The 1619 Project is an icon–perhaps the icon–of racial wokeness in America. While the NYT insists that it is just a needed corrective to the standard narrative of American history, it was actually proposed as a definitive counter-narrative, in which white people are always oppressors, black people are always heroic defenders of democracy, and nothing ever gets better. You don’t have to be a reactionary to be offended by that message.
Reactionaries view American history very differently, as you would expect, and are trying to turn their views into something like an official state ideology. Their story runs something like this:
- America was founded by white European Christians. The country belongs to them. Black people are interlopers.
- Slavery and racism are just an unfortunate blip in the heroic arc of American history.
- The Civil War and Reconstruction were about the unlawful encroachment of federal power into the Confederacy, not slavery.
- The unfortunate blip was eliminated for good in the 1960s.
- America has been a land of freedom and complete equality since the success of the Civil Rights Movement. There is consequently no need for any kind of affirmative action or white guilt. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a racist.
There is plenty of middle ground between these two extreme opinions. I suspect that most Americans accept the notion that significant flaws remain in our system, but that our country is not an evil, racist empire. Will our textbooks continue to reflect that position, or will reactionary thought be imposed on our students? TBD.