Historians have argued that the rise of liberty and equality in America, America's democratic experiment, was shadowed from its beginning by its dark obverse: slavery and racism. Slavery in the midst of freedom, Edmund Morgan writes, was the central paradox of the birth of America.

The rapid expansion of opportunities for Europeans was made possible only by the enslavement and exploitation of African and Indian peoples.

Non-Europeans were consigned to a permanent underclass excluded from the benefits of white society, while Europeans profited enormously from the fruits of the labors of those they oppressed.

This is the major contention of the 1619 Project, is it not? 

But this was written prior to the 1619 Project by a white man.  So what is the big deal? other than to try and marginalize black activists as un-American and even communists. . 

The biggest problem with the 1619 Project is that it is a clumsily constructed theory based upon faulty assumptions....with no credible evidence to support it. [deleted]

Removed for context

The seeded article supports the premise of the 1619 Project. That is why I seeded it. 

So, why don't we celebrate the Virginia Colony of 1619 as the beginning of America?  The Plymouth Colony of 1620 has always been celebrated as the beginning of America.  The Mayflower Compact, written by colonists on the Mayflower, has been cited as the first example of free people governing themselves in America.  The Plymouth Colony was the seedling for religious freedom, free thought and speech, and self government that became the core of the Federalist movement that resulted in our Constitution.

Our national mythology is based upon Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts and our Pilgrim forebears of 1620.  The Mayflower brought the beginning of America to the continent; not slave ships.  The swamps of Virginia hasn't been part of our national mythology and we haven't celebrated colonization of Virginia as the birth of America.  Virginia slaves contributed nothing to the beginning of America and the founding of the United States.

I think that scholars like the author of this article probably know a little more about the history of their speciality than myth makers do. 

I think that scholars like the author of this article probably know a little more about the history of their speciality than myth makers do. 

Then why did the author get it wrong?  The Mayflower Compact was the first document that established self government in the New World in 1620.  

Where did the American Revolution begin?  It wasn't in the swamps of Virginia.  Virginia slaves contributed nothing to the beginning of America or the founding of the United States.

If these historians want to celebrate the history of the Confederacy, that's their choice.  But it was what Pilgrim settlers started that made that choice possible.

Virginia slaves contributed nothing to the beginning of America or the founding of the United States.

OMG.

Four of the first five US presidents were from Virginia. 

What did the slaves contribute, other than their labor.?

You are going to dig yourself a hole you won't be able to get out of. 

Do you honestly think that all those rich plantation owners would harvest that cotton, tobacco and sugarcane without slave labor?

Those slaves made landowners rich

George Washington was one of the richest men in America. When he died he owned more than 50,000 acres of land. 

I was never taught that in school. 

Washington and Jefferson's and Madison's cares were not the cares of everyday people, and especially not everyday people in the industrial age and the computer age. 

a hole you won't be able to get out of.

he'll get out of it when he reaches China

I think you mean russia.

was never taught that in school. 

I guess your teachers didn't want to lie to you. 

Washington divided his estate between 23 heirs, effectively splitting all of his wealth. The majority of the former president's wealth was tied up in land, which made him one of the richest men in America.  George Washington's Final Years—And Sudden, Agonizing Death - HISTORY

Washington was so broke he had to borrow money to go to the Constitutional  convention. The idea that he was one of the richest men in America is preposterous. His "wealth" consisted of land on the frontier that was essentially worthless while he was alive  and most of it ended up being taken over by squatters.  It's simply preposterous revisionism based on what the land was worth well after  he was dead. 

 ...Until the eve of the Revolution he devoted himself to the duties and pleasures of a great landholder, varied by several weeks’ attendance every year in the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg. During 1760–74 he was also a justice of the peace for Fairfax county, sitting in court in Alexandria.

In no light does Washington appear more characteristically than as one of the richest, largest, and most industrious of Virginia planters....

Encyclopedia Britannica

George Washington was a wealthy elitist. 

George Washington was a wealthy elitist. 

Backpedaling from one of the richest men in America claim I see. Bernie Sanders is wealthy.   There's a difference between calling Sanders wealthy and calling him one of the richest men in America. 

As your own source says  "he minutely inspected operations every day and according to one visitor often pulled off his coat and performed ordinary labour"   He was far from the idle rich

I am not backtracking from anything.  I have seen numerous references to Washington being one of the richest men in America at the time but I dont wish to argue about it. 

He was quite wealthy. We can leave it at that. 

For real Nerm, starting up with this shit again? What do you have against black people? I ask because downplaying slavery in American history and blaming the slaves for America’s problem is starting to become a thing with you.

