In the ongoing debate about CRT social justice types have taken the position that conservative criticism is is a non-starter because they don’t know what CRT is. How can you critic what you don’t understand?
I have tried to understand what CRT is. After reading articles from journalists or CRT scholars it is clear they also don’t know what it is or at least it is different things to different people. It is tangible enough to be something but intangible enough to dodge any direct criticisms. What does it mean to be Christian?
Gee, Matt, thanks for the comment about Portugal not being dedicated to anything, only the US is. That’s all we are, a country that didn’t become a part of Spain. That’s very kind, not at all arrogant. It’s good that someone puts us in our place, just a glib throwaway line at the end of an article.
You mention that most educators are progressive. That's a lot more left than most of the country. It may just be me, but it seems like it's not a good idea if most people in a particular industry are far to one end of the political spectrum. If most people have very similar political beliefs, then ideas within the industry aren't going to be subjected to rigorous evaluation. And you're not going to get potentially good ideas taht are outside of that political group. It's a problem for education, but it's also a problem for, say, the oil and gas industry.
One, it's not clear that ideological groupthink in an industry is any problem at all, when the topic about which there is groupthink is irrelevant to the main function of the industry. It doesn't really matter if all actors have weird views about bowel health, or if all police officers have weird views about sports teams. It's more of a concern if the area in which there is ideological groupthink is relevant to their central function - that's when rigorous evaluation matters. (No one can rigorously evaluate everything.)
Two, just because most teachers are left of the nation as a whole doesn't mean there's any less ideological diversity among teachers. It just means that there's socialists and liberals and social democrats and greens and libertarians and party-line Democrats and a bunch of other groups that argue about everything.
It's not really right to claim that Portugal isn't (or wasn't) dedicated to anything. If you look into Portuguese imperial ideology during the twentieth century, you'll find that they were entirely convinced that their national purpose was colonizing as many places as they could, and spreading a sort of "kinder", "less racist" colonialism than that of the British or the French. With that, they hoped that they would contribute to the fraternity of all peoples in the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusotropicalism).
Nowadays, we recognize that this was all BS and that Africans in Mozambique and Angola suffered as much (if not more) under Portuguese colonialism than did Africans elsewhere. Likewise, racism in Brazil remains as pernicious (if not more pernicious) than it does in the United States.
That said, given the effects of America's foreign policy throughout the world, I wouldn't be surprised if most people find the idea that America is "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" as laughable as the idea that Portuguese imperialism was dedicated to "fraternity" ;).
It’s really striking to me how much all this debate hinges on the least taken seriously core subject in schools.
I’ve taught first, second and 3rd grade. I’ve never had a social studies curriculum. The standards are a joke, Its not tested so there’s no budget for one or even internal goals or metrics to follow. In most schools it is being subsumed by reading and scattershot being put into the ela curriculum so the instruction follows the teacher’s personal interests.
I am very skeptical of the argument that "conservatives" are uniquely the inheritors of everything bad in this country. I think this is a self serving view and one that does not take seriously the fact that conservative/liberal takes on little coherence and meaning the further back we go in time. The coalitions were *really* different back then and our conceptions of what is conservative, liberal, or progressive do not really map well when we delve into eighteenth century history.
I think Douthat's column really did articulate well the underlying political/emotional stakes of the 1619 project. Matt's interpretation strikes me as a little bit of a jump, though an interesting one to consider.
However, I am willing to bet money that if Matt showed this column to any prominent Black writer, Nicole Hannah-Jones included, they would retort "NO, Matt. Everyone's hands are dirty when it comes to the brutalization of Black people. Not just conservatives." Hence why I think Matt's formulation is a little off the mark.
Yes... why is it that so many of us in modern day are drawn to read history as a fantasy football game where we get to retroactively draft the "good guys" onto our team and assign the bad guys to the other side? Why do we invest in a sense of hyper-collectivism where we take pride in the actions of other people we had no influence over and feel guilt (or assign guilt) in modern day based on the actions we also had nothing to do with? And especially to do it on the basis of skin color? It's super weird, when you think about it. No one in history was 100% good or bad. People of all colors, background, and ideologies participated in things that they thought were good at the time that turn out to look pretty bad in retrospect. Shouldn't the lesson for all of us be "the things you think are good could turn out to be bad, so if someone else is telling you you're doing something bad, maybe reflect on if they're on to something for at least a few minutes"?
