Nikole Hannah-Jones is the founder of the New York Times 1619 project. She
is reviled by white supremacists for having called into questions things
like the motivation for the declaration of independence from abolitionist
England. A solid body of evidence points to how the South felt that
England was going to end slavery and so they joined the Puritan
northerners to achieve independence.
As a result, white supremacists such as Fox News, the Daily Mail, and
others have seized on a long forgotten article Hannah-Jones wrote in 2008
(The
Cuba We Don't Know 9/27/2008 Oregon Live) where she praised the Cuban
government for the low rates of HIV and high levels of education among
other factually non-controversial items at that time. And they dredged up
a small portion of an obscure 2019 Vox podcast (Nikole
Hannah-Jones on the 1619 project, choosing schools, and Cuba) to show that she thought
Cuba had done the most of any country in the hemisphere in terms of
fighting racism. The US far right, now the mainstream right, is eager to
racialize every topic they can, which in this case could have unforseen
consequences.
Nikole Hannah-Jones said Cuba ‘most equal’ Western country in podcast 7/19/2021 NY
Post: "New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who led the publication’s
controversial “1619 Project,” claimed Cuba is the “most equal” country in the
Western Hemisphere in a newly resurfaced podcast, sparking fresh criticism from
conservatives online. Hannah-Jones made the eyebrow-raising comments about the
Communist regime in a 2019 chat with Ezra Klein, the National Post reported last
week."
1619 Project founder believes Cuba has 'the least inequality' and has brought
about the 'end of codified racism' 7/16/2021 The Post Millenial: ""The most
equal multi-racial country in our hemisphere, it would be Cuba. Cuba has the
least inequality between black and white people anyplace really in the
hemisphere. I mean, the Caribbean, most of the Caribbean it's hard to count
because the white population in a lot of those countries is very, very small. A
lot of those countries are run by black folks. But in places that are truly at
least biracial countries, Cuba actually has the least inequality. And that's
largely due to socialism—which I'm sure no one wants to hear," Hannah-Jones
continued."
LISTEN: 1619 Founder Believes America Should Follow Cuban Path. 7/13/2021 National
Pulse: "1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones claimed that “largely due to
socialism” Cuba had the “least inequality between black and white people” while
speaking on a Vox podcast in 2019."
Seven months later, 1619 Project leader admits she got it wrong 3/12/2020 Washington
Examiner: "The head of the New York Times’s much-hyped 1619 Project concedes she
got it wrong when she reported that “one of the primary reasons” the colonists
revolted against England was to preserve the institution of slavery. Journalist
Nikole Hannah-Jones claims now that she meant to say “some of” the colonists
fought to preserve slavery, not all of them. The admission comes seven months
after her faulty assertion first appeared in the New York Times’s package of
essays arguing that America’s founding is defined by chattel slavery. The
admission also comes after Hannah-Jones mocked and debased the many academics
who directed mild and good-faith criticisms at her bogus statement."
The Cuba We Don't Know 9/27/2008 Oregon Live: "This summer I traveled to
Cuba with six journalists, documenting the experiences of the African diaspora
in the Western Hemisphere for the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies in
North Carolina. While there, I found a Cuba you may not know. A Cuba with a 99.8
percent literacy rate, the lowest HIV infection rate in the Western Hemisphere,
free college and health care."
As Confederate Statues Come Down, It's Worth Remembering That the Civil War
Wasn't the Only American Conflict Involving Slavery 6/22/2020 Time: "Three
attorneys who dedicated their careers to American civil rights, in two separate
books, have provided the basis for a fresh but compelling explanation for the
American south to enter the American Revolution alongside their northern
brothers: A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.’s 1978 In the Matter of Color and 2005’s
Slave Nation by Alfred W. and Ruth G. Blumrosen. These authors, whose work has
more recently been cited by the New York Times’ 1619 Project, arrive at a single
conclusion. The Southern colonies had no reason to put their lives, their
families’ lives, their property and their legacy on the line until a single
decision at the Court of King’s Bench in London on June 22, 1772, Somersett v.
Steuart, often seen written as Somerset v. Stewart."
I Helped Fact-Check the 1619 Project. The Times Ignored Me. 3/6/2020 Politico: "It
is easy to correct facts; it is much harder to correct a worldview that
consistently ignores and distorts the role of African Americans and race in our
history in order to present white people as all powerful and solely in
possession to the keys of equality, freedom and democracy. At least that is the
corrective history toward which the 1619 Project is moving, if imperfectly."
1619 Project Fact-Checker Says The New York Times Ignored Her Objections 3/6/2020 Reason: "Far
from being fought to preserve slavery, the Revolutionary War became a primary
disrupter of slavery in the North American Colonies. Lord Dunmore's
Proclamation, a British military strategy designed to unsettle the Southern
Colonies by inviting enslaved people to flee to British lines, propelled
hundreds of enslaved people off plantations and turned some Southerners to the
patriot side. It also led most of the 13 Colonies to arm and employ free and
enslaved black people, with the promise of freedom to those who served in their
armies."
The Fight Over the 1619 Project 2/9/2020 The Bulwark: "Revisionist claims
of such a backlash rely heavily either on apparent speculation—the Blumrosens’
2005 book, Slave Nation, is particularly egregious in this respect, discussing
at some length how “slave owners and their lawyers react[ed]” without citing a
single source—or on disturbingly out-of-context citations."
We Respond to the Historians Who Critiqued The 1619 Project 12/20/2019 NYT: "The
work of various historians, among them David Waldstreicher and Alfred W. and
Ruth G. Blumrosen, supports the contention that uneasiness among slaveholders in
the colonies about growing antislavery sentiment in Britain and increasing
imperial regulation helped motivate the Revolution. One main episode that these
and other historians refer to is the landmark 1772 decision of the British high
court in Somerset v. Stewart. The case concerned a British customs agent named
Charles Stewart who bought an enslaved man named Somerset and took him to
England, where he briefly escaped. Stewart captured Somerset and planned to sell
him and ship him to Jamaica, only for the chief justice, Lord Mansfield, to
declare this unlawful, because chattel slavery was not supported by English
common law."
