This morning the quiet Twitter account of the American Historical Association went into lockdown mode. As they went under, they posted this brief explanatory tweet: Whoa, what the heck happened? The opening salvo It began on August 17, when James Sweet, the president of the AHA, posted
Quite interesting, I am always disappointed by these apologies that are extracted at the point of a woke gun.
Having said that, it seems like both sides are trying to use the past now to control the present, as outlined on the left in your article, and MAGA basically means that, to go back to some time in the past when things were supposedly better. That doesn't really exist in my view.
The whole thing seems like a giant control game that isn't doing a whole lot to solve any problems in the present that we actually have.
Regarding the mob response- what a shame, yet wholly predictable.
Regarding 'presentism', when faced with the mores prior to our more 'enlightened' age, I think of S Scott Fitzgerald- "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
I recall my grandmother referring to 'darkies'. I don't recall context. Odds are most members of the mob should denounce many of their ancestors.
"...of course, a number of the Twitter responses expressed dissatisfaction with his apology. For some of these folks, it seems, no apology could ever be sufficient."
When you search your memory for an example of someone who apologized for angering the social justice mob and mob's collective response was, "That was a really good apology. He seems to have really learned an important lesson. All is forgiven," what instance comes to mind?
Look, the reason that these blowups continue to occur is that the 1619 Project was politically on point, noble in intent, and lousy. It made for a passable Sunday magazine, but it contained factual errors, flaws of interpretation, over-reliance on secondary sources – all the stuff that got drummed out of me as an undergraduate history major. I can't imagine that anyone who took the subject seriously could make it through the original magazine without noticing its inadequacies. It was ambitious, overblown and nowhere good enough to justify its own hype. It was the Zack Snyder's Justice League of American history.
And unfortunately, just like that film, its legion of defenders (including its author) have been zealous to the point of pathology. Anyone who has dared point of that the whole project is not, you know, very good immediately gets accused of racism, or of wanting to erase Black history, or of being a secret white supremacist, etc. This blow-up is just the latest example of this.
And predictably, this thin-skinned defensiveness has drawn the attention of conservative politicians, who are delighted to wield the 1619 Project as a cudgel to beat the study of our past into nothing more than patriotic, all white, pablum.
For those of us who love history, this is deeply frustrating because the motivations for making the 1619 Project – that Black history is inadequately taught, that centering the Black experience changes and challenges the comfortable moral arc of traditional American history – are entirely, undeniably true. We don't hate the ideas behind the project. We just wish it was better.
Quite interesting, I am always disappointed by these apologies that are extracted at the point of a woke gun.
Having said that, it seems like both sides are trying to use the past now to control the present, as outlined on the left in your article, and MAGA basically means that, to go back to some time in the past when things were supposedly better. That doesn't really exist in my view.
The whole thing seems like a giant control game that isn't doing a whole lot to solve any problems in the present that we actually have.
Can’t help but notice that @tenuredradical is inverting what “presentism” is.
It’s not using the past to understand the present. It’s using the present to understand the past.
She’s got her strawman facing the wrong way around.
Regarding the mob response- what a shame, yet wholly predictable.
Regarding 'presentism', when faced with the mores prior to our more 'enlightened' age, I think of S Scott Fitzgerald- "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
I recall my grandmother referring to 'darkies'. I don't recall context. Odds are most members of the mob should denounce many of their ancestors.
Twitter really is going to be the death of the history profession.
This feels like the SHEAR2020 debacle.
"...of course, a number of the Twitter responses expressed dissatisfaction with his apology. For some of these folks, it seems, no apology could ever be sufficient."
When you search your memory for an example of someone who apologized for angering the social justice mob and mob's collective response was, "That was a really good apology. He seems to have really learned an important lesson. All is forgiven," what instance comes to mind?
Look, the reason that these blowups continue to occur is that the 1619 Project was politically on point, noble in intent, and lousy. It made for a passable Sunday magazine, but it contained factual errors, flaws of interpretation, over-reliance on secondary sources – all the stuff that got drummed out of me as an undergraduate history major. I can't imagine that anyone who took the subject seriously could make it through the original magazine without noticing its inadequacies. It was ambitious, overblown and nowhere good enough to justify its own hype. It was the Zack Snyder's Justice League of American history.
And unfortunately, just like that film, its legion of defenders (including its author) have been zealous to the point of pathology. Anyone who has dared point of that the whole project is not, you know, very good immediately gets accused of racism, or of wanting to erase Black history, or of being a secret white supremacist, etc. This blow-up is just the latest example of this.
And predictably, this thin-skinned defensiveness has drawn the attention of conservative politicians, who are delighted to wield the 1619 Project as a cudgel to beat the study of our past into nothing more than patriotic, all white, pablum.
For those of us who love history, this is deeply frustrating because the motivations for making the 1619 Project – that Black history is inadequately taught, that centering the Black experience changes and challenges the comfortable moral arc of traditional American history – are entirely, undeniably true. We don't hate the ideas behind the project. We just wish it was better.