I've been so pissed since I read about this in NYT, that I was hoping someone else would start the discussion, alas.

So, the NYT has decided we should all look at American history through the slave perspective. It is only they, that have done anything towards making America a semi-decent place to be. Any accomplishments have been on their backs or by them. Seriously. They have even come up with lesson plans made in conjunction with the Smithsonian, thus using all of our money to change history.

Oh the Founding Fathers? )They don't capitalize that title, they were just lucky heirs to what had already been done with the slaves. The entire Revolution was a response to England wanting to end slavery. There is no mention of the thousands of years that slavery existed prior to 1619, it was all those English colonists doing.

https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/605...omment-1021541

Retconned America – The 1619 Project
Posted by Sgt. Mom on August 19th, 2019 (All posts by Sgt. Mom)

It appears that this week, the New York Times, the so-called paper of record, upon whom the self-directed spotlight of smug superiority ever shines – has now taken that final, irrevocable step from the business of reporting news and current events, matters cultural and artistic to becoming a purveyor of progressive propaganda. Of course, as characters in British procedural mysteries often say, ‘they have form’ when it comes to progressive propaganda; all the way from Walter Duranty’s reporting on famine in the Soviet Union through the drumbeat of ‘worst war-crime evah!’ in coverage when it came to Abu Ghraib, and the current bęte noir – or rather ‘bęte orange’ man bad. It seems that it has now become necessary for the Times to make the issue of chattel slavery of black Africans the centerpiece, the foundation stone, the sum and total of American history. Everything – absolutely everything in American history and culture now must be filtered through the pitiless lens of slavery.


Never mind that as a human institution, slavery has existed at least as long as war, prostitution, and agriculture itself. Never mind that black slaves from Africa went largely to the middle east, to the Caribbean and to South America, where they labored in such horrible conditions that few survived, let alone reproduced. Never mind that at least as many English, Irish and Scots arrived in those English colonies in North America as indentured servants laboring under the same brutal conditions. Never mind that at least half of the founding fathers had strong objections to chattel slavery, and less than a hundred years into the great experiment in self-rule, sufficient numbers of Northerners felt strongly enough about it to fight a brutal civil war in order to bring it to an end. And never mind that slavery itself kept the South inefficient, relatively poor, largely inhospitable to industrialization and unattractive to poor and working-class immigrants.


No, all must be reframed and ret-conned; the concept of the United States is fatally stained with the new version of original sin; slavery and racism. There must be nothing left of our traditions and culture in which we can take honest and openly expressed pride. Not throwing off the last ragged remnants of feudal rule, and establishing a democratic republic, wherein the common, ordinary citizen could, by voting, exercise political control of his or her own life. Industrial innovation and creativity in everything from weaving cloth to taming the wild atom, setting up trade networks, exploring and settling a continent, reaching out into space, encouraging social mobility in a manner practically unknown to any other nation … no, all of that and more. Everything about America – that part of it occupied by the United States of – is now marred by the stain of slavery, in the eyes of the NY Times. All because better than half of us who live in it and honor those traditions had the temerity to vote for the ‘bęte orange’.


The NY Times, the so-called, duly anointed and authoritative ‘paper of record’ has now taken up the heavy job of entirely re-writing American history. Will they have any luck at this, given the death-grip that the establishment media has on current culture? Or are there enough of us still left who actually read history that we can pull pop culture the other way? Discuss as you wish.


https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...rget-trump-too

New goal for New York Times: 'Reframe' American history, and target Trump, too by Byron York

| August 17, 2019 07:18 PM

by Perhaps when you think of the founding of the United States, you think of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers. Now, the New York Times wants to "reframe" your understanding of the nation's founding.


In the Times' view (which it hopes to make the view of millions of Americans), the country was actually founded in 1619, when the first Africans were brought to North America, to Virginia, to be sold as slaves.


