Since February 1st 2020, all public schools in Buffalo, NY are mandated to teach the vastly inaccurate and misleading 1619 Project from the New York Times to advance the idea that American history should be centered around the importation of African slaves in 1619, rather than the American Revolution in the 1770s.
The 1619 Project goes beyond tracing the history of slavery and its impact in America. Instead, the 1619 Project pushes absurd claims to argue that America is still an inherently bigoted and racist country.
One of the lead writers for The 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, states that American slavery in the colonies was “a brutal system of slavery unlike anything that had existed in the world before,” when in fact Brazil, Cuba, the West Indies, and many other South American nations had strikingly similar systems of slavery in place.
The fact that Jones wants to teach children that slavery is a unique American problem is disturbing. Slavery is a great evil that has existed in the world for nearly 11,000 years, including in countries like Egypt, Greece, Rome, Spain, Persia, Portugal, England, and in Native American and African nations. Students should be taught the true and complete history of slavery, not the Left’s false curated narrative aimed at demonizing America.
The 1619 Project lost even more credibility when it published a piece titled “American Capitalism is Brutal. You Can Trace That Back to the Plantation.” Matthew Desmond, Princeton University professor and the author of this entry explained how overseers would watch slaves in order to make sure that they were working, which is undisputed. However, the author then draws a connection between overseers and the modern workplace. He absurdly writes “Modern technology has facilitated unremitting workplace supervision, particularly in the service sector. Companies have developed software that records workers’ keystrokes and mouse clicks, along with randomly capturing screenshots multiple times a day.”
Sadly, Buffalo schools are not the first to cherry-pick history to advance leftist thinking. Three other cities, Washington D.C., Newark, NJ, and Chicago, IL, have adopted similar curriculum.
Virtuous, freedom-minded Americans agree that slavery is a terrible evil that existed in this country for far too long. However, to teach young, impressionable minds that the society that they currently live in is somehow still akin to slavery and rife with oppression is wildly inaccurate, divisive, and harmful to the nation. Conservatives are not asking for special treatment– just for the truth.
