MEAWW.COM / NEWS / HUMAN INTEREST

Trump lashes out at schools teaching '1619 Project', says they're trying to 'change our history'

The president said this at a press conference a day after threatening to defund the education department if the project was taught in schools

President Donald Trump on September 7 hit out at schools teaching the 1619 Project saying it seeks to change the US’s history and slammed protesters who have been targeting and tearing down Confederate monuments across the country in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, giving rise to serious race riots. 

During a press conference in the White House, Trump was asked about the use of the project as part of the school curriculum and whether he wanted the subject of slavery to be taught. Though the president said that he wanted the subject to be taught, he was not in favor of the "revisionist history". He also said that he was against "cancel culture".

"I want everybody to know everything they can about our history. I am not a believer in cancel culture, the good or the bad, if you don’t study the bad it could happen again. So I do want that subject studied very carefully and accurately," he said. In July, a conversation between Trump and a GOP senator who was at a restaurant in Capitol Hill was put on a speakerphone and the former was heard calling cancel culture "bulls***t".

"But, we grew up with a certain history and now they’re trying to change our history. Revisionist history. That’s why they want to take down our monuments, take down our statues," the president said, referring to the attacks on Confederate monuments amid the Black Lives Matter movement.

What is 1619 Project?

The ‘1619 Project’ was started in August 2019 by The New York Times to mark the 400th anniversary of the arrival of African slaves to the English colonies and to acknowledge the legacy of slavery and the contributions that the Black Americans made towards the nation. The interactive project is directed by Pulitzer-winning New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones with contributions made by the daily's writers and includes essays on the history of several aspects of contemporary American life that have "roots in slavery and its aftermath", according to many authors. The project suggests that 1619 be considered as America’s “birth year” as the first enslaved Africans came to Virginia that year and not 1776 when the founding fathers declared independence from Great Britain.

Oprah Winfrey and Lionsgate are partnering with Hannah-Jones to also adapt it for film and television while a series of books have also been planned. 

The president’s remarks opposing the project came just a day after he retweeted a post from an unverified account criticizing the project saying, "California has implemented the 1619 project into the public schools. soon you wont recognize America." In his retweet, Trump said: "Department of Education is looking at this. If so, they will not be funded!" 

On September 4, Trump banned federal agencies from conducting racial insensitivity training related to "White privilege" and “critical race theory". Critical race theory says "institutions are inherently racist and that race itself... is a socially constructed concept that is used by White people to further their economic and political interests at the expense of people of color," according to Texas A&M University professor Tommy Curry. 
 
Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, asked the heads of the federal agencies to change the racial sensitivity training programs for employees in a two-page memo where he called such training "un-American propaganda". 

Meanwhile, Trump's threat to defund the education department gave rise to a debate. According to a report in the Independent, the president’s capacity to cancel funding to schools via the education department is strictly limited and earlier efforts on behalf of the Republicans to stop children from studying the project have not met any results. 
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, for instance, brought a bill to ban teaching of the 1619 Project but it is unlikely to get the backing. The lawmaker was criticized for calling slavery a "necessary evil upon which the union was built" and also referring to the project as "left-wing propaganda".

The project has also faced a critical reception from other quarters. In August last year, Time Magazine said the first slaves came in South Carolina in 1526 when it was a Spanish colony and the incident of 1619 did not mark the beginning although it was a turning point for slavery in American history.

In March this year, historian Leslie M Harris, who acted as a fact-checker for the project, said the authors did not take care of her corrections but believed the project was needed to rectify the current historical narratives.