A more recent exemplar of Bad History (though arguably enabled/encouraged by the success of Zinn) is the 1619 Project of Nikole Hannah-Jones (published and pushed by the New York Times and the New York Times magazine). This bit of “history” (subsequently re-framed as “educational materials,” and then subsequently re-framed as “journalism”) attempts to revise U.S. history in such a way that slavery and white supremacy are at the core of the American enterprise.
The reaction of actual historians (unlike the case of Zinn) was swift and unsparing. Hannah-Jones’ claim that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery,” in particular, was vigorously opposed (principally because there is not a shred of evidence for it). Marxists opposed it, conservative scholars opposed it vehemently, center-left scholars opposed it, historians of no particular political persuasion opposed it, conservative commentators opposed it, and the centrist “1776 Unites” project of the Woodson Center was born largely out of opposition to it. The New York Times’ response to all this criticism has been to double down and refuse to admit any error, all the while changing the promotional materials so as to re-brand it as journalism, not history (see the fascinating response to this re-branding from the World Socialist Web Site – the phrase “evasive and disingenuous” was used).
I wish I could say that, once the educational establishment saw the blowback against the project from distinguished historians across the political spectrum and the dishonest response to the blowback, they slunk away furtively from the project. Instead, school boards across the country eagerly adopted it (or recommended it), resulting in parental backlash, legislative backlash and likely the election of a Republican governor in Virginia.
This might be a cautionary tale related to the Zinn story in a couple of different ways – perhaps it wouldn’t have made a difference if academic historians had taken Howard Zinn on (after all, it doesn’t seem to have made a difference here); perhaps it didn’t make a difference here because the forces invested in oikophobia, emboldened by the success of Zinn, just didn’t give up when faced with nearly uniform opposition from actual historians. Or, maybe, it’s just a different story, with a different trajectory for many different reasons.
At this point, it’s tempting to get into the weeds with all the many, many factual errors in the 1619 Project* but it’s unclear how helpful that is. The links in this paragraph contain lots of them, from extremely eminent historians, but that hasn’t been enough yet to cast the project onto the “ash heap of history.” When someone is determined enough to write what is obviously intended as a revolutionary shift in historical interpretation, but they don’t even run drafts by the eminent experts in the field (and ignore the responses of the ones they did consult), it becomes clear that the real aim of the project is likely not to communicate historical truth.
I can’t say what truly motivated Nikole Hannah-Jones and her colleagues to produce this work, but for U.S. students who receive their view of U.S. history through this extraordinarily noisy filter, the result, I’m afraid, will be more oikophobia.
* as one example, the servants who came to Virginia in 1619 (the “true founding” of America according to the project) were almost certainly not what we think of as slaves (that is “slaves for life”) but rather “involuntary indentured servants” (that is, obligated to work for a fixed period of time, though they did not enter this arrangement voluntarily). The first slave for life in Virginia was John Punch, declared such in 1640 for running away from his indentured master, and the second was John Casor, declared such in 1655 and owned by Anthony Johnson, a free, black, former indentured servant who arrived from present-day Angola in 1621. Thus, the second “true slave” in Virginia had a black master – hardly any sort of white supremacist. Even Wikipedia gets these details right, but Hannah-Jones and her NYT compatriots just couldn’t be bothered.
I will mention this essay by Phil Magness, as an attempt to assess “ground truth” for 4 key points of contention between the 1619 Project and its 5 most vocal historian critics – his score is 3-1, historians.