This year marks the 400th anniversary of that event, and the Times has created something called the 1619 Project. This is what the paper hopes the project will accomplish: "It aims to reframe the country's history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are."




Another, more concise statement from the Times: "The goal of The 1619 Project is to reframe American history."


The basic thrust of the 1619 Project is that everything in American history is explained by slavery and race. The message is woven throughout the first publication of the project, an entire edition of the Times magazine. It begins with an overview of race in America — "Our democracy's founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true." — written by Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, who on Twitter uses the identity Ida Bae Wells, from the crusading late 19th-early 20th century African American journalist Ida B. Wells.


The essays go on to cover the economy ("If you want to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation."), the food we eat ("The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the 'white gold' that fueled slavery."), the nation's physical health ("Why doesn't the United States have universal healthcare? The answer begins with policies enacted after the Civil War."), politics ("America holds onto an undemocratic assumption from its founding: that some people deserve more power than others."), daily life ("What does a traffic jam in Atlanta have to do with segregation? Quite a lot."), and much more.


The Times promises more 1619 Project stories in the future, not just in the paper's news sections, but in the business, sports, travel, and other sections. The Times' popular podcast, The Daily, will also devote time to it.


But a project with the aim of reframing U.S. history has to be more than a bunch of articles and podcasts. A major goal of the 1619 Project is to take the reframing message to schools. The Times has joined an organization called the Pulitzer Center (which, it should be noted, is not the organization that hands out the Pulitzer Prize) to create a 1619 Project curriculum. "Here you will find reading guides, activities, and other resources to bring The 1619 Project into your classroom," the center says in a message to teachers.


The paper also wants to reach into schools itself. "We will be sending some of our writers on multi-city tours to talk to students," Hannah-Jones said recently, "and we will be sending copies of the magazine to high schools and colleges. Because to us, this project really takes wing when young people are able to read this and understand the way that slavery has shaped their country's history."


The project rollout just happened to come at the same time as the leak of a transcript of a Times employee town hall in which the paper's executive editor, Dean Baquet, discussed his "vision" of making race the central theme of Times coverage for the remaining two years of President Trump's term in office.


Baquet spoke frankly about the paper's approach to Trump. For two years, he explained, the Times made a very, very big deal of the Trump-Russia affair. "We built our newsroom to cover one story," Baquet said. But then came the Mueller report, which failed to establish the core allegation against the president: that he and his campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia to fix the 2016 election.




"Now we have to regroup," Baquet told the staff, "and shift resources and emphasis to take on a different story."


That different story is race — and Trump. "We've got to change," Baquet said. "I mean, the vision for coverage for the next two years is what I talked about earlier: How do we cover a guy who makes these kinds of remarks? How do we cover the world's reaction to him? How do we do that while continuing to cover his policies? How do we cover America, that's become so divided by Donald Trump?"


Some on the staff appeared both anguished by the president ("it's a very scary time") and more than ready to make race a key feature of Times coverage.


"I'm wondering to what extent you think that the fact of racism and white supremacy being sort of the foundation of this country should play into our reporting?" one staffer asked Baquet. "Just because it feels to me like it should be a starting point, you know? Like these conversations about what is racist, what isn't racist, I just feel like racism is in everything. It should be considered in our science reporting, in our culture reporting, in our national reporting."


The staffer's point brought Baquet back to the paper's new initiative. "One reason we all signed off on The 1619 Project and made it so ambitious and expansive was to teach our readers to think a little bit more like that," Baquet said. "Race in the next year ... is going to be a huge part of the American story. And I mean, race in terms of not only African Americans and their relationship with Donald Trump, but Latinos and immigration."


So the Times has two big plans. One would be big enough: to focus on the universe of racism accusations that increasingly surround the president at a time when he just happens to be running for reelection. But the other is even bigger: to "reframe" American history in accordance with the values of Times editors. It's an extraordinarily ambitious undertaking for people in what used to be known more simply as the news business.