I'll grant there are figures whose possible good attributes are now considered irrelevant due to the magnitude of their bad-ness. But I'd argue even those people generally thought of their actions as being for the "greater good" or fighting the "good fight" or some-such. It's a trap to think that the worst figures of history thought of themselves as the bad guys or knew what they were doing were obviously bad and did it anyway--leaves us thinking it could never be us.
You are likely correct. I would think of that more as people being bad and just not caring, but I don't think people think that way. They always convince themselves that they are justified.
Yes! And I like to remind myself that everyone we are talking about is dead for a long time, so there should be no personal stake in whether we think they are bad or good. There is only understanding.
"Yes... why is it that so many of us in modern day are drawn to read history as a fantasy football game where we get to retroactively draft the "good guys" onto our team and assign the bad guys to the other side?"
Off topic: are the audio posts discontinued? Haven't seen any this week. (Of course- would prefer Yglesias read them as opposed to the rather earnest narrator from Curio.)
I will simply say I fundamentally disagree with your kind words towards the 1619 Project, and the 'progressive' attempts to redefine American history in general. Progressives would leave us without:
-George Washington (the first American president, creator of many important precedents, the guy who led the military aspects of the revolution, and without whom we'd not exist as a country)
-Thomas Jefferson (the guy who wrote the ideas that America is founded upon)
-Abraham Lincoln (the man who led the effort which helped make those ideas more of a reality)
-Ulysses S. Grant (the other major important figure in the above effort with Lincoln)
Along with several other lesser, but also crucial, figures in our history including: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Clay, James Madison, and others.
I wish I could say that the progressives waging war on American history held as positive view of this country as you present here, but I simply do not believe that it's true.
Just want to point out that you're being reductive and there's little evidence for any of those claims. Who, specifically, are The Progressives who are itching to purge your list of historical figures? If by The Progressives, you mean some collection of individuals you've managed to collect from various anecdotes across the country, who cares? If by "leave us without" you mean "present as historical figures with good and bad qualities" why is that a bad thing?
There have been several cases of ‘progressives’ working to cut historical figures from statues, names of schools, and other examples. These are not simply isolated incidents
Which, to conclude, I want to agree: the conservative movement (as you have defined it here) has lost the war on history. It's why conservatives have fallen back to Joe Biden's common refrain: that America is an idea.
To add onto this: you cannot (on the one hand) argue:
"The whole point of the 1619 Project was to be provocative and not just to repeat the most common, basically known facts about slavery in American history."
While recognizing that:
"On the history front, the conservative backlash really started well before the “critical race theory” kick got going. It dates back to The New York Times publication of the 1619 Project and the announcement that the Pulitzer Center was developing school curriculum units based on the project."
The "whole point" of the 1619 Project was not to be "provocative" but to reteach American history from the perspective that the country is not, in fact, an idea: but a country founded to perpetuate racism. The 1619 Project was never intended to simply be a provocative magazine article forcing people to really rediscover the evil of slavery and Jim Crow. The point was to reshape views of the country as fundamentally racist, to its core, and to force people into action today on that basis.
This is why the first essay written by Nikole Hannah-Jones' lead essay is so important. Her contention (which she has not backed off of) that the American Revolution was inspired to defend slavery (or at least in part to defend slavery, which is simply not true) does not simply cut against traditional understanding of America, but its designed to undercut the message of 1776.
If you believe in the message you wrote in this essay then, I would say, it's not enough to simply write: "But I think teach the 1619 Project in public schools is just an overreach." You need to recognize the whole project for what it is: not a simple series of magazine articles but an ideological project meant to reshape modern politics. Which is why Douthat ends his essay with this:
"Except, of course, the controversy isn’t only about history. Instead, Wallace-Wells notes, what has the Texas Republicans most agitated is the debate over how to teach children about racism today"
The 1619 Project reframes history so they can have an excuse to push their own current political agenda (which, I might add, is not a new idea: history has always been weaponized to promote or defend policies in the present).
