Because neither version of the project claimed to replace history but to reframe and expand it.

Forgive me for judging a book by it's cover, but you do know the name of Prof. Hannah-Jones's new book, right? It is not "A Reframed and Expanded Origin Story."

I don't much care about credibility, as I am not asking anyone to believe me. I have offered readers an opinion different from yours. They can make of it what they will.

You don't have to give anyone a "free pass." There are plenty of ways to criticize historic figures without calling into question principles that, if honored, would make this country a better place for everyone in it. Are you incapable of finding something between destroying the work of these men and giving them a free pass?

I don't believe it is an "irrefutable fact" that "there would be no America without slavery," any more than there would be no relativity without Einstein. Slavery was how things got done, but if the plantation owners had been required to use wage slaves, they'd have found them and used them. (Agricultural workers are still badly served.)

Chattel slavery was much worse than laissez-faire capitalism for its victims, but it was not crucially better for its perpetrators. Not only would there be an America without slavery, there would have been a better America without it. That, indeed, is one of the worst things about it.

But none of that has anything to do with the 1619 Project, which is in fact exacerbating racial division. That consequence, whether or not intended, like the consequences of Marxism, demonstrates that the project is simply a bad idea whose time has come. How "true" its claims are doesn't really matter, because the historical record can be set straight in any number of ways. 1619 is not about setting the record straight. It is about indoctrination. No I can't prove that, so you can pretend it isn't true. But the consequences are the consequences, and supporters of the project own them.