The Foreign Service Journal, December 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2021 11 LETTERS Remembering Ambassador Johnny Young I just read the online version of the tribute to Johnny Young. We were of the same generation, but from very different backgrounds. He was a great role model! Johnny was administrative counselor at The Hague when I was assigned to Rotterdam from 1984 to 1986 as a second- tour consular/admin officer. Our contacts were limited, but whenever our paths crossed, even in post-retirement settings, he displayed the admirable qualities described in the essay about him in the October FSJ . That he traveled such an incredible life path from rural Georgian to superior statesman exemplified the fine- ness of the man in every role he played. His wife, Angie, contributed much to the well-deserved respect and honor accorded them over their years of service. Thanks, Mr. Ambassador, for your patriotic dedication. Dave Rabadan FSO, retired Annandale, Virginia Coming to Terms with the 1619 Project Bob Fretz’s letter in the October FSJ claims the New York Times ’ 1619 Project lacks “balance, sources, footnotes or bibli- ography, so is not a history text.” In fact, I would submit that it is his own letter that deserves those criticisms. For despite his assertion that “the project gets a lot wrong,” Mr. Fretz does not identify a single factual error—but he commits several of his own. For starters, the authors of the 1619 Project do not claim there were no Black enslaved persons in America before Jamestown, for plainly there were. But as John Fer noted in his May Speaking Out column on the controversy (“How the 1619 Project Can Help Public Diplo- macy”), their focus is on the spread of slavery and the institutionalization of systemic racism in the original 13 colonies (my emphasis). The contemporaneous developments in the French and Spanish territories Mr. Fretz cites are certainly interesting and deserving of attention in their own right, but they are also irrelevant to the 1619 Project’s mission. Speaking as a musician, this whole line of attack reminds me of concert reviewers who devote their space to the program they feel the performers should have pre- sented, rather than the one they did. When Mr. Fretz finally gets around to critiquing the project’s actual findings, he treats us to a string of assertions carefully qualified with “likely,” “probable” and other weasel words. But even if everything he claims were 100 percent true, that wouldn’t contradict the stirring words of Columbia University Professor John McWhorter, whom Fer quotes in his May column: “In terms of what makes America unique, 1776 or various years thereabouts, are absolutely crucial, beyond the flags and the songs. …This land was built on the backs of unpaid laborers and enslaved people, and this went far back beyond 1776.” No historical analysis is perfect, and the 1619 Project is no exception. We can, and should, debate what responsibility 21st-century white Ameri- cans bear for that history, and what we ought to do about it. But let us have that debate on a level playing field—one that acknowledges the continuing reverbera- tions of our nation’s original sin, slavery. Steven Alan Honley Former FSO Washington, D.C. He Likely Prospered? Bob Fretz wrote a letter of some length com- menting on the failings of the 1619 Project and the challenges it poses for our country’s diplomacy. He finished off his long critique by elevating the name of one John Punch, an indentured servant whose descendants likely include President Barack Obama and Ralph Bunche. What caught my eye was his casual line, “He likely prospered,” after noting Punch’s marriage to “a white woman, likely a fellow indentured servant.”That bears some explanation, considering the most prominent reason for a contempo- rary American to recognize John Punch’s name is that he is most often character- ized as America’s first official slave. Sadly for Punch, having escaped with two white indentured servants, he was sentenced upon his recapture to a lifetime of chattel slavery. There are conflicting essays from 1913 and later that explore Punch’s status relative to the two Europe- ans, yet there is never any doubt that he spent the rest of his life as a slave. There is much to study and learn and understand from the period, but denying the primary fact of Punch’s permanent reduction to slave by declaring “he likely prospered” reflects that Mr. Fretz has much more to learn himself. Your reader- ship is due a clarification. Leslie D. Mark FS family member Kansas City, Missouri Leading on Democracy The White House’s virtual Summit for Democracy set for Dec. 9-10 fulfills a campaign promise by then-candidate Joe Biden to “set an affirmative agenda” for