I think there is fatigue on the right about having their values and stories not only constantly challenged but mocked. I used to love watching John Stewart tease the more absurd examples of right-wing anything on the "The Daily Show" but now I see this is what got Trump elected - conservatives were tired of being made fun of and wanted to "own the libs" more than anything. The media and entertainment complex has far more influence on the daily lives of Americans than wonky policy details, which is what Trump deeply understood.
Of course, this is the nature of the liberal versus conservative dynamic - the liberal pushes change faster than the conservative wants to allow it. That tension actually works well when it's balanced (go slow to avoid unintended consequences), but media and social media have labeled this dynamic a "catastrophe" rather than the way of the world that it has been for much of the progress of history. Why? Ratings and clicks, sadly.
I think Matt's comments on the 1619 Project are generally spot on -- some of the essays are truly wonderful, and I loved NHJ's paean to her father's patriotism. But what I object to (and what Matt calls merely "sloppy") is the focus on slavery and race relations as the monocausal explanation of American history. Slavery was *the* cause of the American Revolution. America's national wealth was basically built on cotton and slavery. These are not sloppy statements; they're deeply wrong. Were they really really important? Sure! But history is a complex phenomenon, and making such wild claims paints you as a fanatic, not an educator.
It's the fanaticism in this debate (on both sides, but most definitely on the woke side) that I find most disturbing. We need a much more richly detailed history taught than heretofore has been done, but we have to understand that every thread we pursue is just one more -- some more important than others -- in the American tapestry.
The 1619 Project is Trumpian in its bombast and sweep. The NYT asserted that “out of slavery” and “anti-Black racism” “rose everything that made America truly exceptional.”
Who *isn’t* offended by that? Certainly, as an immigrant, I’m pretty offended to see that entire aspect of American exceptionalism just waved away.
100%. I took the oath of allegiance in a court in Brooklyn, it was a day I waited for my whole life, and it was packed with people from all around the world who became American with me. My personal reaction to the 1619 Project was really pretty visceral, the idea that I took the oath to a country that, as you correctly note, the NYT said everything was out of slavery and anti-Black racism, made me want to punch something. And then they're teaching it to kids!? Makes me spit.
(And I also think Matt is engaging in some sanewashing here, the NYT very much promoted those couple of lines in NHJ's essay about the Revolution being for slavery as the core thesis until those historians called them on it and they got embarrassed enough to make some stealth edits).
I don’t think “American conservatives have been consistently wrong on race” immediately equals “American conservatives are bad.” Even if it does, as Matt himself points out, there’s not much you can do with such a proposition outside of liberal circles.
On the other hand, you could teach something like “conservatives tend to be too friendly to bad systems with a lot of historical precedent, which is why American conservatives have been wrong about race for a long time. Conversely, liberals tend to be too optimistic about shiny and new ‘utopian’ projects, which is why they were slow to admit just how bad full-scale communism is. Whatever your natural bent, you should know its weaknesses.”
I don't see why Matt's take is incompatible with Ross's. Most conservatives genuinely have moved toward the center in their understanding of American history and are concerned about an "over-correction" that actually leaves kids (who aren't really wired to add nuance to a one-sided story by themselves) with the impression that America is a pretty fucked up place. Also conservatives don't like the idea of progressives taking over the curriculum and painting history as a war of good guys vs bad guys, where the bad guys are always the conservatives. Imagine that!
