The National Myth
The Issue Beyond 1619
“It is now clear that the creation of America required not only the theft of labor and land, but a national myth in which we made pirates into patriots… It should not surprise us a hoard addicted to the national myth that pitched white men as the unvarnished savior of all civilization is not primed to share the country that they’ve been taught they own. It is myth that sanctifies their action.” Ta-Nehisi Coates
On May 22, 2021 writer Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke on the backbone of the controversial 1619 project. His statement (above) came after Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project, was denied tenure by the University of North Carolina.
Coates’ underscoring of a “national myth” and the behavior it has sanctified is the conversation we should be having as a nation that is entrenched in the ongoing global curse of human extremism — that idea that one way to be and belong in the world justifies the violence committed in the name of that ideology. If not race, the issue is Western cultural hegemony and the idea that all other civilizations are tainted with savagery and have offered no value to humanity.
Failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum was recently axed from CNN for echoing this talking point, claiming clumsily in a speech that there was nothing in America when settlers arrived. Right-wing darling Candace Owens has said the same of Native American civilizations. This is a common theme among radicalized Western cultural supremacists, and it’s the grievance (I suspect) at the heart conversations on race today, and its not limited to Native Americans. Throughout American history the curse of hatred toward African Americans (and other people of color) passed down from generation to generation, waxing and waning, but ever present nonetheless. How that curse manifests varies, but by no means is it anything less than a curse.
A few weeks ago, I watched the Amazon Prime series Underground Railroad, based on a fictional work touching on the heart of slavery in America. While the ‘railroad’ was portrayed as an actual railroad, and other creative liberties were taken through the series — what shook me was the eerie use of sound and storytelling to weave a portrait of the day to day annihilation of Black American identity and experience that is an undeniable cornerstone of American history. That annihilation carries on today in different manifestations, across different population groups.
(As a Muslim, we’re routinely painted as savages or ignorant by the radicalized sector of the American political class. The experience many Muslims collectively shared last month in light of the renewed Israel/Palestine crisis is demonstrative of that.)
Elsewhere, there is no curiosity about the intellectual value of the work an an esteemed African American writer like Coates. Instead, the organization Fair for All, made up of enough many uniquely radicalized minds in favor of the Neo-conservative narrative (even as that narrative unravels into a darker and darker abyss), summarizes Coates’ work as disempowering black Americans:
“A 2021 study showed that black Americans who read a single passage of Ta-Nehisi Coates experienced a 15-point drop in feelings of personal empowerment and control over their lives.”
As the report cites, the study was conducted in 2021 by the Manhattan Institute. The Manhattan Institute is a Neo-conservative think tank that in 2020 cited “a war on police,” without acknowledgement of legitimate shortcomings across enough police departments to warrant the issue a national crisis. In years prior, the Manhattan Institute also cozied up with tobacco lobbyists to push a campaign against “junk science.”
It has been my repeat experience that the think tanks and non-profits we think exist to serve universal ethics are routinely created to serve a personal agenda. Manhattan Institute is no different; it is just one example in this case. The same can be said for other organizations with different political leanings.
There is a national obsession of filtering unique human experience through the lens of identity markers, be they racial, religious, sexual or political. It homogenizes the breath of what it means to human. In many ways this is the backbone of where distortion thrives and hate is amplified.
In the context of our story here, it seems it’s not enough that people of vulnerable and exploited populations suffered the curse of hate — and continue to be burdened by it — but there is now an assault against the expression of that suffering.
Notes on the 1619 Project
While Coates is deeply respected in the literary community, the 1619 project is riddled with challenges.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, critics have said of the 1619 project:
"It still strikes me as amazing why the NY Times would put its authority behind a project that has such weak scholarly support." - Gordon Wood, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American Revolution.
The New York Timespresented an "unbalance, one-sided account" that "left most of the history out." - James McPherson, civil war historian and Pulitzer winner.
The 1619 project is a "racialist falsification" of history," according to the World Socialist Website run by the Trotskyist Socialist Equality Party.
