I guess it is upsetting a lot of conservatives that the New York Times, on the 400th anniversary of the first African slaves arriving in Virginia, is dedicating a lot of ink to telling the history of our hemisphere. The latest effort is on the history of sugar production. It’s shocking, I guess, for some to learn that no one wanted to go to the trouble of mass producing sugar until they discovered they could make slaves do it for free. Now Americans (especially the descendants of those slaves) consume twice as much sugar annually as they should and people are obese and die of diabetes at alarming rates.
It is un-American to tell this story?
I certainly don’t think so. I think it’s educational. Just don’t try to convince Professor Newt Gingrich of that.
“The NY Times 1619 Project should make its slogan ‘All the Propaganda we want to brainwash you with’.it is a repudiation of the original NY Times motto,” the former House speaker said Sunday on Twitter.
Why would a while male conservative from Georgia consider the history of slavery in the New World to be propaganda?
The question answers itself.
It’s projection and cognitive dissonance all the way down.
Professor GIngrich’s PhD thesis was about what a great job the Belgian government did administering the Congo (I think he didn’t try to defend the Leopold II part where the king personally owned the country and everybody in it), so you can say he’s been pretty consistent throughout his career.
The story tells us how we white folk went along for the better part of four hundred years perfectly happy telling ourselves and children we were better than those black and brown people. It is hard to hear it, but it is the truth. Now we must live with it and fix what we can. Let’s start by removing the stench we have in the W.H. today.
A (fraudulent) “conservative” history prof tweeting 50 character objections to history on twitter. Sounds about right for this movement of morans…
The reactionary right really hates that American history has been torn from their exclusive grasp and that our century-and-a-half-long neoconservative white-washing of race in America isn’t the only thing on offer anymore. Plus, the fact that there are now at least a few (online) voices detailing the manifest failure of the anti-democratic Constitution is driving “conservatives” to rage as well.
It’s still way too hot an idea for an elected Dem to utter, but our “leaders” haven’t been doing much leading for quite some time. How and why the Dems can’t train their rhetorical sights on (at least) the failure of the electoral college and the resulting democratic illegitimacy of Der Trumper (after Bushco!) is disgusting