After the publication of the 1619 Project in the New York Times, Peter Wood wrote a powerful book in response to the project titled 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project. The 1619 Project was written by Nikole Hannah-Jones in August of 2019. As Nikole Hannah-Jones stated, her purpose for creating this project was to reframe American history in order to explain the roots of slavery and how it’s legacy affects the United States today. Years later, this project is still receiving immense praise by other educators and intellectuals, it is even being taught in schools across the country. The project is said to contextualize the systems of race and caste that define America today. Peter Wood immediately identified false facts when originally reading the project which were used to reframe history, as Nikole Hannah-Jones states. Wood wants to address the idea that in today’s society, people are able to just say whatever they want without any backlash or fact checking based on their background and place in society. He argues that because Nikole Hannah-Jones is writing about such a sensitive topic as a Black journalist writing for the New York Times, people do not feel the need to understand her work through an intellectual standpoint. People believe everything she says is true, just because of who she is as a person. Intellectuals today often are scared to stand up for intellectual thinking due to their morals. As Wood explains, this post-modernism thinking is spreading and getting worse. Throughout his book, he wanted to clearly identify these false facts to explain that the intention of the project makes no sense since these facts were indeed completely false. Peter Wood in his book wants to go over these false facts, to justify his argument that the 1619 project was in no way reframing history. He goes over many statements that are made in the 1619 project which are contradicting. One of these statements that Hannah-Jones makes, is that slaves were dehumanized. Yet she also states, that people like Thomas Jefferson knew his slaves were human. Wood explains how this way of thinking is incorrect. He states that slave owners knew their slaves were human. He explains that slave owners were able to act in evil ways even though their slaves were humans. Wood explains five different points in chapters to discuss the context behind them and why the 1619 Project does not explain them in an accurate way. One of these is that plantation slavery was the foundation for American capitalism. Wood writes that slavery did not help American capitalism grow in any way, it did not make the country wealthier. The way Wood explains it almost holds slave owners more accountable, for they are acting hateful towards other humans knowing that they are doing this to other humans. Another important false fact that Wood identifies is what the entire book is based on, the idea that slavery started in 1619. Wood explains that slavery was happening in many cultures for thousands of years before slavery started in America. He writes that slavery evolved, it was different across time periods and across cultures. A very important portion of Wood’s book is about the fact that the New York Times indeed had fact checkers look over the 1619 Project, identify false facts, and tell the New York Times, yet they decided to do nothing about the false facts. This just confirms the idea of post-modernist thinking. Why would such an influential company that knows they have thousands of people reading their work decide to claim that this project is so influential, yet at the same time they also know that there are false facts? Today, the New York Times Magazine has a website dedicated to the project. There are links to other authors who wrote works similar to the 1619 project, that Wood identifies also has false facts. There is even a separate website dedicated to resources for educators to use if they want to be able to use the 1619 project in schools. In class, we’ve discussed the idea of intellectuals and how they fit into society today. Peter Wood’s book brings up another very important lesson. How can we be sure that what we are reading is correct? As a college student, it is easy for me to read something like the 1619 Project and immediately understand it as the truth. This is something that especially when reading things that relate to morals, can be difficult. Morals are very important to me, and I am sensitive when it comes to defending those morals. I can understand how the 1619 Project can be interpreted as a work that is meant to define slavery as a bad thing while also exposing the heinous atrocity behind it. However, as Wood states, this was not the intention of the project. It is stated many times in the 1619 Project that this was meant to redefine history in a way that would spread so people could understand the true history of the United States. Just this fact alone is extremely important in analyzing the project. The point of the project was based on the idea that there was redefining of facts, yet in doing this redefining, there is an extreme use of false facts.
This book is extremely intriguing and brings up a lot of important facts about today’s society. Peter Wood does an amazing job analyzing how the 1619 Project is a way for us to look at our society as a whole. He is able to look critically at a sensitive topic, and is able to still identify that racism and slavery are obviously heinous acts. I think that this is one of the most important lessons from Peter Wood’s book, since this is such a sensitive topic people are afraid to speak out. Intellectuals today are putting their morals above fact, making their works completely unjustifiable. It brings up an important question, what are we teaching our youth? Wood explains that teaching young children about slavery in schools is extremely important. But the notion that we are teaching facts that are not true should be discussed. The amount of praise that the 1619 Project is receiving is completely unjustifiable. Wood explains that claims that are made, especially in a magazine so powerful such as The New York Times, must be fact checked in order to have intellectual praise.