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An opinion piece released Saturday on the Chinese state-controlled media outlet China Global Television Network (CGTN) has come out strongly in favor of the New York Times’ rewriting of U.S. history, the 1619 Project.
The 1619 Project is written by journalists — not historians — and posits that the true beginning of America should not be 1776 when the 13 original colonies declared independence from England, but 1619 when the first slaves arrived in Virginia. Some school districts are already incorporating the 1619 Project into their curriculum despite the fact that several historians have warned about factual inaccuracies contained in it.
Entitled “Barr and Trump try to rewrite slave history but fail in reality,” the piece is written by Nairobi-based author and lecturer Stephen Ndegwa, who takes President Trump and Attorney General William Barr to task, saying they are “kindred souls” who wish to deny the history of slavery in the United States.
CGTN first attacks Barr for a September 16 statement in which he rightly pointed out that the COVID-19 restrictions placed on Americans were an intrusion of civil liberties. “You know, putting a national lock-down, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest. It’s, you know, other than slavery — which was a different kind of restraint — this is the greatest intrusion of civil liberties in American history.”
The piece called the remark “poorly calculated,” “shocking,” and “totally insensitive.” Further, it claimed that it was “tinged with racism.”
From the piece: “How is it possible that the inhumane conditions that slaves lived under are comparable to coronavirus countermeasures like wearing a mask, social distancing, washing of hands, stay-at-home or even quarantining? It clearly shows that Barr not only has scant knowledge of this ugly part of America’s history, but is also ignorant of the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
But Barr never made that comparison. The attorney general didn’t compare the lock-downs and other COVID-19 measures to slavery. By saying “other than slavery,” he was clearly inferring that slavery was different and was the greater evil.
The piece went on to heartily endorse the opinions of the left-wing journalists who created the 1619 Project that America’s year of birth should not be 1776 but 1619. The 1619 Project’s stated goal is to retell America’s history “by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of [the United States].”
“The project marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first slaves in the Virginia colony in 1619, which should actually be seen as America’s year of birth.”
To counter this obviously false narrative, President Trump has touted the creation of a new education program, which he has dubbed the 1776 Commission.
“I will soon sign an executive order establishing a national commission to promote patriotic education. It will be called the 1776 Commission,” Trump said in a speech at the National Archives.
Trump went on: “[The commission] will encourage our educators to teach your children about the miracle of American history and make plans to honor the 250th anniversary of our founding.”
But for CTGN, such a commission amounts to a “whitewashing” of American history. “Unfortunately for Trump, no amount of denial or deception can erase the contribution of African-Americans in the country.”
To be lectured by a Communist Chinese news outlet is galling to say the least. Have they looked at their own history of human-rights abuses or of their own history of slavery that exists even to this day?
Frankly, we don’t need a rewriting of American history such as the 1619 Project, and we definitely don’t need another federal commission about anything. How about this: We do away with all the competing left-wing projects and federal commissions and simply teach our children the truth about America?
This includes the truth about how we were a nation founded on the principles of self-governance and liberty; the truth about how we escaped the tyrannical bonds that tied us to the British Empire without any representation in their government; the truth about how slavery was an ugly evil that we allowed to exist for too long and the truth about the long and bloody civil war we fought against each other to finally expunge that evil; and the truth about how Democrats in the South struggled long and hard against integration of blacks into society, enacting Jim Crow laws that subjugated black Americans for a century after they were declared free.
The truth is interesting enough. It doesn’t need any ideological spice to make it better.
Image: Thinkstock
James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects. He can be reached at [email protected].