Just to re-up my Haidt stan cred, progressives also don't seem to recognize that the conservative enthusiasm for the American myth is a deeply-held moral perspective for them. Being American is a core part of their identity for many of them much like being a member of a minority racial group is for other people, one of their biggest sources of personal and collective pride. Toppling a statue of George Washington in protest would stir up the same feelings of disgust and offense in many of them as toppling a statue of MLK in protest. It's personal. They take pride in standing up for the foundational values of America in the face of an army of an army of progressive-socialist-communist-anarchists who would burn it all to the ground. When they watch Star Wars, we're the Empire. When they read history, we're the "Democrats" who fought to protect slavery (I know, it's dumb). We're the Maoists holding struggle sessions. We're the angry protesters opposed to judging people on the content of their character instead of the color of their skin. We're their bad guys. Simple as that. You can point out all the ways they're wrong (there are plent) but if you can't accurately see us through their eyes, you'll never understand what's actually behind the outrage.
"Being American is a core part of their identity for many of them much like being a member of a minority racial group is for other people, one of their biggest sources of personal and collective pride."
Being a white American is a core part of their identity.
Seriously, think for a moment why toppling a statue of Washington would outrage "Americans" but toppling a statue of MLK would offend "racial minority groups." MLK is an American hero. To make him the exclusive concern of some racial minority group is so common and so illustrative. The reason there's such outrage against things like CRT is that it shines a light on these unexamined impulses and talks about them.
Did I say only minorities would care if a statue of MLK was toppled? No, I did not. In fact I was trying to say most conservatives would be equally mad about both. I used to see things the way you describe…. It was a very weird realization/identity crisis to realize most conservatives in 2021 genuinely don’t care about being white until someone gives them trouble about it. Are there some people who care about their whiteness? Yes, and they usually suck, but they’re not as common as you might think.
What you call "giving them trouble about it" I think is more accurately described as "any mention of it whatsoever." This makes sense: In a society in which institutional racism plays such a powerful role, and operates largely on auto-pilot, the mechanisms can only function if we pretend they don't exist. *That's* the reason folks on the right react with rage when you point out the obvious.
I suspect I won’t change your mind on this. I do want to ask this sincerely…. Have you ever stopped to fully consider the possibility that you could be wrong about what’s in other people’s hearts and minds?
Absolutely. I'd ask you though, do you believe that implicit bias exists. Do you think people absorb assumptions about, for example, gendered differences from the culture they inhabit? If so, how do you think the way sexism is so fundamentally different from racism?
Oh man, yes, implicit bias absolutely exists! Biases are super hardwired into us humans. I spent, I dunno, 20 years operating under the conviction that the vast majority of white people were biased in favor of other white people (I still think this part) and that this was the primary root cause of racial disparities, and that to end disparities, white people had to acknowledge their biases and work to eliminate them. What I didn't realize that was biases between the tribal political parties VASTLY outweigh the psychological weight of race-based biases in most people. https://www.vox.com/2015/12/7/9790764/partisan-discrimination I realized my implict bias about conservatives led me to glom on to any story or study that confirmed my intuition that they were awful, terrible people. I realized that all of my navel-gazing about my biases about black people was actually making those associations stronger (ironic processing theory). I gave myself permission to think critically about the ideas of leaders in the antiracist movement who were POC for the first time because *that's what you do for people who you consider to be your equals*. When I gave myself permission to not care about race, I took the IAT again and lo and behold- I got neutral scores for the first time ever. I realized I'd been making my biases so much worse by obsessing over them. And I realized a lot (not all) of the conservatives who say they don't care about race and they really do want to treat everyone equally aren't lying... they don't understand why our side is so obsessed and find it offensive/racist. Are they biased? Sure as hell they are. But they're 1000x more biased against Democrats (based on actual policy ideas and moral perspectives) than they are against minorities. They would hang out with a minority conservative over a white liberal any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Has it always been this way? Absolutely not. But I think liberals have 1965 frozen in their mind and assume conservatives are the same people who picketed bussing when that was 2 generations of people ago. Anyway at this point I'm rambling, this is why I started a Substack :D Hope some of that makes sense!
I have nothing really profound to contribute, but I just wanted to drop in to say that I really enjoyed this post!
In the ongoing debate about CRT social justice types have taken the position that conservative criticism is is a non-starter because they don’t know what CRT is. How can you critic what you don’t understand?
