Response to George Will re the 1619 project

 In an opinion piece in the Washington Post, George Will professes to have a problem with The 1619 project. Here is my response to his nonsense, first published as a comment:

The 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary cited Nikole Hanna-Jones of the New York Times as follows:

"For a sweeping, deeply reported and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America's story, prompting public conversation about the nation's founding and evolution."

When I first read the articles of the 1619 project, I kept exclaiming, "Wow." I consider myself an educated person, but I simply had no idea that the effects of slavery are still so widespread and pernicious.

Here are some titles from the 1619 project:

- If you want to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.

- Myths about physical and racial differences were used to justify slavery—and are still believed by doctors today.

- America holds onto an undemocratic assumption, that some people deserve more power than others.

- Why doesn't the United States have universal health care? The answer has to do with policies enacted after the Civil War.

- Slavery gave America a fear of black people and a taste for violent punishment. Both still define our prison system.

- The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the 'black gold' that fueled slavery.

- A vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining and evictions and exclusions, separates black and white America.

- Most Americans still don't know the full story of slavery.

And there's more, including poetry and photography.

Against all this, Will desperately tries to change the subject, objecting to quotations out of context. He simply ignores the respected historians who consulted on the project.

Indeed, when I first read Will's "critique," my first reaction was "Huh?" Is he talking about the same nuanced, graceful, powerful history that won the Pulitzer Prize?

In short, Mr. Will's essay is itself ideological, slovenly, and dishonest.