Colleges? UNC-Chapel Hill denies tenure to 1619 Project author Nikole Hannah-Jones https://thehill.com/homenews/media/...re-to-1619-project-author-nikole-hannah-jones
That article is connecting dots that they don't know that are connected. And them sighting only conservative groups having problems with the 1619 project is disingenuous a lot of academic groups have problems with the 1619 project and not all of them are conservative. I would like to know how many of these tenorship gets approval, just a lot of questions that need to be answered to come to the conclusion that this happened because of conservative groups.
New York Times did a story on the efforts in the Texas Legislature now to whitewash Texan and US history: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/us/texas-history-1836-project.html I'd say it's not much of an accident that this thread showed up when it did. Liberal groups have been making headway in bringing a reckoning on our racist history and conservatives have only recently managed to organize their counter-attack. So now the PR companies are at work, placing op-eds, letters to the editors, academic studies, TV interviews and debates, and astroturf political organizations to promote the ideas of these two sides of the argument. The politicians are doing their part by passing dumb laws (an old colleague of mine liked to praise the Texas model because he thought legislatures didn't need to be passing new laws every year -- I'm starting to think every other year is still too often). Tenure is hard to get, but she was hired for a named chair, so I think the expectation of tenure or tenure-track is reasonable. Maybe one of our professor posters can weigh in on that. I'm guessing though that some of her difficulty comes because it is a state school and therefore sensitive to the political landscape. She was offered tenure-track instead because the board wouldn't approve immediate tenure. I wonder if that leaves the school vulnerable to poaching, though, because some private university that would love to add the 1619 Project to their reputation could swoop in and recruit her. I'm not sure any of this controversy is bad for her career.
I think the 1619 project has been widely dismissed from all sides of academia but I would like to dig down on if these type of straight tenure positions are usually offered. I do agree that its harder for a state school to sign off on somebody with that kind of rep.
I personally find issues with both sides. Both are biased and trying to achieve a narrative. The world is a shade of gray but everyone is presenting it as black and white. Literally.
Because when you are born AND raised as a black person in this country it literally IS a matter of black and white. But don't take my word for it - ask Rev. George Lee, Lamar Smith, Emmitt Till, John Reese, Willie Edwards Jr., Mack Charles Parker, Herbert Lee, Cpl. Roman Ducksworth Jr., Paul Guihard, William Lewis Moore, Medgar Evers, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carol Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Virgil Lamar Ware, Louis Allen, Johnnie Mae Chappell, Henry Hezekiah Dee, Charles Eddie Moore, James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Henry Schwerner, Lt. Col. Lemuel Penn, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Rev. James Reeb, Viola Gregg Liuzzo, Oneal Moore, Willie Brewster, Jonathan Myrick Daniels, Samuel Leamon Younger Jr., Vernon Ferdinand, Dahmer, Ben Chester White, Clarence Tiggs, Wharlest Jackson, Benjamin Brown, Samuel Ephesians Hammond Jr., Delano Herman Middleton, Henry Hezekiah Smith, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and James Byrd Jr.. The world certainly wasn't "a shade of gray" for them.
I agree but do we want to continue for it all to be a matter of black and white? What's the end game here? I know we are nowhere near it but I feel that we are just content to be mad and upset and people are just monetizing that anger and not actually trying to fix anything. Like this entire Critical Race Theory, what is the actual purpose who does it help?
This is a good place to start understanding CRT (and the fact that it has indeed become a catchphrase for a number of things that it doesn't specifically address). https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05 Both CRT and the 1619 project are advocating for a deeper understanding of how race effected the birth of our nation, and integrating a wider perspective on the topic of race into our history scholarship (which would then filter down to our schools). As far as monetizing "anger," both CRT and the 1619 project are academic in nature - I'm not sure how they are responsible for monetizing anger or any other emotional response to racism. Despite what you've claimed here, the 1619 project has not been widely rejected by academics. Obviously, there are some who reject it in whole, while others object to certain contentions (or in many cases, its overall pessimism toward the odds of an eventual resolution of racial discrimination in the US). https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/historians-clash-1619-project/604093/ I won't attempt to speak for African Americans, but I can tell you that far too many white Americans are stubbornly disinterested or outright hostile to addressing the systemic issues that many African Americans have been speaking up about for decades. Much like a family that doesn't want to address the abuse that one member inflicted upon another, white Americans expect African Americans to forgive everything, pretend like nothing wrong ever happened, move along and to not "stir the pot." I can tell you - having witnessed such situations - that kind of silence does not heal wounds or address wrongs or improve relations. It leaves the mistreated person wondering why he/she is valued so little (less than the abuser and even less than "keeping the peace") and absolutely devastates his/her self-esteem and mental health. Now.....apply that concept to a whole population and spread it out over 400 years. It's not a perfect analogy (as if anything is) but I hope it provides you with some perspective.
