Nikole Hannah-Jones, founder of the 1619 project, called the backlash against her revisionist history work her ‘greatest honor.’
Hannah-Jones, speaking at an MSNBC event called a ‘National Day of Racial Healing,’ which included an acknowledgement to Native American tribes by host Chris Hayes, spoke about what she feels is the ‘truth’ of her work.
‘If we acknowledge what this country was actually built upon, if we acknowledge that the reason that black Americans live in the circumstances we do is not because of our pathology, but because of a country that was erected literally on extracting wealth from us, then we have to do something about it,’ she said.
She also blamed ‘powerful interests’ for the backlash to The 1619 Project, which many on the right and in the center have called woke revisionism.
Hannah-Jones, a New York Times Magazine reporter, founded the 1619 Project with the outlet in 2019, using essays, photos, podcasts and eventually a book and guide for educators arguing that America was founded the year a group of slaves arrived in the country and not when independence was granted in 1776.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, founder of the 1619 project, call the backlash against her revisionist history project her ‘greatest honor’
‘The truth makes powerful people in this country very scared. And I’m glad they’re scared,’ she said, reiterating her belief that America was built on slavery.
The left-wing writer added that she said the backlash was caused because Americans are ‘all taught this history so poorly,’ referencing education on the plight of African and Asian Americans.
She also blamed the media and ‘entrenched interest groups’ in causing division between black people and other minority groups.
‘There are powerful interests that don’t want us to understand that history, that don’t want us to understand our common struggle,’ she said. So we’re over here fighting for crumbs and respect while the hierarchy is maintained and stays in place.’
Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project will continue to spread in media circles with the debut of a six-part documentary that will stream on Hulu later this year, produced by Oprah Winfrey.
‘It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative,’ the NYT Magazine wrote on its website.
The project won a Pulitzer Prize that year.
Hannah-Jones, speaking at an MSNBC event called a ‘National Day of Racial Healing,’ which included an acknowledgement to Native American tribes by host Chris Hayes, spoke about what she feels is the ‘truth’ of her work
She also blamed ‘powerful interests’ for the backlash to The 1619 Project, which many on the right and in the center have called woke revisionism
Published in August 2019, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the English colony of Virginia, the work has been criticized by some academics for its claims – and angered many others who saw it as unpatriotic.
In December, Hannah-Jones told the Associated Press that the ongoing debate was unsurprising.
‘We’ve been taught the history of a country that does not exist,’ she said.
‘We’ve been taught the history of a country that renders us incapable of understanding how we get an insurrection in the greatest democracy on January 6.’
She said that America was ‘willfully’ avoiding its complicated and painful past, and that was why her work was so polemical.
‘Steps forward, steps towards racial progress, are always met with an intensive backlash,’ she said.
‘We are a society that willfully does not want to deal with the anti-blackness that is at the core of so many of our institutions and really our society itself.’
Her work has sparked intense discussion about teaching of history in schools.
Critical Race Theory, which evaluates race and its impact on society, questioning whether racism is embedded in legal systems and policies, has enraged parents and inflamed school board meetings over the past year.
The 40-year-old academic theory has become a symbol of America’s culture wars, and in the years since The 1619 Project it has sparked furious debate about what should be taught to children.
Hannah-Jones was considered for a tenured position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last year, but in response to pressure from donors she was ultimately offered the position without tenure – something she said was deeply disappointing.
She ultimately turned it down, and instead accepted a tenured position at Howard University.
Nikole Hannah-Jones speaks onstage at The Hollywood Reporter 2021 Power 100 Women in Entertainment in December
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