Being the economic backbone for half the country is a pretty big contribution.

I think it is was a reference to the old saying, digging deep enough to reach China.  It was also used in the movie The China Syndrome, one of Jane Fonda's best roles ever imo.  But Russia works also.

"The Plymouth Colony was the seedling for religious freedom, free thought and speech, and self government that became the core of the Federalist movement that resulted in our Constitution."

Ah yes, religious freedom to be any type of God fearing Christian conservative you wanted to be, but don't you dare let us catch you practicing any of the native religions or we'll string you up by the neck and label you a heretic or a witch!

"Our national mythology is based upon Plymouth Rock"

Mythology: noun - a collection of myths, especially one belonging to a particular religious or cultural tradition

Myth: noun - a widely held but false belief or idea.

The Mayflower brought the beginning of America to the continent; not slave ships.

Yet that wasn't really the "founding" of America since those slave ships had already arrived in August of 1619 at what is today's Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia. The romanticized "myth" of the founding being the Mayflower and the Speedwell landing at Plymouth rock is just that, a myth. Ignoring the actual facts in favor of the myth just shows how weak and childish ones mind must be. The fact is that the English were importing slaves to the Americas even before the 20+ slaves were brought into Virginia as slaves were brought to the English colonies in Bermuda years before.

"The swamps of Virginia hasn't been part of our national mythology and we haven't celebrated colonization of Virginia as the birth of America."

Because it didn't really make for good storytelling, not because it didn't happen.

"Virginia slaves contributed nothing to the beginning of America and the founding of the United States."

And you have what kind of evidence to support this opinion? Did the 20+ slaves brought just sit on their hands? Are you claiming they were for some reason "lazy" thus didn't contribute anything? Why is their supposed "contributing nothing" so important to you personally?

I'm not really sure why some seem so desperate to separate America from its long history of slavery. The colonies and America has had a longer history of accepting and supporting slavery in the Americas than we've had without slavery. It's just a fact and anyone trying to obfuscate those facts likely have some deep seated need to distance themselves from that history, perhaps because it hits a little too close to home to their hidden prejudices that they continue to harbor but are desperate to deflect and distract from.

The 1619 project shouldn't be any point of contention for rational thinking Americans regardless of what skin color or background they have, it's merely unvarnished colonial American history. Those who demand a whitewashing and varnishing of colonial American history so they can feel better about themselves might want to reexamine why and ask if it's their own inadequacies or explore what feelings such facts are causing to surface in them and why.

Yet that wasn't really the "founding" of America since those slave ships had already arrived in August of 1619 at what is today's Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia. The romanticized "myth" of the founding being the Mayflower and the Speedwell landing at Plymouth rock is just that, a myth. Ignoring the actual facts in favor of the myth just shows how weak and childish ones mind must be. The fact is that the English were importing slaves to the Americas even before the 20+ slaves were brought into Virginia as slaves were brought to the English colonies in Bermuda years before.

You are attempting to make a 'squatters' rights' argument.  Typically those 'squatters' rights' arguments are all about the greed. 

The Pilgrims, particularly the Puritans, came to the New World to escape Europe.  The Pilgrims were the oppressed people that today's liberals champion.  

The Virginia Colony was settled to pursue greed.  The Virginia Colony was not established by oppressed people.  The Plymouth Colony was settled to survive; to escape harassments, imprisonment, and death because of their religious beliefs.

The Plymouth Colony represents desirable qualities in the American myth.  The Virginia Colony represents undesirable qualities in the American myth.  Which are you celebrating?

Nerm's "argument" in this matter seems to be Puritans good, Virginia tobacco planters bad, and since the slaves were held by the bad people we don't need to discuss the slaves in terms of America's founding, because the "good" story of the Puritans is a better "national myth". 

Its not a good argument , but apparently the best his side can do. 

Our Education system is full of myths that are taught as "facts." Anyone interested in a sample of this should read "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James M. Loewen.

1619 Project leaves out and ignores several facts.

That the vast majority of slaves sold to slave traders were from African tribes.

digitalhistory.uh

African Slavery

1. African law recognized slavery and the right of owners to alienate slaves.

2. A relatively low population density and an absence of the concept of property in land encouraged the development of slavery in West and Central Africa.

3. Slavery had been important in the medieval empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai, and slave exports had supplemented the export of gold.

4. Although African slavery was not a benign institution, slaves in Africa were used in a wider variety of ways than in the New World: they were employed as agricultural workers, soldiers, servants, and officials.