Why do you say that? My wife related a conversation she had with a phd student who studies race in America (I don't know if it was history or sociology or education or what), and he said that he felt like the name "critical race theory" came out of nowhere. That plenty of people are writing about how to teach about race and theories abound, but having a little package with a tidy name was new. Which might be why in this thread I've been thinking a lot about the PR battle -- naming a 'theory' gives political activists on both sides a flag to rally around.
Using "Critical Race Theory" as a boogeyman catchphrase is new, but the actual scholarship that uses that name is 40 years old
I read some stuff about how it was not historically accurate and was lumping a lot of stuff together, I will see if I can find it.
I teach History and I don't see the need to teach how race effected the birth of our nation its all there to see if a person is interested to see. I may have misspoke about it being widely dismissed but there is academic pushback. Yes white americans are widely disinterested and CRT or 1619 is not gonna make them more interested and will turn some off because it assigns blame just for being white it some instances. I am African American I don't need perspective and I know it is easy for us to blame people or systems for the plight of our daily lives and not actively do things to change that plight and a lot of this stuff tends to be a crutch or an excuse. Once again what is gonna be changed by CRT or 1619 if you don't think America was largely built on the back of blacks and immigrants and that they have not had a level playing field these things are not changing any minds. IMO these theories don't do much to address the bolded and are just paying lip service.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/historians-clash-1619-project/604093/ This is an example of what I am talking about. "The letter disputes a passage in Hannah-Jones’s introductory essay, which lauds the contributions of black people to making America a full democracy and says 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” as abolitionist sentiment began rising in Britain. This argument is explosive. From abolition to the civil-rights movement, activists have reached back to the rhetoric and documents of the founding era to present their claims to equal citizenship as consonant with the American tradition. The Wilentz letter contends that the 1619 Project’s argument concedes too much to slavery’s defenders, likening it to South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun’s assertion that “there is not a word of truth” in the Declaration of Independence’s famous phrase that “all men are created equal.” Where Wilentz and his colleagues see the rising anti-slavery movement in the colonies and its influence on the Revolution as a radical break from millennia in which human slavery was accepted around the world, Hannah-Jones’ essay outlines how the ideology of white supremacy that sustained slavery still endures today. “To teach children that the American Revolution was fought in part to secure slavery would be giving a fundamental misunderstanding not only of what the American Revolution was all about but what America stood for and has stood for since the Founding,” Wilentz told me. Anti-slavery ideology was a “very new thing in the world in the 18th century,” he said, and “there was more anti-slavery activity in the colonies than in Britain.” Hannah-Jones hasn’t budged from her conviction that slavery helped fuel the Revolution. “I do still back up that claim,” she told me last week—before Silverstein’s rebuttal was published—although she says she phrased it too strongly in her essay, in a way that might mislead readers into thinking that support for slavery was universal. “I think someone reading that would assume that this was the case: all 13 colonies and most people involved. And I accept that criticism, for sure.” She said that as the 1619 Project is expanded into a history curriculum and published in book form, the text will be changed to make sure claims are properly contextualized." That's too much opinion about history and even when she admits its not right she wants it to be contextualized. That's not history and who does it serve to say this was a reason for the American Revolution?
You're being rather inconsistent here. On one hand, you are acknowledging that "America was largely built on the back of blacks and immigrants and that they have not had a level playing field" but on the other, you object to this being talked about in schools. As the son of a teacher, I'm pretty flabbergasted by this attitude. School is EXACTLY the place to discuss this issue. I'm not saying it should be at the level of an academic journal when teaching elementary kids, but it should be discussed. The perspective I'm offering is not what black people go through, but why the effects of racism need to be discussed in school. You avoid that topic and I guarantee most people will not read about it on their own (largely because most people don't read any history on their own). Acknowledging it is neither a crutch or an excuse - it's ****ing enlightenment and it offers the only path to resolving racial inequities and tension. I mean, wouldn't you agree that a problem can't be fixed until the majority acknowledges the existence of a problem. CRT and 1619 are just two of many perspectives that together are working to fix the massive gap that exists in our current education. As a history teacher, I would think you'd welcome but instead your primary concern seems to be some white people's feelings getting hurt because they misconstrue this discussion as "blaming whites." Again, where will people learn about the reality of racism if not in school?
It is history - it's just one that comes at the facts from a different angle than someone like Wilentz does. And furthermore, this idea is not unique to the 1619 project. There's even a book that details how slavery was a driving force in the getting the South to join the North to fight the Revolutionary War https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/slave-nation/ So there is absolutely concrete facts involved with making this claim. Now should a history teacher present this as the whole truth with no other perspectives? No, but at the same time, 1619 isn't even presenting itself as a wholesale replacement of existing history curricula - they are providing information to supplement and counter that curricula.
Demonizing people that had nothing to do with racism is no path to eliminate racism. There were plenty of white people (I'm not white) who are not racist and have helped progress equality. There a lot of white people who voted for Obama. The civil rights act were passed by a bunch of white men. Slavery wouldn't have needed without white people willing to die for the cause. Biased views doesn't bring credibility to the argument even when there is some validity in it.
