The 1619 Project

The conversation from last week made me rethink a lot of the concepts we have discussed throughout the class thus far. I think discussing the idea of the 1619 project, and the troublesome false facts that were written brings up a lot of conceptual issues relating to the intellectual class. Something interesting that came up was the idea of someone’s morals being more important than fact. I believe that this is something troubling that happens a lot within the intellectual class. We talked about the moral reasoning behind the 1619 project, and how when intellectuals choose to use their morals in place of following facts it can completely discount their journalism, research, or whatever it is that they are expressing their thoughts through. I talked about the idea that the 1619 project opened the door for a bigger conversation, including allowing Black creators to be able to speak their truths about their ancestry including their experiences with slavery. After discussing this, I realized that even if this was the intention of the 1619 project, a lot of the intellectuals writing for this project stated that their intentions were to completely rewrite history. By stating this, it shifts the narrative, changing the intention of the project whether that is what they intended to do or not. It brings up the point of intellectuals realizing how important what they state is, and the impact it can have. The 1619 project is now being taught in schools, even though a lot of the information that is stated is wrong and incorrect. I think it is teaching younger generations that even if their morals are in the right place, and they want to expose something like the brutality of slavery and how it affected the United States, they are allowed to use false facts to back up their claims. I think this is the downfall of the 1619 project. It is true that there are many false facts taught in schools when younger kids are learning about history. We have seen this in the teachings of Christopher Columbus. This is an entirely different conversation, because there are intellectuals who are creating the textbooks taught to younger kids in schools. When there is false information taught, it allows for misinformation to spread. I believe that the reason why people do not talk about the 1619 project more and how the misinformation in it discounts the idea that more children should be taught about slavery, is because it is about such a sensitive topic. Black intellectuals should be allowed to speak their minds and what they believe on a matter such as slavery. As a country, we should allow for Black people to be able to speak their minds. As a white person, it becomes uncomfortable when having to discount someone on speaking on a matter I know nothing about. Similarly, that is why I believe the conversation was so difficult to have. I am not an intellectual, nor am I knowledgable on the beginnings of slavery, more specifically the factual evidence. This is exactly what harm the 1619 project can do, people like myself who do not know enough about the subject can be influenced easily by such a large news source such as the New York Times deciding to publish and share such an influential piece of information. This also points to another important idea, the fact that the average person trusts what intellectuals say even though the facts may not be correct. It begs the question, how many other sources like this are out there? How can one be sure that they are reading facts? Because this is a subject that people make out to be political, it also creates another problem. There are many people that just because a piece of journalism may suggest it leans a certain way politically automatically deem it incorrect or do not want to continue reading or understanding the work. This is something that has lead to the polarization in our country today. Even if there are certain works of journalism or research that do have some form of politics in them, that does not deem it incorrect. The 1619 project has to do with this. Since Republicans have been deemed racist by some groups of people, more specifically the far left, people do not care to understand if the facts in it are correct. It is just deemed correct because of the moral content that is in it. This is something hard to comprehend in the society we live in today. When reading content, it can be easy to comprehend that the person’s morals are in the right place, such as the 1619 project wanting to expose slavery and allow Black voices to be heard about an issue that is still so prevalent in today’s society. However, it is important to further understand the facts and whether they portray the correct historical evidence. Furthermore, it just goes back to my original point that because of the incorrect nature of the 1619 project, it just completely discounts the entire point of the project, whatever that point may be.