I have tried to understand what CRT is. After reading articles from journalists or CRT scholars it is clear they also don’t know what it is or at least it is different things to different people. It is tangible enough to be something but intangible enough to dodge any direct criticisms. What does it mean to be Christian?
Great post.
Sorry for shilling, but I've come here, a day late, just to affirm that pieces like this make the subscription price a bargain.
Wasn't this a public post? Haha I'm with you though.
Gee, Matt, thanks for the comment about Portugal not being dedicated to anything, only the US is. That’s all we are, a country that didn’t become a part of Spain. That’s very kind, not at all arrogant. It’s good that someone puts us in our place, just a glib throwaway line at the end of an article.
This would make for a great Argument episode between you and Douthat
You mention that most educators are progressive. That's a lot more left than most of the country. It may just be me, but it seems like it's not a good idea if most people in a particular industry are far to one end of the political spectrum. If most people have very similar political beliefs, then ideas within the industry aren't going to be subjected to rigorous evaluation. And you're not going to get potentially good ideas taht are outside of that political group. It's a problem for education, but it's also a problem for, say, the oil and gas industry.
Two things:
One, it's not clear that ideological groupthink in an industry is any problem at all, when the topic about which there is groupthink is irrelevant to the main function of the industry. It doesn't really matter if all actors have weird views about bowel health, or if all police officers have weird views about sports teams. It's more of a concern if the area in which there is ideological groupthink is relevant to their central function - that's when rigorous evaluation matters. (No one can rigorously evaluate everything.)
Two, just because most teachers are left of the nation as a whole doesn't mean there's any less ideological diversity among teachers. It just means that there's socialists and liberals and social democrats and greens and libertarians and party-line Democrats and a bunch of other groups that argue about everything.
It's not really right to claim that Portugal isn't (or wasn't) dedicated to anything. If you look into Portuguese imperial ideology during the twentieth century, you'll find that they were entirely convinced that their national purpose was colonizing as many places as they could, and spreading a sort of "kinder", "less racist" colonialism than that of the British or the French. With that, they hoped that they would contribute to the fraternity of all peoples in the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusotropicalism).
Nowadays, we recognize that this was all BS and that Africans in Mozambique and Angola suffered as much (if not more) under Portuguese colonialism than did Africans elsewhere. Likewise, racism in Brazil remains as pernicious (if not more pernicious) than it does in the United States.
That said, given the effects of America's foreign policy throughout the world, I wouldn't be surprised if most people find the idea that America is "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" as laughable as the idea that Portuguese imperialism was dedicated to "fraternity" ;).
It’s really striking to me how much all this debate hinges on the least taken seriously core subject in schools.
I’ve taught first, second and 3rd grade. I’ve never had a social studies curriculum. The standards are a joke, Its not tested so there’s no budget for one or even internal goals or metrics to follow. In most schools it is being subsumed by reading and scattershot being put into the ela curriculum so the instruction follows the teacher’s personal interests.
I am very skeptical of the argument that "conservatives" are uniquely the inheritors of everything bad in this country. I think this is a self serving view and one that does not take seriously the fact that conservative/liberal takes on little coherence and meaning the further back we go in time. The coalitions were *really* different back then and our conceptions of what is conservative, liberal, or progressive do not really map well when we delve into eighteenth century history.
I think Douthat's column really did articulate well the underlying political/emotional stakes of the 1619 project. Matt's interpretation strikes me as a little bit of a jump, though an interesting one to consider.
However, I am willing to bet money that if Matt showed this column to any prominent Black writer, Nicole Hannah-Jones included, they would retort "NO, Matt. Everyone's hands are dirty when it comes to the brutalization of Black people. Not just conservatives." Hence why I think Matt's formulation is a little off the mark.
Yes... why is it that so many of us in modern day are drawn to read history as a fantasy football game where we get to retroactively draft the "good guys" onto our team and assign the bad guys to the other side? Why do we invest in a sense of hyper-collectivism where we take pride in the actions of other people we had no influence over and feel guilt (or assign guilt) in modern day based on the actions we also had nothing to do with? And especially to do it on the basis of skin color? It's super weird, when you think about it. No one in history was 100% good or bad. People of all colors, background, and ideologies participated in things that they thought were good at the time that turn out to look pretty bad in retrospect. Shouldn't the lesson for all of us be "the things you think are good could turn out to be bad, so if someone else is telling you you're doing something bad, maybe reflect on if they're on to something for at least a few minutes"?
