Twitter Drags Mike Pompeo for Attacking Award-Winning 1619 Project on Slavery: ‘You’ve Got Racist Bingo!’

Tommy ChristopherJul 17th, 2020, 11:24 am
 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went out of his way to slam the New York Times‘ 1619 Project during a speech Thursday, which sparked a deluge of outraged responses on Twitter alternately accusing Pompeo of racism, attacking the free press, and ignoring more pressing issues.

Pompeo ripped the project during a speech at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia Thursday afternoon, then posted that specific portion of his speech on Twitter.

“The @NYTimes’s 1619 Project wants you to believe our country was founded for human bondage. What a dark vision of America’s birth. What a disturbed reading of history. What a slander on our great people,” Pompeo wrote, above a clip of his remarks to the same effect.

The reactions from journalists, media figures, and other verified Twitter users were a mixture of revulsion on a variety of levels.

Among the reactions was this tweet from 1619 Project co-creator Nikole Hannah-Jones, who  won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary this year for her contribution.

Racism and historical denial were a running theme, with Young Turks host Cenk Uygur writing “Congrats! You’ve got racist bingo! You somehow managed to be racist against Asian people while trying to be racist toward black people. Mission accomplished! Your prize – Trump’s base next time you run for office!”

NYU Professor Jay Rosen was disturbed by Pompeo’s attack on the press, writing “Darker to me is the fantastic belief that you are somehow doing the work of the American people by attacking their free press. This is what you have time for? Your job as Secretary of State is to uphold press freedom as a fundamental right around the world. Please return to it.”

Those themes, as well as more general shock and mockery, were shared by other prominent users.

The 1619 Project is a re-examination of the history of slavery in the U.S. that was released in August 2019. Some historians have offered criticism about the project, but the effort has been widely praised, and is currently being adapted for film and TV.

NY Times Magazine editor Jake Silverstein later added a clarification to Hannah-Jones’ essay, and an editor’s note which read “A passage has been adjusted to make clear that a desire to protect slavery was among the motivations of some of the colonists who fought the Revolutionary War, not among the motivations of all of them.”

But in its clarification, Silverstein noted “We stand behind the basic point, which is that among the various motivations that drove the patriots toward independence was a concern that the British would seek or were already seeking to disrupt in various ways the entrenched system of American slavery.”

Watch Pompeo’s remarks above.

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