This episode includes further insights on critical race theory, including a discussion of the 1619 project.
Transcript: Critical Race Theory Part 2: the 1619 Project.
Eric: There's a lot of stuff that we present to students in terms of content that go against or cut against the national mythology…. It's been a slow movement, real slow movement. It's been well over 400 years. And African-Americans are tired.
Penny: Welcome to the Diversity & Inclusion for All project supported by Calvin University and the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship. Together, we'll listen to key prospective, build our knowledge, inform our thinking, and get a little better equipped to engage our world.
I'm back again today to explore more about critical race theory with Will Katerberg and Eric Washington. If you missed part one of this two-part series on critical race theory, we encourage you to check out episode number 28: an introduction to critical race theory.
Will, could you begin today by explaining why some people react so strongly against the idea of critical race theory?
Will: There are three things, I think, to understanding reactions against critical race theory. One, people respond to it by feeling guilty and thinking that that's the point, that critical race theory wants to make them feel guilty. That's wrong. It's not about that. It's about learning to think about how systems work, whether or not a person is personally racist. Second, part of the negative reaction to critical race thinking is philosophical, I think. People who in their political thinking, economic thinking, reject the idea of social systems, social structures; there are only individual actions and individual ideas and individual things. Social structures and systems don't exist. Third, people often assume that critical race theory requires you not just to think about and analyze American history or American society today in certain terms, but that it also requires you to embrace certain political responses. Really, that's not true; the two need to be kept distinct. Critical race theory at its core is about understanding how social structures and systems work, legal, economic, political and so on. It doesn't inevitably require you to think that, therefore, there must be these policies in response. And the two often get conflated.
Penny: OK, thank you. I just want to take a few minutes to talk a little bit about the 1619 project and the controversy that has surrounded that. So, first of all, in a few sentences, what is the 16 19 project?
Eric: The 1619 project is a project that was spearheaded by investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones of New York Times. And it basically outlined American history from an African-American perspective, beginning at 1619, because that was the year in which 20 enslaved Africans from Angola arrived in the English colony of Virginia. But the project is much more than just was outlined in the introductory article of the project. It also talks about African-American contribution to American culture and in many different ways. So it's more than just what Nikole Jones wrote in the introduction.
Will: What some people have reacted negatively to is in part the basic premise that if we're going to understand the origins of America, we need to trace them to 1619, when the first African slaves arrive, as Eric says, rather than, say, 1620, when it's the story about the pilgrims and then the Puritans and so on, and them seeking religious freedom. That's saying, we need to think of our history from its origins as marked by slavery and racial inequities. And then, as Eric says, like that critical part gets carried through. But also, it's a positive project to say we need to from the start recognize the contributions of people of African descent. So some people are angered by the idea that we ought to approach American history as from the start, including racism, slavery, and various kinds of related injustices. Some people have also reacted to a particular part of the original essay where it said that a primary cause of the American Revolution was defending slavery. And a number of historians, including a couple of African-American historians and progressive historians and so on, said that's too strong. And so they were critical of it as a particular detail. In response, there has been the Trump White House's educational program, 1776. And it's an effort to reassert a more traditional, laudatory, nostalgic, patriotic kind of history, you know, that sees the founding fathers as giants and downplays any kind of original sin of slavery and racism.
Penny: So in the 1619 project, there are some statements made by the author or authors that other historians and other people also disagree with. So it's not like you're either for or against it completely.
Will: Exactly. Historians will probably complain that in some parts it's not understanding the past on its own terms enough, which is sort of a common way for historians to frame things, but rather it's looking too much at the past from the standpoint of our present day questions and concerns and issues. My own view is that it's fundamental to do good history that you understand the past on its own terms. But it's also important and legitimate to understand the past in ways that helps us think about the origins of our current issues and questions. And so some of the debates about the curriculum are just the normal historical debates about how should you understand something, like that example I gave about how should we understand the significance of slavery as a motivating factor in the American Revolution.
Penny: And that's something that historians will debate. They'll argue about how important it was or what other factors were also important.
Will: Exactly. Exactly. But the deeper concern which inspired the 1776 project by the Trump White House was the core idea, which is to say that if we're going to understand American history on its own terms and if we're going to understand our present day issues, challenges, problems, concerns, we need to see that right from the beginning the inequities associated with importing African slaves and creating slave systems, not just in the south, but in other colonies, has marked and shaped and played a defining role in American history.
Penny: So what you just said that understanding the history of slavery from its beginnings here in our country is part of understanding history. That is like part of the, let's say, the positives of the 1619 project.
Will: But it's also part of why some people don't like the 1619 project. They want to see America’s origins as pure, and racial inequalities as a departure from good origins. You know, that's why somebody might want to say the real origins are 1620, when the Puritans, pilgrims', you know, that that kind of story in New England, as opposed to 1619, if we say that's the origin. And that's when the first African slaves were imported. So, the heart of the question is whether we need to see from its origins American history is marked by systemic inequalities associated with slavery and race, or whether we see the origins as good, but some unfortunate stuff at some point becomes part of the story.
