History As Myth; Narrative As Truth

     The study of history ought to be about understanding the past as it objectively was, warts and all.   But as with science, all of knowledge is subjective and based on “different ways of knowing”, including history. Even more broadly than science, history is subject to being presented as nothing more than competing myths and biased narratives.

     Such is the case of the infamous “1619” project, that is being taught as fact, or at least the correct myth. It is a dishonest trick that presents facts without explicitly saying that it is a narrative that uses facts to tell one of many possible stories, and that it’s story is the morally correct one, as the person behind the “1619” admits.

Leave it up to you to offer the least perceptive take possible and to tweet a single tweet without its context. I wasn’t arguing that the 1619 Project is trying to control THE national narrative. The point of this is about the people against 1619 who only want ONE narrative. https://t.co/0QIsSZHxUt

— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) July 27, 2020

I’ve said consistently that the 1619 Project is AN origin story, not THE origin story. Our intro says explicitly, what *would* it mean to consider 1619 our founding — not that it IS our founding.

— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) July 27, 2020

The entire point of the 1619 Project, which you pretend to not understand, is to offer an alternative, to challenge the single narrative, to push against it and center the margins. I’ve said there could be a 1619 Project for Indigenous people, that this is a reframing.

— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) July 27, 2020

     She also went on to state that this isn’t about truth, but of control.

     Despite the fact that many educators want to use the “1619” project as the basis for history classes in school, Ida Bae Wells disregards the actual study of history with some type of collective “memory”, and using the control of the past to control the present, and thus the future.

Oh, this is a fabulous, thoughtful thread. He is right: The fight over the 1619 Project is not about history. It is about memory. https://t.co/3Ji7SMUFo6

— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) July 27, 2020

I’ve always said that the 1619 Project is not a history. It is a work of journalism that explicitly seeks to challenge the national narrative and, therefore, the national memory. The project has always been as much about the present as it is the past.

— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) July 27, 2020

     This the “magical realism” version of history.

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