5. The great majority of slaves sold to Europeans were not slaves in Africa; they were usually recent war captives or victims of banditry and judicial proceedings.

wsj

But the American side of the story is not the only one. Africans are now also reckoning with their own complicated legacy in the slave trade, and the infamous “Middle Passage” often looks different from across the Atlantic.

Records from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, directed by historian David Eltis at Emory University, show that the majority of captives brought to the U.S. came from Senegal, Gambia, Congo and eastern Nigeria. Europeans oversaw this brutal traffic in human cargo, but they had many local collaborators. “The organization of the slave trade was structured to have the Europeans stay along the coast lines, relying on African middlemen and merchants to bring the slaves to them,” said Toyin Falola, a Nigerian professor of African studies at the University of Texas at Austin. “The Europeans couldn’t have gone into the interior to get the slaves themselves.”

The anguished debate over slavery in the U.S. is often silent on the role that Africans played. That silence is echoed in many African countries, where there is hardly any national discussion or acknowledgment of the issue. From nursery school through university in Nigeria, I was taught about great African cultures and conquerors of times past but not about African involvement in the slave trade. In an attempt to reclaim some of the dignity that we lost during colonialism, Africans have tended to magnify stories of a glorious past of rich traditions and brave achievement.

But there are other, less discussed chapters of our history. When I was growing up, my father Chukwuma Nwaubani spoke glowingly of my great-grandfather, Nwaubani Ogogo Oriaku, a chief among our Igbo ethnic group who sold slaves in the 19th century. “He was respected by everyone around,” he said. “Even the white people respected him.” From the 16th to the 19th centuries, an estimated 1.4 million Igbo people were transported across the Atlantic as slaves.

Slave traders were European. Yet they, like the African tribes that sold slaves to them, get a free pass. 

blackhistorymonth.uk

sold by Africans to European slave traders who then transported them to the colonies in North and South America. The numbers were so great that Africans who came by way of the slave trade became the most numerous Old-World immigrants in both North and South America before the late eighteenth century.

britannica

By the 1480s, Portuguese ships were already transporting Africans for use as slaves on the sugar plantations in the Cape Verde and Madeira islands in the eastern Atlantic. Spanish conquistadors took African slaves to the Caribbean after 1502, but Portuguese merchants continued to dominate the transatlantic slave trade for another century and a half, operating from their bases in the Congo-Angola area along the west coast of Africa. The Dutch became the foremost slave traders during parts of the 1600s, and in the following century English and French merchants controlled about half of the transatlantic slave trade, taking a large percentage of their human cargo from the region of West Africa between the Sénégal and Niger rivers.

If you are going to teach history, then teach all of it. Don't act like the US was the only country in the world to ever use slaves. Nor did we go to Africa and capture slaves to bring back for sale in the US. There was a whole world wide network of slave trade. It just didn't spring up in a vacuum in the US.

Thats all immaterial.  Frankly, I have found that the argument that the Africans were sold into slavery by other Africans and thus the Europeans are not really at fault is an excuse used by people trying to excuse racism. 

Pulling the racist card? That is all you have?

Slavery was a world wide organization. Africans sold Africans into slavery- and used slaves themselves. Teaching all aspects of history does not diminish slavery in any way in the US, or the role slaves played in building this country. It is reality, something that is in very short supply it seems for some on the left.

yesmagazine

The 1619 project acts like this country wouldn't have existed w/o slavery. That no accomplishments or advancements would have been made w/o them; which is completely false. 

[ deleted ]

Pulling the racist card? That is all you have?

White racists have been saying that slavery in America was no big deal because the Africans were sold into slavery by their own for as long as I have been alive. 

The whole premise of this leftist myth is absurd.

Almost all of the development of the USA that led to its advancement into an independent nation occurred in the industrialized North. The fact that a few of the Founders held slaves is irrelevant

[deleted]

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DEFLECTION, PROJECTION, DENIAL

I am super sick and tired of people like you trotting that out whenever the subject of slavery comes up. Yes, Africans did engage in the slave trade but would they have if wealthy people like rich plantation owners didn't buy slaves? Would they have had a market in West Africa if they couldn't sell people to white Europeans?

No one is contesting where or how the slaves were obtained. Once they were here though their origin has no real place in the discussion of American slavery practices and its long lingering effects.

We all know slavery is a very old practice and was practiced around the world for thousands of years. Not sure what the relevance is to how it was practiced here.

