discussions of the legacy of slavery is that it may make some children experience “guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress.” Frankly, our history of slavery should make anyone feel psychological distress. That is no reason to pretend it didn’t happen.
As difficult as it may be to read, "The 1619 Project” isn’t propaganda, it is factual. DeSantis et.al. are determined to block children from knowing the truth. It is as simple as that.
Slavery was a birth defect in the forming of America and nearly split our young nation apart. In myriad ways, this book shows how the legacy of slavery continues to keep us divided. Speaking in support of the so-called “individual freedom” bill recently passed by the Florida Legislature, a Republican legislator stated, “We’re going to teach honest history,” before disingenuously adding, “We’re not going to influence it with personal opinion.”
Whitewashing history is an attempt to influence it with “personal opinion,” the personal opinions of people like DeSantis and a complicit legislature who does his bidding. They are doing our children a great disservice by trying to deny history.
"The 1619 Project” may be difficult to read; keeping the truth from our children is impossible to defend.
Greg McGann is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who lives in Gainesville.
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This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Greg McGann: '1619 Project' deserves to be read in Florida schools
