‘1619 Project’ Creator Rejects UNC’s Tenure Offer After Right-Wing Outrage Over Hiring | Talking Points Memo

Well, the people who are afraid of the truth and of words and ideas are never going to win. Never.

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Please. It provides a necessary correction to the valorization of 1776 and its parcel of Rich White Guys who enslaved people and didn’t want to pay taxes (I exempt Dr Franklin and a number of others, including my homeboy Elbridge Gerry, not to mention all the working-class guys in the street who made it happen so the powdered wigs could sign in the room. But T Jefferson and the rest of the slaveholders’ caucus can fuck right off).

And it’s “it’s bullshit.”

They knuckled under to a rich white asshole who’s on the Board of Trustees.

She nailed it: as someone said on Twitter, “Total baller move. Championship dunk.” And she brought along Ta-Nehisi Coates.

[e/t/a: https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/nikole-hannah-jones-issues-statement-on-decision-to-decline-tenure-offer-at-university-of-north-carolina-chapel-hill-and-to-accept-knight-chair-appointment-at-howard-university/]

And YEAH–S.D.-who-shall-not-be-named, Phylicia Rashad made a series of disgustingly stupid tweets about Cosby’s “exoneration,” and she should be mocked and shamed.

But Howard U is, beyond anything the pecksniffs want to say about Rashad. Hannah-Jones played this as a total power move, and she schooled them, explicitly, in precisely why it’s “not [her] job to fix UNC.”

Sure do. A somewhat-hidden but terribly corrosive aspect of the corporatization of US higher ed.

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Maybe so, but this is what this TPM article says.

Hannah-Jones became a target of right-wing grievance after she created the New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” which argues that the founding of the United States happened in August 1619, when the first slave ship arrived in the country. Hannah-Jones won the 2020 Pulitzer Price for Commentary for the “1619 Project.”

What comes out of this is a trite statement that is damaging. It leads to misunderstanding, just like the “Defund the Police” nonsense hurt some Democrats’ reelection.

In 1619, the first AA became indentured servants. After their 7 years of service they got their 40 acres. Because they were successful at farming and their color didn’t matter to most white Virginia colonist, by 1700 there were 10 of thousands of free mulattoes and blacks in Virginia colony.

Initiated after Bacon’s rebellion, when whites and black got together to fight against the control exerted by rich white landowners, was a concerted divide and conquer strategy that still lives on today.

Colonial charters and other official documents written in the 1600s and early 1700s rarely refer to European colonists as white.

Many of the European-descended poor whites began to identify themselves, if not directly with the rich whites, certainly with being white. And here you get the emergence of this idea of a white race as a way to distinguish themselves from those dark-skinned people who they associate with perpetual slavery.

Racism was not a significant issue before this for Africans or Europeans. This is what needs to be taught.

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Ok. But replacing bullshit with bullshit is not the way to go.

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It’s Not. Bullshit.

History is always interpretation. You want a different one? Get the training, do the research, write the manuscript, go through the peer review, accommodate requested changes, get published.

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I read stories like this, and I think “Who are these moronic assholes?”, and then I remember they are my cousins, my former friends, people I see every day in stores and gas stations - they are the members of the church down the street, they are on our school board, they are teaching at our schools, they are my neighbors and they are my representatives in government - Andy Biggs is my representative.

I’m surrounded.

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I remember when the word donor implied something noble.

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Biggs is my Rep., as well; I feel your pain.

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I understand why Hannah-Jones would feel more comfortable at Howard. But if she cares about her 1619 Project and the truths is represents, this is a terrible decision! I do believe she was initially denied tenure because of racism and the right-wing rage machine. But many supporters came out to fight for her. And they won! And now she walks away?

Hannah-Jones has revealed herself to be a fair-weather ally to her own beliefs.

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Not to be too disputatious with you; but why would Hannah-Jones be more comfortable at Howard? Seems to me she has been offered a good gig at Howard; and UNC’s major concern presently has to do with their basketball program. Priorities!

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UNC showed her exactly what she was worth to them. I’m glad people rallied and showed UNC up for the craven fools they are, but what’s going to happen after the limelight fades?