I agree with you wholeheartedly except for "No one in history was 100% good or bad."
Strong evidence there were members of the 100% bad group.
I'll grant there are figures whose possible good attributes are now considered irrelevant due to the magnitude of their bad-ness. But I'd argue even those people generally thought of their actions as being for the "greater good" or fighting the "good fight" or some-such. It's a trap to think that the worst figures of history thought of themselves as the bad guys or knew what they were doing were obviously bad and did it anyway--leaves us thinking it could never be us.
You are likely correct. I would think of that more as people being bad and just not caring, but I don't think people think that way. They always convince themselves that they are justified.
Yes! And I like to remind myself that everyone we are talking about is dead for a long time, so there should be no personal stake in whether we think they are bad or good. There is only understanding.
"Yes... why is it that so many of us in modern day are drawn to read history as a fantasy football game where we get to retroactively draft the "good guys" onto our team and assign the bad guys to the other side?"
Keep talking...
Off topic: are the audio posts discontinued? Haven't seen any this week. (Of course- would prefer Yglesias read them as opposed to the rather earnest narrator from Curio.)
I will simply say I fundamentally disagree with your kind words towards the 1619 Project, and the 'progressive' attempts to redefine American history in general. Progressives would leave us without:
-George Washington (the first American president, creator of many important precedents, the guy who led the military aspects of the revolution, and without whom we'd not exist as a country)
-Thomas Jefferson (the guy who wrote the ideas that America is founded upon)
-Abraham Lincoln (the man who led the effort which helped make those ideas more of a reality)
-Ulysses S. Grant (the other major important figure in the above effort with Lincoln)
Along with several other lesser, but also crucial, figures in our history including: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Clay, James Madison, and others.
I wish I could say that the progressives waging war on American history held as positive view of this country as you present here, but I simply do not believe that it's true.
Just want to point out that you're being reductive and there's little evidence for any of those claims. Who, specifically, are The Progressives who are itching to purge your list of historical figures? If by The Progressives, you mean some collection of individuals you've managed to collect from various anecdotes across the country, who cares? If by "leave us without" you mean "present as historical figures with good and bad qualities" why is that a bad thing?
There have been several cases of ‘progressives’ working to cut historical figures from statues, names of schools, and other examples. These are not simply isolated incidents
“Several cases” seems like the very definition of “isolated incidents” to me.
Which, to conclude, I want to agree: the conservative movement (as you have defined it here) has lost the war on history. It's why conservatives have fallen back to Joe Biden's common refrain: that America is an idea.
To add onto this: you cannot (on the one hand) argue:
"The whole point of the 1619 Project was to be provocative and not just to repeat the most common, basically known facts about slavery in American history."
While recognizing that:
"On the history front, the conservative backlash really started well before the “critical race theory” kick got going. It dates back to The New York Times publication of the 1619 Project and the announcement that the Pulitzer Center was developing school curriculum units based on the project."
The "whole point" of the 1619 Project was not to be "provocative" but to reteach American history from the perspective that the country is not, in fact, an idea: but a country founded to perpetuate racism. The 1619 Project was never intended to simply be a provocative magazine article forcing people to really rediscover the evil of slavery and Jim Crow. The point was to reshape views of the country as fundamentally racist, to its core, and to force people into action today on that basis.
This is why the first essay written by Nikole Hannah-Jones' lead essay is so important. Her contention (which she has not backed off of) that the American Revolution was inspired to defend slavery (or at least in part to defend slavery, which is simply not true) does not simply cut against traditional understanding of America, but its designed to undercut the message of 1776.
