New York Times’ Nikole Hannah-Jones Fires Back at Trump for Attacking 1619 Project: He’s ‘Trying to Stoke Racial Division’
Nikole Hannah-Jones, the founder of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, responded to President Donald Trump’s criticism of her work by accusing him of “trying to stoke racial division.”
In response to Trump’s criticism and his announcement of a new ‘1776 commission’, Hannah-Jones said on CNN Friday, “The 1619 Project is really about giving us the history and the understanding to see how slavery was foundational to America and the way that the legacy of slavery still permeates modern society. Of course we know that 1776 was the founding of this country.”
“The project does not argue that 1776 was not the founding of the country, but what it does argue for is that we have largely treated slavery as an asterisk to the American story, as marginal to the American story, and this project is trying to place slavery at the center where we believe it belongs,” she explained.
CNN’s Brianna Keilar responded, “Why do you think the president — and look, millions agree with him — are so resistant to this examination of what slavery has meant to this nation, even when you look at present day and it’s right before you? You can see the fallout from slavery very much today. Why is there this resistance?”
“I mean, this is a very challenging history, of course,” said Hannah-Jones declared. “We are raised to believe that America was founded on these ideas of liberty and freedom, and so to have to grapple the fact that we were also founded on slavery. It’s very difficult, but that is the truth, and it’s very ironic that President Trump would be saying that he needs to vindicate true American history by actually attempting to cover it up.”
“We have to be able to grapple with both the good and the bad of this country, and American school children and American educators are able to understand a complex history about this country and its founding,” she continued.
After Keilar asked what she thinks about the discussion of whether schools that are teaching lessons based on the 1619 project should be “penalized,” Hannah-Jones replied, “The president doesn’t actually have the ability to control what is taught in local school districts. Curriculums are decided on by local school boards and by the state, and there’s actually a federal law against federal intervention into the way that local communities set their curriculum.”
“So, we know that this is really Trump’s effort to bring 1619 into the culture wars,” she concluded. “He’s clearly running on a nationalistic campaign that’s trying to stoke racial division and he sees this as a tool in that arsenal.”
Watch above via CNN.