The 1619 Project has also found a nesting space in the California state department of education. A bill coming out of California sought to establish a K-12 curriculum introducing the "four I's of oppression." The plans are an extension of the 1619 project, which was the New York Times' account of race in American history.
In 2019, California State Assembly passed an ethnic-studies bill known as the AB 331 with a 63-8 vote ratio.
The model curriculum that came out of that bill was halted as result of bipartisan opinion that the curriculum was extreme.
2020 riots offered a new leverage to supporters in favor of the bill and curriculum.
In August 2020, the California education department offered a new curriculum draft, which passed a Senate committee vote on August 20th.
If Governor Gavin Newsom signs the bill, the legislation would require all school districts to offer a semester-long ethnic studies class, effective 2025.
In September 2020, Newsom vetoed the bill based on a question of what the appropriate model is for a K-12 ethnic studies program. (Please note, I have not inquired further on the state of this bill and where it stands today.)
If it were not for the events in 2020 surrounding George Floyd’s murder, the 1619 Project would not have gained momentum; most certainly, its Californian off-shoot would not have found the social pressure needed to raise the issue again after it was defeated for the first time — and now for the second time.
Ultimately, the 1619 project is less about history and more about race narratives. Those narratives, in a climate of polarized leadership that uses the language and tactics of radicalization to push agendas, further distorts our ability to have a real conversation about race in America and its impact on vulnerable populations.
Should we be teaching our children an historical narratives through multiple lenses beyond the role of oppressor/oppressed, conqueror/conquered? Absolutely.
Should the 1619 project be pushed into schools as curriculum? As a parent to a student who pulled their child out of public school during COVID, I think our entire public school system is broken and emphasis on the 1619 project is like worrying about a paper cut while downstream in a kayak, without a paddle, at the edge of a cliff, in a situation where you don’t know how to swim.
Exceptionalism on slavery denies the opportunity for progress, change, and division. It creates its own "national myth" by rejecting and defying context and individuality of the human experience.
Like all of us, Mr. Coates' views continue to evolve over time. We need a mercy-based discussion on race, slavery, and history, but artificial divisions continue to prevent us from having that discussion. Walls of rage with a foundation of history beginning from half a millenium ago create an atmosphere of caricature and distrust on people labeled exclusively by race, and not by their views and actions. We need to move beyond these labels and division. We need to be able to reject extremist hate - whatever its source - whether it is from the Ku Klux Klan or the Nation of Islam - and categorically reject the idea that people of another race are actually not "human beings." The dehumanization of "the other" only perpetuates the wrong of the slavery of the past, by normalizing dehumanization as a way of life that we should not only continue, but also openly encourage. We need to respect for our fellow human beings as human beings first - whatever labels we choose to put on them.
I distinctly recall Mr. Coates' criticism of "white folks" in December 2008 in the Atlantic because "you won't conform to the two-dimensional caricatures laid out for you," but 10+ years later, he has argued on behalf of a historical narrative that ultimately does seek to reduce them and their ancestors to just such two-dimension caricatures. When we take individuals and massivelyeduce them to only labels of identity groups and assume that they are all "good" or all "evil," we are ignoring both history and facts. But this labeling has been popular for sometime in the USA about a variety of groups and labels that make it convenient to be pro- or anti-"label." In the meantime, while many work to build walls, filtering the problems of today exclusively based on the distant past, they ignore that 1,528 fellow human beings have been shot thus far this year in one of the U.S. great cities of Chicago, and our human rights and our race-based organizations largely ignore such ongoing, daily atrocities. Our obsession with violence of centuries ago is so complete, we ignore massive violence going on today right in front of us - not simply by police abuse, but on a daily basis by fellow Americans, and too often by those whose rights we campaign to defend. We need to find the courage to embrace both outrage as well as shame - not simply about "the other," but also about ourselves and our silence on the disease of violence.