If you believe in the message you wrote in this essay then, I would say, it's not enough to simply write: "But I think teach the 1619 Project in public schools is just an overreach." You need to recognize the whole project for what it is: not a simple series of magazine articles but an ideological project meant to reshape modern politics. Which is why Douthat ends his essay with this:
"Except, of course, the controversy isn’t only about history. Instead, Wallace-Wells notes, what has the Texas Republicans most agitated is the debate over how to teach children about racism today"
The 1619 Project reframes history so they can have an excuse to push their own current political agenda (which, I might add, is not a new idea: history has always been weaponized to promote or defend policies in the present).
I think there is fatigue on the right about having their values and stories not only constantly challenged but mocked. I used to love watching John Stewart tease the more absurd examples of right-wing anything on the "The Daily Show" but now I see this is what got Trump elected - conservatives were tired of being made fun of and wanted to "own the libs" more than anything. The media and entertainment complex has far more influence on the daily lives of Americans than wonky policy details, which is what Trump deeply understood.
Of course, this is the nature of the liberal versus conservative dynamic - the liberal pushes change faster than the conservative wants to allow it. That tension actually works well when it's balanced (go slow to avoid unintended consequences), but media and social media have labeled this dynamic a "catastrophe" rather than the way of the world that it has been for much of the progress of history. Why? Ratings and clicks, sadly.
Excellent post.
I think Matt's comments on the 1619 Project are generally spot on -- some of the essays are truly wonderful, and I loved NHJ's paean to her father's patriotism. But what I object to (and what Matt calls merely "sloppy") is the focus on slavery and race relations as the monocausal explanation of American history. Slavery was *the* cause of the American Revolution. America's national wealth was basically built on cotton and slavery. These are not sloppy statements; they're deeply wrong. Were they really really important? Sure! But history is a complex phenomenon, and making such wild claims paints you as a fanatic, not an educator.
It's the fanaticism in this debate (on both sides, but most definitely on the woke side) that I find most disturbing. We need a much more richly detailed history taught than heretofore has been done, but we have to understand that every thread we pursue is just one more -- some more important than others -- in the American tapestry.
The 1619 Project is Trumpian in its bombast and sweep. The NYT asserted that “out of slavery” and “anti-Black racism” “rose everything that made America truly exceptional.”
Who *isn’t* offended by that? Certainly, as an immigrant, I’m pretty offended to see that entire aspect of American exceptionalism just waved away.
100%. I took the oath of allegiance in a court in Brooklyn, it was a day I waited for my whole life, and it was packed with people from all around the world who became American with me. My personal reaction to the 1619 Project was really pretty visceral, the idea that I took the oath to a country that, as you correctly note, the NYT said everything was out of slavery and anti-Black racism, made me want to punch something. And then they're teaching it to kids!? Makes me spit.
(And I also think Matt is engaging in some sanewashing here, the NYT very much promoted those couple of lines in NHJ's essay about the Revolution being for slavery as the core thesis until those historians called them on it and they got embarrassed enough to make some stealth edits).
I don’t think “American conservatives have been consistently wrong on race” immediately equals “American conservatives are bad.” Even if it does, as Matt himself points out, there’s not much you can do with such a proposition outside of liberal circles.
On the other hand, you could teach something like “conservatives tend to be too friendly to bad systems with a lot of historical precedent, which is why American conservatives have been wrong about race for a long time. Conversely, liberals tend to be too optimistic about shiny and new ‘utopian’ projects, which is why they were slow to admit just how bad full-scale communism is. Whatever your natural bent, you should know its weaknesses.”
Something like that could be taught everywhere.
I don't see why Matt's take is incompatible with Ross's. Most conservatives genuinely have moved toward the center in their understanding of American history and are concerned about an "over-correction" that actually leaves kids (who aren't really wired to add nuance to a one-sided story by themselves) with the impression that America is a pretty fucked up place. Also conservatives don't like the idea of progressives taking over the curriculum and painting history as a war of good guys vs bad guys, where the bad guys are always the conservatives. Imagine that!
