CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
 |  Subject: Humanities Academia in Crisis  Sun Apr 18, 2021 7:34 pm | |
| ‘Bad History and Worse Social Science Have Replaced Truth’
Daryl Michael Scott on propaganda and myth from ‘The 1619 Project’ to Trumpism.
Prof. Scott of Howard University is interviewed on topic by Len Gutkin for The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 10. The article is free access but requires registration with the site. I have posted two very good excerpts after the jump which were tweeted by Wesley Yang. But I highly recommend reading the entire article as it is a very good summary of the troubles that have been going on in this area.
Daryl Scott warns against the embrace of convenient lies by academics: "if the professors are understood to be nothing but propagandists, it will hurt those institutions." https://t.co/L07y5djFa1 pic.twitter.com/im5pNqnURM
— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) March 13, 2021
Scott notes that the American Exceptionalism -- "America is an idea" -- Reaganites embraced, and which was at the center of the 1776 Commission that Trump set up -- was the creation of mid-century American liberalism designed to repudiate conservative ideas of white nationhood pic.twitter.com/DwcaZmNgvo
— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) March 13, 2021
An interesting article. The 1619 Project is viewed as controversial. Scott notes that Leslie M Jones, who was a graduate student at the same time that he was, did a review of the 1619 Project before it was published by the NYT. Her advise was not taken.
From Dr. Jones, who specializes in the history of slavery in the 1600s onward
Weeks before, I had received an email from a New York Times research editor. Because I’m an historian of African American life and slavery, in New York, specifically, and the pre-Civil War era more generally, she wanted me to verify some statements for the project. At one point, she sent me this assertion: “One critical reason that the colonists declared their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery in the colonies, which had produced tremendous wealth. At the time there were growing calls to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire, which would have badly damaged the economies of colonies in both North and South.”
I vigorously disputed the claim. Although slavery was certainly an issue in the American Revolution, the protection of slavery was not one of the main reasons the 13 Colonies went to war.
The editor followed up with several questions probing the nature of slavery in the Colonial era, such as whether enslaved people were allowed to read, could legally marry, could congregate in groups of more than four, and could own, will or inherit property—the answers to which vary widely depending on the era and the colony. I explained these histories as best I could—with references to specific examples—but never heard back from her about how the information would be used.
Despite my advice, the Times published the incorrect statement about the American Revolution anyway, in Hannah-Jones’ introductory essay. In addition, the paper’s characterizations of slavery in early America reflected laws and practices more common in the antebellum era than in Colonial times, and did not accurately illustrate the varied experiences of the first generation of enslaved people that arrived in Virginia in 1619.
Both sets of inaccuracies worried me, but the Revolutionary War statement made me especially anxious. Overall, the 1619 Project is a much-needed corrective to the blindly celebratory histories that once dominated our understanding of the past—histories that wrongly suggested racism and slavery were not a central part of U.S. history. I was concerned that critics would use the overstated claim to discredit the entire undertaking. So far, that’s exactly what has happened.
More: https://dagblog.com/comment/303767
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