She made the right call

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yes, there should be a nail pounded into the timeline to identify 1619 as a critical milestone - and the beginning of a horrible and inhuman practice in America.

but we do have to note that 1619 is 157 years before 1776 …

I do not know the exact point when the very first visionary thinkers in the colonies began to seriously contemplate the possibility of breaking away and establishing and independent free-standing nation but would guess that it was not until at least the 1760’s …

Now the way I was taught “American History” - the history of colonization of North America - it also included the preliminary events … a whole bunch - the explorers - and the beginning settlements

(1.) the oldest permanent European settlement in what is now the United States was founded in September 1565 by a Spanish soldier named Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in St. Augustine, Florida.
(2.) The colony that was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.
(3)The Pilgrims, founders of Plymouth, Massachusetts, who arrived in 1620.
(4) In 1624, the first colonists, mostly Walloons and their slaves-bound servants, arrived to New Netherland by the shipload, landing at Governors Island. In 1626, Director of the WIC Peter Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan from the Lenape natives and started construction of Fort Amsterdam, which grew to become the main port and capital, New Amsterdam.
and on and on …

So there was over 150+ years of colonizing settling that went on in a rambling - far from unified way - with much of the final say over the way things happened being held in the European capitol of the countries that controlled the respective colonies… and did so for a century and a half …

So where does the finger of “accountability” point - well that is a tough one - but that isn’t exactly the point … it is more a matter of how should the “history of The United States” be delineated - but that gets fuzzy too … nonetheless … it is more than reasonable that the Black experience, the slave trade , and the capitalization on slave labor be recognized as an integral part of the history & be given due recognition of the role that was played and the price that was paid - cultural price - family price - aand economic price.

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Oh lordy, when are we just going to stop with THAT dead horse? The recent Pew analysis pretty much shows we did great in those “Law and Order” burbs and among those “I Like My Local Cops” independents. There is absolutely nothing Dems could say, advocate, or vote for that the GQP wouldn’t twist into some new idiocy.

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Howard U. is “friendly territory” from a political point of view for Hannah-Jones. UNC would have been a battleground. Uncomfortable sure, but where you need to be, if you want to win battles.

I don’t need a degree or research to call it. You’ve got to be able to see bullshit and call it!

The limelight is only fading because Hannah-Jones is leaving the battlefield.

Soon, Hannah-Jones will be comfortably ensconced as a tenured professor in a university which will never question her worthiness or wisdom. UNC will get around to hiring a academic nothing-burger, whose only qualification will be his/her lack of controversy. And the right-wing will crow that they successfully derailed an attempt an attempt by the “far left” to give a “radical” professor a prestigious posting because of values that Tucker Carlson doesn’t like.

In other words the craven fools won. That’s not the right call.

I agree. But here is a milestone that set the course of wholesale slavery and racism in the US. That was Bacon’s Rebellion were black mulattoes and whites together rebelled against the English governor of Virginia. It lead to the “establishment” of the white and black races in America, the delineation of people by skin color in an attempt to create division (divide and conquer); it was initiated by wealthy land owners.

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It was still a dumb idea. It misinformed. 25% of congressional democrats had to run ads to counter the misinformation that started on the left.

The opening line from Hannah-Jones’ pulitzer-winning commentary- “Our founding ideals of liberty and equity were false when they were written.” She laid the groundwork in her first sentence. She’s saying that slavery was accepted in this land before the idea of America being a separate country. She goes on to talk about Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence while his wife’s enslaved half-brother was acting as his man-servant- no irony there.

I know that everyone will not see the merit in her work, but, respectfully, bullshit it isn’t. I remember learning about Jamestown as part of American history.

Look, I don’t like many parts of American history that I learned, but it is what it is, and we cannot pick and choose what happened. American History is full of accounts of people fucked over because someone decided they needed to win something, which to them meant someone had to lose. Slavery and racism figure prominently in American History.

I just today learned about the DC Compensated Emancipation Act. I had heard about the Slave Compensation Act of 1837, which provided generation wealth to several current members of Britain’s House of Lords. It’s not all about slavery either. Look at the Chinese Exclusion Act- America needed Chinese labor for the railroads, but decided that too many Chinese weren’t good. That act was in effect from 1882 to 1943. The refusal to accept Jewish refugees in 1939. Continuing treatment of Native Americans, including the use of so called Indian Schools in America as well as Canada and Australia.

Hannah-Jone’s work is and should be thought-provoking. While several historians disagree with the premise and some points, they can’t refute the overall work.

Time to stop running from history.

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I never said her work was bullshit. I said the 1619 date was.