Hulu's "The 1619 Project": Reframing the Legacy of these United States by Getting to the Truth

The 1619 Project began in 2019 as a collection of longform essays in The New York Times The timing was intentional 400 years after 1619 the year that the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia over 150 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence and almost 250 years before slavery would be abolished That39s the seeding idea behind the project Nikole HannahJones who not only launched the project but wrote the opening essay for which she received a Pulitzer Prize said this quotThe 1619 Project aims to reframe the country39s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrativequotAnd that39s really what it all comes down to right The narrative That39s the reason nobody fks with Christopher Columbus anymore and why we now know Thomas Edison was more quotidea thiefquot than quotlegit inventorquot because the BS narrative we39ve all been fed has finally been changed I mean the Civil War wasn39t about states39 rights any more than James Sims was a legitimate hero Maybe he fathered the practice of gynecology but he did so by experimenting on living enslaved Black women using zero anesthesia because he was an idiot who thought Black women felt no pain That39s like if I cured cancer but I did it by disemboweling white women amp8230 I39m pretty sure that would make me a monsterThat39s what The 1619 Project is It39s a visual retelling of the longform essays poems and otherwise that chronicle the omitted truths of our country39s very bloody and particularly antiBlack legacy That function however is also the main reason that it39s received so much pushback from opposing forces The National Review recently took a stab at both Hulu and HannahJones calling The 1619 Project quotdangerous revisionismquot What39s dangerous about correcting information that39s incorrect I see none unless I was someone who39s benefited from its original falseness in some way in which case amp8230 yeah the truth would feel pretty dangerous to me and my way of life That39s probably the reason former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the project quota slander on our great peoplequotIn an interview with ABC news HannahJones is quoted as saying quotThere39s a great deal of hope in knowing all of the inequality we see has been constructed That means it39s not natural It39s not innate It doesn39t have to be this wayquot Obviously this is a sentiment HannahJones and I both share although I must say that my outlook on the situation may seem a bit more cynical than hers For me whether or not this inequality is natural was never the question Of course it isnamp8217t and there definitely isamp160 hope in that Instead my concerns are with the amount of time the beneficiaries of said inequality have spent quotin the leadquot so to speak I once heard a saying that went something like quotIf you walk ten miles into the woods you have to walk ten miles to get outquot So the question isnamp8217t whether or not leaving the woods of inequality is possible The question is how far in are we today Have we even been walking the right directionAs a piece of media specifically a sixpart documentary miniseries The 1619 Project holds its own It39s beautifully shot and edited as I expected it to be but it wasn39t all gold For whatever reason the quotMusicquot episode didn39t hit me as hard as quotRacequot but upon further reflection I attributed that to how relevant race as a construct is to every other topic in the series Any disinterest I felt was related to the series39 documentary format and not so much the subject matterHowever these are hourlong episodes that cover a lot of ground and while the sustained exposure to truth is uplifting and freeing it can also be an emotionally taxing process Learning more about the horrors perpetrated against one39s ancestors and then watching them be linked to how you andor your presentday peers may be being treated can be difficult at times And if you are someone who39s ancestors may have been said perpetrators or worse you just so happen to benefit from the framework of systemic racism that modernday America exists on top of well yeah this maybe isn39t the most pleasant watchMost important though is the fact that this type of information is under attack Recently Florida has been in the news for a number of reasons the main ones being the legal banning of African American Studies from Florida public schools followed less than a week ago by Florida school teachers removing every book from their classroom libraries for fear of being charged with felonies for exposing students to books that are quotharmful to minorsquot While the latter story isn39t limited to books about American history and slavery the idea that students reading what they want and thinking for themselves shares the same energy as those who feel The 1619 Project assaults the quotaccuracyquot of our already very whitewashed history booksThis Thursday Hulu39s The 1619 Project will telecast the final two episodes of the miniseries quotFearquot and quotJusticequot which is fitting because fear of the truth always has and will continue to lead to gross miscarriages of justiceClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Hulu's "The 1619 Project": Reframing the Legacy of these United States by Getting to the Truth

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Ainsley Andrade

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Hulu's "The 1619 Project": Reframing the Legacy of these United States by Getting to the Truth

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