History based on dates and facts will always be subjective as well as objective, after all, such history depends on who is choosing what facts to tell, as it is impossible to convey all of human history in a limited space or time of communication. But Mr. Coates' U.S. "exceptionalism" statement that "the theft of labor and land" was essential to the creation of the U.S. leaves out a massive contextual element, in an attempt to use the "national myth" as a uniquely "national crime" and "original sin" for the U.S. alone. Again, history is both subjective as well as objective, and leaving out the context of "theft of labor and land" in the creation in parts of most "countries," prevents an honest and diligent examination of the past. Wrong is Wrong. But the wrong of 500+ years ago is not as uniquely wrong or "exceptional" as Mr. Coates and 1619 project convey. We know that the numbers of slaves brought to U.S. settlements were a historical and obscene wrong. The initial numbers of slaves that actually ended up in the U.S. were a limited portion of the total slave trade, but that does not discount the impact of their continued slavery of generations that led to nearly 4 million race slaves by the time of the U.S. Civil War. But the uniqueness of this U.S. wrong cannot ignore other history including the estimated 3-4 million "faith slaves" of Christians and Muslims, as a result of wars in Europe and the Mediterranean.
Before North and South American slavery, slavery sadly existed around the world, in Europe, the Mediterranean, Middle East, Asia, and in Africa. We don't guess this. We know this as historical fact, because of numerous documents from the earliest times of humankind, describing such practices of slavery, which are disgusting and despicable to us today, but had found a path of "normalcy" ages ago. As UNESCO has documented in Timbuktu alone, "From 650 to 1600, nearly five million enslaved people from sub-Saharan Africa were transported through Timbuktu and other desert trading centers for destinations along the Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean." The moral wrong of slavery from Africa that global historians have documented - predated the U.S. settlements by over 1,000 years. But we cannot and will not discuss those facts today as context today. We can both oppose the slavery in the U.S. settlements, and also recognize the long history behind the moral wrong of slavery, as well as those who opposed slavery and fought against it.
The U.S. history does not begin at either 1776 or 1619. The reality is the first settlements were in Florida, in San Agustín (St. Augustine) in 1513 with Juan Ponce de León, and in 1565 became the first permanent European settlment (by Spanish Europeans) in North America. French Europeans were also part of efforts at such settlements and wars. As part of global wars and the related ongoing slave trade between nation in Africa, Spanish Europeans ultimately brought slaves as part of their colonization efforts. The Jamestown, VA settlement was founded in May 14, 1607 and for years there was no slavery among the 104 initial settlers. The first English slavery was a result of war between Portugal and Ndongo (Angola), and 50,000 prisoners of war were exported from Angola to Portugal, when English pirates boarded them and seized the Angolans as part of their war against the Portugese, and they ultimately wound up in what is today Hampton, Virginia.
We do not have remembrance days to condemn the slavery described in the Talmud, the Bible, the Qur'an, the Vedas, early Buddhist texts, and the history of global people from ancient times. Let us also not confuse calling for "proper treatment" of slaves, or some calls to free slaves as "righteous act," with a moral position that commanded the complete and total abolition of slavery. We don't even imagine having such remembrance days to challenge such slavery from the distant past among these global people, many of whose spiritual texts represent religious inspiration from around the world. But our moral mathematics on wrong cannot only apply to a select period of time in a select part of the world. The "exceptionalism" of racial slavery committed in the U.S. as a specific and unique wrong is not a consistent focus on global human rights, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which forbids slavery (UDHR Article 4). This "exceptionalism" is instead focused to rightly challenge the literal whitewashing by some of the U.S. past, and it is right to make it crystal clear about these wrongs. Where this "exceptionalism" on slavery goes wrong is the idea that the U.S. crimes in slavery are unique in a way that makes the U.S. both unforgivable and irredeemable. We do not make the judgment on the rest of the entire world that accepted and normalized slavery in the past. Our moral compass must not simply only point moral wrongs with only one nation, one group of people, and one race. Wrong is wrong for all.