In response to the posts by Jiggyfly and Subatomic, I would like to turn to excerpts from a Q&A with James Hunter in today's Politico that examines "culture wars". 30 years ago James Davison Hunter wrote a book that coined the term "culture wars". Because this whole argument about CRT is merely an offshoot of an ongoing clash between culture and politics: "Democracy, in my view, is an agreement that we will not kill each other over our differences, but instead we’ll talk through those differences. And part of what's troubling is that I’m beginning to see signs of the justification for violence on both sides. Obviously, on January 6, we not only saw an act of violence—I mean, talk about a transgression—but one that the people who were involved were capable of justifying. That’s an extraordinary thing." "In 1991, politics still seemed like a vehicle through which we might resolve divisive cultural issues; now, politics is primarily fueled by division on those issues, with leaders gaining power by inflaming resentments on mask-wearing, or transgender students competing in athletics, or invocations of “cancel culture,” or whether it’s OK to teach that many of the Founding Fathers had racist beliefs. And this reality—that the culture war has colonized American politics—is troubling precisely because of an observation Hunter made in 1991 about the difference he saw between political issues and culture war fights: “On political matters, one can compromise; on matters of ultimate moral truth, one cannot.”" Now here is where the ideas behind CRT enter the discussion: "If I could draw a parallel, it’s not unlike the Civil War. There was a culture war for 30 years prior to the Civil War. The Civil War was—without question—about slavery and the status of Black men and women, and, yes, the good guys won [the Civil War]—at the cost of 4 out of 10 Southern males dying and 1 out of 10 Northern males dying. But think about what happened: Dred Scott was an attempt to impose a consensus by law; it took the Civil War and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to overturn Dred Scott. And yet that was also an imposition of solidarity by law and by force. The failures of Reconstruction and the emergence of Jim Crow and “Black Codes” and all of that was proof that politics couldn’t solve culture; it couldn't solve the cultural tensions, and so what you end up with is a struggle for civil rights." "My view is that the reason why we’re continuing to see this press toward racial reckoning is because it's never been addressed culturally." "In other words, racial justice failed by succeeding. The international slave trade ended in 1808. And it created this sense of complacency: “Oh, we’ve dealt with that.” Yet the slave trade and number of slaves grew astronomically over the next 50 years. Then the Civil War was fought and won: “Oh, we’ve dealt with that. Now we can move on.” It created complacency. I think that’s what happened after the civil rights movement and [the Rev. Martin Luther] King’s martyrdom: It was a tremendous success at one level, but created complacency, especially among whites—“We’ve dealt with that. We don’t need to deal with this anymore”—when, in fact, ongoing discrimination is still happening. It represents, again, the attempt to generate a kind of cultural consensus through political means. And that doesn’t seem to work." CRT would be one way you could highlight the root causes of the cultural impasse we are seeing today - especially in matters of race. And by shining light on these causes it would be possible to reach some sort of consensus going forward. But that's not what the so-called conservatives are interested in today. With the cultural conflicts moving into politics we have now entered a "winner-take-all" conflict over the fate of the country. To understand what's happenning now you have to look at the fallout from the events of 2008 when the Great Recession hit: "2008 was a really important year, insofar as the Great Recession accentuated an important distinction within the white middle class. It drove a wedge between the middle and lower-middle or working class and the highly trained, professionally educated managers, technocrats and intellectuals—basically, between the top 20 percent and the bottom 80 percent. And that meant [there] were now class differences that were overlaid upon some of these cultural differences. And in surveys that we've done here at the Institute [for Advanced Cultural Studies at University of Virginia], we’ve tracked that. In 2016, the single most important factor in determining a Trump vote was not having a college degree." "So now, instead of just culture wars, there's now a kind of class-culture conflict. With a sense of being on the losing side of our global economy and its dynamics, I think that the resentments have just deepened. That became obvious, more and more, over the four years of Trump, and part of Trump’s own genius was understanding the resentments of coming out on the losing side of global capitalism." There's much more to this discussion and I highly recommend reading the entire article. It offers perspective to not only this discussion but several others in this forum: https://www.politico.com/news/magaz...ticle&utm_campaign=10-for-today---4.0-styling
Now this response illustrates perfectly why some people feel that CRT is necessary. All I did was present historical facts by listing the names of those people who died because of racial hatred toward black people. There's nothing "biased" in the mere reciting of facts. For those people, it wasn't a such a "gray area" but a black and white area with deadly consequences. And, so that you'll know, some of those named were white. But you chose to equate the reciting of historical fact with the act of racism itself which is both disingenious and deliberately misleading. Ignoring history or pretending that it didn't happen is one of the least credible approaches one can take but that appears to be the stock approach being used by those in opposition to CRT. Their ultimate goal is to whitewash history in order to gain political advantage over people of color.