The simple fact of the matter is that slavery in America was not a small thing and not something that can be written off or ignored. It has a substantial impact on drafting of the constitution, the social and economic development of half the country, and the civil war was fought over it. 

Among the many axioms of history, 2 tend to rise above all others on yada-yada sites such as this:

1. History is written by the victors.

2: Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.

It follows that a history that leaves out the perspective of the losers/vanquished is doomed to be repeated by the sheer weight of the absence of complete perspective.

Historical truth is not as many seem to want, a garden of the right flowers in the right places; history’s garden is also full of weeds, many of them invasive.

So a question, what would be the history of Jazz if  a Billie Holiday was but a footnote?

I think it’s strange to talk of change in Virginia in 1619, claiming slavery as the subject of that change. The Portuguese and the Spanish had been working the slave trade in the Americas for 100 years by this time, and the African slave trade to Europe, Asia and within Africa itself had existed for centuries prior.

If we are talking about English colonization, there really isn’t much going on in America before this time. So how could there be change with respect to slavery? The truly remarkable change is this: 

1619 marks the inception of the most important political development in American history, the rise of democracy . . . 

It’s really the development of self-rule and concepts of liberty and inalienable human rights in the North American colonies that sparked change - change from the old ways. Slavery was not the new thing in 1619. The utilization of slaves was something that was already happening around the world. It took the new systems and new ideologies evolving in America and Europe to eliminate slavery, but that would take time. It’s never simple or quick to overcome centuries of traditional practices, no matter how easily we can see the cruelty of it from the vantage point of modern times.

It’s really the development of self-rule and concepts of liberty and inalienable human rights in the North American colonies that sparked change - change from the old ways. Slavery was not the new thing in 1619. The utilization of slaves was something that was already happening around the world. It took the new systems and new ideologies evolving in America and Europe to eliminate slavery, but that would take time. It’s never simple or quick to overcome centuries of traditional practices, no matter how easily we can see the cruelty of it from the vantage point of modern times.

With all due respect I think you are misunderstanding the article.  Because of events, slavery and democracy grew up hand in hand, so to speak, in the colonies. That is the point of this article , or one of the points, as I excerpted, and that is also one of the main points of the 1619 Project. 

Why did they go back to 1619? Because 1619 has never been taught to schoolchildren as an important year. 1492 was , 1607 was (founding of Jamestown), 1776 was, but 1619 was not.  In the seeded article we see that democracy in a sense and slavery came to America at the same time. 

I dont agree with some of the rhetoric of the 1619 Project which is unnecessarily strident, but I have no issue with the premise , which is to approach US history from a different perspective than most of us were taught in school. 

Because of events, slavery and democracy grew up hand in hand, so to speak, in the colonies. That is the point of this article

As you can see in my earlier comment. I think that’s wrong. Slavery was an ancient and mature institution by 1619. Even in the Americas, it had been going on for a century. It just hadn’t been going on in Virginia because Virginia didn’t exist yet as a European holding. Democratic self-rule and inalienable rights, on the other hand, were new concepts.

Even an elementary school kid can read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution and figure out that slavery conflicts with the ideology expressed there. But those documents hadn’t been written by 1619.

In the seeded article we see that democracy in a sense and slavery came to America at the same time. 

What we should see and acknowledge is that slavery existed already. It came to America when Europeans settled the land and sought to develop it. It’s not as if there was a free European society here that was polluted by the introduction of slavery. They came together. Over time - not that long a time in the scheme of human history - slavery was removed from this society. Slavery was not the change. The concept of natural human rights protected by government was the change, but that didn’t really develop popularly until later. That’s why 1776 is such an important date. 

I dont agree with some of the rhetoric of the 1619 Project which is unnecessarily strident, but I have no issue with the premise , which is to approach US history from a different perspective than most of us were taught in school. 

I’m not sure, but we may or may not agree on some things that should be taught about American history. I do believe - and I have for many years, since I have had to teach history - that the history of America cannot be properly taught without continually looking at it through the divisive prism of race relations.

However, my understanding of 1619 critics and critical race theory critics is that they think those approaches teach young Americans to hate their country as irretrievably racist, and hate themselves as inherently racist people. To the extent that those ideas are taught (and I don’t know if that is truly the intent), I would agree that that is an unfair and inaccurate approach.

1619 was important in that it was the year that America’s system of slavery found its roots, and the long shadow it casts even today.

Double post

At least now the right wing has the word "WOKE" to get their sniffs in a snuff.

For the old Antebellum crowd the very thought of 1619, the history of it and the continuing aftermath of it merely exposes them for what they always were and continue to be.