Penny: I wonder if it's the way to just step away from good, bad, hero, villain, and just say there are different parts of our history. Let's look at the whole puzzle and then we may draw very different conclusions. But it seems like it's a little counterintuitive to say we're just not even going to talk about this other half of the puzzle.
Eric: Right. Right. Historians we tend not to talk about heroes, heroines, and use our type of language in or used that as frameworks to understand history, teach History. That's what politicians tend to do. So, yeah, we like to live in the complexities, whereas politicians whether on the right or the left, like neat stories.
Penny: I think for me, too, I want to know what's on the other half of the puzzle, because I think we haven't heard those stories. But I don't think that if I find out more about the 1619 project or if I read and explore more about the initial start of the importation of Africans in our country to be used as slaves, that I think if I learned more about that, that doesn't mean I have to suddenly think that I'm going to say our founding fathers, right, that their motivations were all evil or that they were all the bad guys. Like it's not a zero-sum game. Like, if I pay attention to this other story, then I can't honor some of the good things that are part of the story I already know.
Will: That's exactly right, Penny. And this ought not to be a surprise to people at a place like Calvin University who are Christians. You know, I think of the Apostle Paul talking about how even after he began following Christ, he says, the good that I would do, I don't, and the sins that I would not do, I do. You know that in all of us there are things that we can admire and there are the stain …. There's the stain of what Christians call sin. A former colleague of Eric and mine in the history department, Ron Wells, talked about this in an essay he wrote. He said that sometimes people have viewed America as humanity's salvation, that back in the old world, which was corrupted and sinful and marked by inequality and injustice, you know, people could leave that, come to America as a place to start over, you know, where humanity would get it right. That's sort of a one of the ways about thinking of American mythology or where America's mythic history. And he says America is not uniquely good in the world. America is not the solution to the world's problems. It's not a chance to start over. And he said that ought not to be a surprise by Christians. The very idea from a Christian point of view be considered a heresy, that it misunderstands the nature of the sin. The solution to sin is not America, but Christ. And then Welles pivots in the other direction, and he says some people have swung in the other direction. America is not uniquely good, not uniquely a solution to the world's problems. America is uniquely evil, an empire of slavery, an empire of capitalism, a Cold War behemoth or what have you. America is not that either, he says. America is neither the solution nor the source of the world's problems. America is simply another place where humanity in its good ways, in ways that reflect, you know, being created in God's image and humanity as corrupted by sin play out.
Eric: And I think we historians who may take a look, a view like that, we get caught up. We we get caught in the crossfire because we have to help balance the narratives. Our students come with the narrative of America, the good and the all …this these departures that really do not reflect what America is. So, we historians have to say, OK, but look at this, look at this, look at this. And when and when we're saying, look at this, look at this from certain students’ perspective, it's like, well, you're saying that America is just like just corrupt and evil in its own right and uniquely so, which obviously it isn't. So I think the the way that historical knowledge has been passed down and still inculcated in educational systems in the United States makes the job of the historian to the undergraduate level I’m not going to say difficult, but it makes it challenging in the sense that there's a lot of stuff that we present to students in terms of content that go against, that cut against the national mythology.
Will: I was talking to a former student in the history department who is now a history and social studies teacher. And at her first school, which was more progressive and racially diverse, she was pressured by some people to teach the 1619 curriculum. And, you know, she responded by saying, well, there are some parts of the 1619 curriculum that are problematic. And she said, you know, where it's not trying to understand the past on its own terms, but trying to use history as a way of thinking about and addressing current political issues, she said, I want to resist it. At the next school she went to or she is now, it's a school that's mostly white, mostly conservative and Christian. And she's been getting pressure to use the 1776 curriculum. And she's responding the same way. She's saying there’s a lot of stuff in this curriculum that is about using the past as a way of addressing contemporary issues and and promoting a contemporary message. And my job as a history teacher is to teach the past on its own terms in all of its complexity. And I think the only thing I would add would be that when I'm in a classroom, one of the things I want to get a sense of is where the students are. You know, are the students thinking everything about this topic of, say, some aspect of American history, we’re the bad guys. Or everything about this topic, do the students tend to assume, you know, the most nostalgic or the most naive or the most positive viewpoint and we're the good guys? Well, I want them wherever they are, to see complexity: moral complexity, the complexity of the details of what happened, all of that. You know, and then after we've done that, maybe we can talk about, well, what is the contemporary resonance of this and how does this help us understand contemporary problems and maybe think about what are some ways out of these problems.
