Rescuing American History: Essay Reviews (3)
In this blog posting, we continue (from the September 6, 2021 and November 1, 2021 postings) a review of some essays on the topic of American-history education in the U.S. These essays were recently published in the book “Red, White, and Black,” which includes critiques of the revisionist history published as the “1619 Project” by the New York Times. The editor of “Red, White, and Black” is Robert L. Woodson, Sr. Bibliographic data is included in Essay Reviews (1) appearing as the September 6, 2021 blog posting. (There was a typographical error in that 9/6/21 posting: The correct name is Robert L. Woodson, Sr.) Today’s blog posting will review another essay in “Red, White, and Black.”
The essay appearing on pages 143 - 150 in Woodson’s book is titled “Critical Race Theory’s Destructive Impact on America.” Its author, Carol M. Swain, currently a political commentator on nationally well-known news outlets, is a former university professor of political science and law at Princeton and Vanderbilt universities. Swain finds that the 1619 Project is a revisionist history of race in America that invokes newfangled and morally repugnant claims in order to justify its thesis that racism is an American way of life that is irremediable - - unless the 1619 Project’s teaching materials are universally adopted. The basis of this project is to assign 1619, the year that Africans first appeared in Virginia, as the founding year of the United States. The 1619 Project holds that all of U.S. history revolves around the practice of slavery. (One notes in passing that 17th century Englishmen would have been astonished to learn that what they had considered as a North American seaboard ripe for colonization was instead a land destined to become a republic by virtue of what was, for them, an isolated sequence of transactions starting in 1619.)
Swain mentions that this revisionist history has been put into the form of classroom materials for K-12 education without the normal, lengthy peer-review process. As of February, 2020 these materials were in 3,500 classrooms. However, a “small detail” seems to have been overlooked by the purveyors of the 1619 Project: Swain finds that during the forty-two years from 1619 to 1661, there was a mix of slavery and indentured servitude in North America. The result was that some blacks became free. Free blacks, American Indians, and whites all competed in buying slaves, which were legally imported after 1661. “Early Negroes imported into Virginia held the status of indentured servants … [and received] ‘freedom dues’ in the form of land at the end of their term of service.” There are documented cases of free black individuals who were able to pay for the import of additional indentured servants and to receive 50 acres of land for each indentured servant imported.
The picture of colonial individuals who maintained some measure of mobility among slave, indentured, and free classes “differs substantially from the narrative advanced by the 1619 Project contributors.” There is the appearance, Swain thinks, that the 1619 Project is a stalking horse for the larger project of extracting and administering reparations for slavery. Reparations would flow from sufficiently non-black individuals to sufficiently black individuals. Reparations would be theoretically justified by the assumed existence of torts and malfeasance by some remote ancestors against other remote ancestors.
Swain maintains that reparations are wrong, first, on utilitarian grounds: The real problems of some black citizens would not be addressed by reparations, and the real progress shown by other black citizens would not be recognized. Second, reparations are wrong on moral grounds: Today’s white Americans are not responsible for great-great-great grandparents who might have been insufficiently zealous in abolishing slavery (or who might have been residing in Slovakia or Lithuania). Moreover, free blacks, American Indians, and whites all bought slaves. Finally, one notes in passing the problem that, for the purposes of reparations, it would be impossible for any individual, of any race, to prove that some remote ancestor had not held slaves at some time in the remote past. What should one say about African Americans whose near ancestors were slaves in North America, but whose remote ancestors held slaves in Africa? Proving a negative is no more likely of success in reparations theory than in any other endeavor.
Swain goes on to define “critical race theory” (CRT) as an analytic framework to analyze institutions and culture, dividing the world into white oppressors and non-white victims. CRT uses anecdotes and “personal narratives” in place of traditional historical data. The goal is to create a new ruling class. Such a class would be available for administrating reparations. Although left unsaid by Swain in her essay, one notes in passing that any new ruling class will owe homage and fealty to the theorists of the 1619 Project and to sufficiently “woke” individuals of any race - - or so those theorists and “woke” individuals hope. (An individual is said to be “woke” if he or she is a connoisseur of life’s inequities, being adept in their detection and elimination.)
In the world of the 1619 Project, Swain states, “education is now about white privilege indoctrination.” Even poor Appalachians (and one thinks also of the descendants of the Okies who fled the dust bowl) are guilty of incorrect skin color. Swain maintains that “The 1619 Project is a misguided effort to keep open historical wounds while telling only half the story … Blaming today’s families for the mistakes of our ancestors is not a prescription for unifying the country or empowering racial and ethnic minorities.” Swain is able to perceive this misguided effort, because “I [Swain] reached my formative years before critical race theory and cultural Marxism gained a dominant foothold.”