The Foreign Service Journal, May 2021

18 MAY 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL American contributions should stand front and center in the descriptions of America’s development, before and after 1776. 2) Ignoring the valid fact-checks of experts is bad journalism. Thoughtful, discerning, critical assess- ments like those put forward by Leslie Har- ris are exactly what we should be showcas- ing as the best of America. Popularizing Complexity In another enlightening exchange, Conor Friedersdorf, a staff writer at The Atlantic , hosted a podcast, The Philanthropy Roundtable, in which Har- ris and Columbia University Professor John McWhorter, also African American, debated the value of efforts like 1619. Though he levied significant criticism at Hannah-Jones’ contention of 1619 as the “true founding” of the United States, McWhorter said he would tell this to young Black Americans and new immi- grants to America: “In terms of what makes America unique, 1776 or various years there- abouts, are absolutely crucial, beyond the flags and the songs. I would tell them that this land was built on the backs of unpaid laborers and enslaved people, and that went far back beyond 1776. … But frankly, I would also tell that young Black person to resist the idea of supposing that the entire history of the United States must be reduced to a story of how well people were doing in learning of how to think of Black people as equals.” Harris largely agreed, adding: “The message is not just that there was a big problem—and there was—in terms of the ideals of freedom and the continu- ation of slavery. It’s that how do people think through that? What were the limits on their thinking? And why did it take so long for it to end? …These are important questions because we need to under- stand how change happens historically. …We have tales of intergenerational struggle and possibility in this country.” McWhorter and Harris’ debate over the 1619 Project shows Americans at their best: championing free speech; embrac- ing the marketplace of ideas, complexity and nuance; and neither heaping outrage on nor giving a free pass to controversial statements. Media Integrity The 1619 Project staff and Nikole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for their efforts, but their work should not be exempt from a thorough examination. “Newspapers should have no friends,” Joseph Pulitzer said—and therefore, their journalists should have the thick skins, open minds and gracious egos to accept and learn from valid criticism. To her credit, Hannah-Jones told The Atlantic that she accepted general criti- cism and planned to better contextualize 1619’s claims in a forthcoming textbook. In fact, it was up to her employer, The New York Times , to have spoken up, to insist on accuracy. Yet the Times doubled down, revealing another aspect of the 1619 Project controversy: In the environ- ment of extreme political polarization in the U.S. today, our moneyed and partisan American minds may be too mesmerized by their own media machines to engage each other in liberal discourse, but that doesn’t mean we can’t set a better example abroad. every piece of civil rights legislation that crossed his desk. I was turned down. Today the sins of racism in the United States and the complexities of the charac- ters on all sides are out in the open. There is no reason not to point to the vitality of democracy on display in this moment. The Controversy Some argue that the 1619 Project is politically motivated and historically inac- curate, and that it perpetuates the racism it claims to reject. In presenting it fairly and most usefully, we need to include crit- ical commentary on some of the project’s assertions, as well as the differing views on its purposes, assumptions and effects. Significantly, one of the historians enlisted to fact-check by The New York Times , Leslie M. Harris of Northwestern University, said in a March 2020 Politico article that the Times ignored her fact- checks. An expert in African American life and slavery in the pre–Civil War era, Professor Harris had been asked to validate one of lead author Nikole Hannah-Jones’ central assertions—namely, that protecting slav- ery was “one critical reason” the colonists declared independence from Britain. Harris “vigorously disputed the claim,” as she put it, countering that while slavery was an issue during the Revolu- tionary period, the protection of slavery was not one of the main reasons the 13 colonies went to war. Harris’ concern, as she explained, was that such “overstated claims” and inac- curacies could undermine the “spirit of 1619,” which was to cast Black Americans in the spotlight they deserved from the beginning of settlements in America. What a display of Fitzgeraldian intelligence we’d give if we could hold the following thoughts in our mind and present them at public events: 1) African