Penny: So, I think it's helpful to think about the 1619 project as it's not a perfect resource. And there are controversies even among historians and sort of historical experts about its -- the 1619 project's interpretations and its purpose and what it's trying to do. But what my takeaway is, it's still like I can still learn about stories that I don't know from the past, but that are still important part of our history, like the stories of those first Africans that were imported to be slaves, or the fact that slavery was the economic powerhouse of the start of our country, or just different different things that are sometimes underplayed or not part of the history that I've learned in school. Just to balance the picture. Right. And then as we move forward, so, you know, maybe we've learned or we're starting to learn more and more about race in America and the different things that are part of that big package, that big issue,… As we move forward, how can just knowing more help us? Like where can we look in the world or in our history for models about how to move forward productively together and not get trapped and stymied in this quicksand of political polarization?
Eric: Well, yeah, the United States has really never had a reckoning moment, a real national conversation about the history of race and the legacy of race and
how race has affected negatively generations of of of of people, including African-Americans, indigenous persons, nations, Asian-Americans, Latinos, Latinx, Latine. We have these small conversations. You might read them in The New York Times and Washington Post, and I read them in Atlantic. You hear them maybe from Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson and others from both sides (or) in the middle. But there's never been this --to you …to borrow the name from South Africa--truth and reconciliation. Never had that here. So as racism endures and we keep continuing…we have conversations as we've had it, even that may be enlightening in some in some fashion in terms of like policy and redress and repairing wrongs. It's been a slow movement, real slow movement. So this has to be not only municipal conversations or policy changes in repairing and reconciliation should not only be on municipal levels like what's trying to happen in Evanston, Illinois, about redressing housing and inequity, for example, for African-Americans. It has to be on a state level and national level. We haven't had that yet. And African-Americans, I speak, speak from an African-American perspective here, African-Americans are tired of this. I mean, it's it's yes, been 1619. But also, it has been the middle of the 16th century, really, when the first enslaved Africans arrived in North America, like in Florida. It's been well over 400 years. And African-Americans are tired.
Penny: I think for me, too, it's important to for me just to say I can learn about different African-American experiences. There isn't just one or different indigenous experiences and laws and events and things that happened in our country. And I can do that without somehow feeling like, oh, no, we're not paying attention to Asian-Americans. It's not a zero-sum game. Right. I can learn about the stories of other people without me feeling like no one's listening to my story. I can learn about the different, I'm going to say, you know, not so pretty sides of our national history. I can learn about those. And then that can really shape how I see it. But it doesn't mean I have to lose what I love about this country. Right. Or some of the stories and events that I'm proud of that I think are amazing. But it just brings things into balance and it helps me understand our country. But …and I think that, like, you know, so I used to be a German teacher teaching German language and culture. And I think it is an important maybe lesson or an example that after World War Two, the German people were sort of forced by external powers to recognize and acknowledge and see the evidence of the bad things that happened during the Nazi era, especially in terms of the Holocaust, to learn from that and to move forward. And so even today in the in our current century, Germany does and doesn't do certain things on the world stage because they have sort of all learned about the bad things that happened and are trying to avoid them and are trying to learn from. It's not like I would say a German person today… I'm not going to say, oh, no, you're a terrible, bad person because of what happened in the past. But they are living they're standing on that foundation, on that history and learning and acting in the world in ways that are informed by the history that they've all come to acknowledge and recognize. Not to mention that, I mean, there are people who deny. There are Holocaust deniers, but I think on the whole, they have been able to look at their past, their recent past, and then sort of incorporate that into who they want to be today. And I would hope that we in the United States could set aside all our our baggage a little bit and look at different stories in the past that have been underreported, under-represented, under read and then together recognize what has happened. And it's some of it's been good and some of it has been bad. And then, you know, from this place of where we've seen both the good and the bad and a little more detail, and you work our way forward.
Will: I think that's exactly right, Penny, and in some societies, they've done that better. Eric mentioned the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, and it wasn't just the allies after World War II forcing Germany to do this. In the 1980s and 1990s, Germany did this again. It was known as the historians dispute. It was about a process of coming to terms with the past. I'm sure there's a lovely long German word for that.
Penny: Oh, there is. And it is the lovely word called Vergangenheitsbewältigung.
Will: Yes, I delight in those. And then more recently in Canada, they had a a similar thing --coming to terms kind of thing, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, they called it. And it was about indigenous Canadians, First Nations Canadians, and what happened to them on reserves and in the process of conquest, but especially reserve schools and residential schools. And the conversation continues. Just this summer on the grounds of several former schools they discovered these mass graves where they found the bodies of over a hundred in one case, a couple of hundred in another case of native children who died while at these residential schools. And so this conversation is playing out again in Canada. And it's about truth. And people listening to indigenous people, First Nations people from Canada, and to some degree, people who worked at those schools talking about what they did and what they experienced. So the United States, I think, has some good models to follow if it wanted to have this kind of conversation.
Penny: So I hope that people who've been listening to our podcast and exploring a little bit different topics in race in America are perhaps slightly better poised to get into learning mode, to hear and search out the different stories that have been maybe underrepresented, that help round out the picture, that give the other half of the puzzle, if you will, and that we can perhaps get into a better space where we can work together to understand our history and then work forward to living into our dreams and hopes and what we really our ideal of what we want this country to be.
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