Peter Wood’s 1620, addressed the goal of the 1619 Project which was to essentially reframe the country’s history through the publication of newspapers. The aim of this was to put slavery and the black American experience at the heart of our country’s political identity and origin. Rather than incorporating and adding the black experience into our education of American history, it strived to entirely replace our traditional understanding of American history. The proponents of 1619 further argued that America began with the arrival of slaves. They view the planation system and slave market as the origins of modern day capitalism. They also wanted to revamp our entire perspective on Abraham Lincoln. They claim that he was not a hero to the salves and did not have the slaves’ best interest at heart. I personally think that this claim is too extreme to make. I agree that there were still injustices and formal laws in place that prevented the equality of citizenship that slaves should have been granted during his presidency. However, I think that their claim is too extreme and undermines the progress that Lincoln did make in aiding slaves. I further thought that it was interesting that the 1619 goal aligns with the perspectives of the New Left. This is because it promotes the radicalization and transformation of society. Yet, I think there are many complications with claiming that America began with slavery. On one hand in can make it wrongly seem like we have moved on from slavery and that racism is in the past. On the other hand it can make it seem like racism is ingrained in the roots of our history and is something that is inescapable. Woods agrees more with the later conclusion. He says that even though we should create laws in society that are “colorblind” we will always have the tendency to congregate within certain racial groups. His reasoning for this is that we have shared qualities and cultural affinities which result in these group formations. This makes me wonder; however, is the bonding of racial groups an example of racism? Or is it just us expressing our identity with like minded individuals? This leaves our interpretation of how racist and oppressive American society is and has been in the past ambiguous. Surely we should work to create laws in society that offer equality for all races of citizens, yet it is difficult to tell how much of these oppressions are the direct result of the American government itself. To determine the start of American history and how it should be taught we have to evaluate the facts themselves. Although, plantation systems have many correlations with how we operate modern day capitalism in turns of production and exploitation, we must also recognize that slavery arose in British Northern American colonies, but it did not arrive in Virginia until nearly half a century later. It is difficult to pinpoint a specific year of American history’s origin if we try to use slavery as the start of the timeline. The dates can get very messy so I think we should proceed with caution before proceeding with the 1619 Project.
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