1619 Project creator and professor Nikole Hannah-Jones said Tuesday on ABC’s “The View” that the “propaganda” criticizing her work and Critical Race Theory were people “willfully” denying the history of slavery in America.
Co-host Sunny Hostin said, “In the book, you include these historical facts that Joy is mentioning that aren’t in dispute amongst historians, but Americans just aren’t taught it. These are from The Southern Poverty Law Center, in 2017, just 8% of U.S. high school seniors named slavery as the central cause of the Civil War. Only about half of U.S. teachers understand that enslavers dominated the presidency in the decades after the country’s founding as well as the Supreme Court and the U.S. Senate until the Civil War. How is this information deficit still the norm in 2021?”
Hannah-Jones said, “Well, I think we can look at the backlash to The 1619 Project, the backlash to the propaganda campaign against Critical Race Theory and see that we are a country that has willfully, willfully denied this history. That has not wanted to teach it and own up to the fact that slavery is one of the oldest institutions in America. So much of the wealth of our country was built on enslavement, so much of our political, legal, cultural systems. But we have been in denial about that, and that’s why you see a strong reaction to this work.”
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