#2973: Nikole Hannah-Jones et al.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is an investigative journalist and staff writer for The New York Times, a MacArthur Fellow, inaugural Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at the Howard University School of Communications (where she founded the Center for Journalism and Democracy), possessor of various Honorary Degrees, member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and even a Pulitzer Prize winner for Commentary in 2020 for her work on her most famous project, The 1619 Project. She has, in other words, received lots of accolades and wields a lot of influence, But her work, in particular the 1619 Project, has, to be honest, ideology-driven bullshit as its core (although it should be emphasized that the bullshit verdict doesn’t extend to all essays written by scholars in connection with the project). And even if you agree with her goals (reparations for descendants of slaves, as well as national health care and other social welfare programs for all Americans – like most defenders of the former, she is pretty nebulous about the practical execution and consequences of such a program) – it really doesn’t justify her pseudohistory. And it is junk history. The fact that lots of people like it because they share some or all of her political views doesn’t change that (this review of the later book is somewhat remarkable for its attempt to laud the project but more or less giving up halfway through). The New York Times, meanwhile – and true to their ideological stance – refused to publish corrections, just as they had refused to accommodate the contributions of fact checkers in the first place (instead, editor Jake Silverstein doubled down).

 

And the things is, we have thus far covered a lot of wingnut pseudoscience of the America-as-a-Christian-nation variety – history twisted to serve wingnut or religious right ideology – and that is hard to justify without including the 1619 Project as well. Indeed, the whole thing is eerily reminiscent of the work of David Barton, including the types of inaccuracies and sleights of hand employed.

 

Hannah-Jones herself responded to criticism by pointing out “that history is never objective. There are facts, and then there are interpretations of facts”, and sure: the idea that there is some kind of ‘objective’ framing of history is a myth – that defense of distortion is of course available to Christian nationalists, too – but there are, indeed, facts, and Hannah-Jones seems to be less than ideally concerned with those as well (and with this). It is not a particularly good look. And to emphasize: What really makes the project break the lunacy barrier is not in itself the revisionism – legitimate historical revisionism (in the sense used by historians) is a means to shed new light on and deepen our understanding of history – but the obvious political goal to push it in public schools. Indeed, the Times quickly developed its 1619 Project Curriculum and printed hundreds of thousands of extra copies for distribution to schools, museums and libraries, and The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting made available free online lesson plans and offers help to get speakers to classrooms – all in a manner we are very familiar with from the Discovery Institute’s efforts on behalf of intelligent design: the goal was never to engage with the science but to get their ideas into schools.

 

Some people have of course defended the project on the grounds that, despite its flaws, it serves as a counterweight to prevailing narratives. But that's precisely the sort of idea about the dynamics that makes it scary: the need for a counterweight doesn’t justify pseudohistory in service of ideology but should motivate an even more excrutiating focus on accuracy and detail. Note that the 1619 project is the direct motivation for the 1776 Project, which is even more ridiculously plagued by pseudoscience and pseudohistory. And that’s how it will all continue when accuracy is proscribed in lieu of political games. So even if you agree with the political goal of the 1619 Project, you really ought to be worried about the dynamics here. And no: Our denunciation of the project does not mean that lots of the criticisms from elsewhere weren’t moronic; but they were predictable.

 

Diagnosis: Can people stop doing pseudoscience and pseudohistory in the name of ideology? (Of course they can’t, but life probably won’t get much better before they do.) Given our coverage of wingnut pseudohistory in the past, we really couldn’t circumvent this one. And although the 1619 Project is probably less egregious than, say, David Barton’s drivel, given the support and advocacy it’s been lent and by whom, the 1619 Project’s effects are conceivably even more disconcerting.