Just to re-up my Haidt stan cred, progressives also don't seem to recognize that the conservative enthusiasm for the American myth is a deeply-held moral perspective for them. Being American is a core part of their identity for many of them much like being a member of a minority racial group is for other people, one of their biggest sources of personal and collective pride. Toppling a statue of George Washington in protest would stir up the same feelings of disgust and offense in many of them as toppling a statue of MLK in protest. It's personal. They take pride in standing up for the foundational values of America in the face of an army of an army of progressive-socialist-communist-anarchists who would burn it all to the ground. When they watch Star Wars, we're the Empire. When they read history, we're the "Democrats" who fought to protect slavery (I know, it's dumb). We're the Maoists holding struggle sessions. We're the angry protesters opposed to judging people on the content of their character instead of the color of their skin. We're their bad guys. Simple as that. You can point out all the ways they're wrong (there are plent) but if you can't accurately see us through their eyes, you'll never understand what's actually behind the outrage.
"Being American is a core part of their identity for many of them much like being a member of a minority racial group is for other people, one of their biggest sources of personal and collective pride."
Being a white American is a core part of their identity.
Seriously, think for a moment why toppling a statue of Washington would outrage "Americans" but toppling a statue of MLK would offend "racial minority groups." MLK is an American hero. To make him the exclusive concern of some racial minority group is so common and so illustrative. The reason there's such outrage against things like CRT is that it shines a light on these unexamined impulses and talks about them.
Did I say only minorities would care if a statue of MLK was toppled? No, I did not. In fact I was trying to say most conservatives would be equally mad about both. I used to see things the way you describe…. It was a very weird realization/identity crisis to realize most conservatives in 2021 genuinely don’t care about being white until someone gives them trouble about it. Are there some people who care about their whiteness? Yes, and they usually suck, but they’re not as common as you might think.
What you call "giving them trouble about it" I think is more accurately described as "any mention of it whatsoever." This makes sense: In a society in which institutional racism plays such a powerful role, and operates largely on auto-pilot, the mechanisms can only function if we pretend they don't exist. *That's* the reason folks on the right react with rage when you point out the obvious.
I suspect I won’t change your mind on this. I do want to ask this sincerely…. Have you ever stopped to fully consider the possibility that you could be wrong about what’s in other people’s hearts and minds?
Absolutely. I'd ask you though, do you believe that implicit bias exists. Do you think people absorb assumptions about, for example, gendered differences from the culture they inhabit? If so, how do you think the way sexism is so fundamentally different from racism?
Oh man, yes, implicit bias absolutely exists! Biases are super hardwired into us humans. I spent, I dunno, 20 years operating under the conviction that the vast majority of white people were biased in favor of other white people (I still think this part) and that this was the primary root cause of racial disparities, and that to end disparities, white people had to acknowledge their biases and work to eliminate them. What I didn't realize that was biases between the tribal political parties VASTLY outweigh the psychological weight of race-based biases in most people. https://www.vox.com/2015/12/7/9790764/partisan-discrimination I realized my implict bias about conservatives led me to glom on to any story or study that confirmed my intuition that they were awful, terrible people. I realized that all of my navel-gazing about my biases about black people was actually making those associations stronger (ironic processing theory). I gave myself permission to think critically about the ideas of leaders in the antiracist movement who were POC for the first time because *that's what you do for people who you consider to be your equals*. When I gave myself permission to not care about race, I took the IAT again and lo and behold- I got neutral scores for the first time ever. I realized I'd been making my biases so much worse by obsessing over them. And I realized a lot (not all) of the conservatives who say they don't care about race and they really do want to treat everyone equally aren't lying... they don't understand why our side is so obsessed and find it offensive/racist. Are they biased? Sure as hell they are. But they're 1000x more biased against Democrats (based on actual policy ideas and moral perspectives) than they are against minorities. They would hang out with a minority conservative over a white liberal any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Has it always been this way? Absolutely not. But I think liberals have 1965 frozen in their mind and assume conservatives are the same people who picketed bussing when that was 2 generations of people ago. Anyway at this point I'm rambling, this is why I started a Substack :D Hope some of that makes sense!
You described my views more articulately than I could do so.
Nice... do I win some kind of ideological Turing test prize? :D