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14-06-2023, 03:09 PM
Donald Earl Collins
Visiting Professor of African American History with Loyola University Maryland
Published On 9 Jun 2023
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One of the biggest dustups over Critical Race Theory among leading historians was in 2021.
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That September, veteran American historians Richard D Brown, Gordon Wood, Carol Berkin and three others published an open letter on Medium critiquing both The 1619 Project and those historians who have defended its work.
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the six wrote, “The [American] Revolution was a complicated event, subject to different interpretations; but the idea that the colonists – or even, in the Times’s amended version, ‘some of the colonists’ – revolted in order to protect slavery is beyond farfetched.”
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What all critics ...... including those who penned this letter, seem to have in common is an unwavering belief that the American Revolution was a good thing. They all appear to see it as a world-changing event that forged a nation-state based on equality, freedom, and “the pursuit of happiness”. Thus they treat the existence of chattel slavery and the litany of laws that were in place to protect it in the 13 colonies as a mere aberration. They view the years between 1763 and 1789 as a sacred space, too sacred to sully with the accusation that preserving slavery – or really, systemic racism – might have been a motivating factor for independence.
This is why US historians like the ones who signed the open letter were so enraged by Hannah-Jones’s claim that “one of the primary reasons [some of] the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.”
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The British threat to American slavery at the time was perhaps only indirect. Yet Hannah-Jones and other experts are correct in their interpretation that those who wanted the American Revolution joined the fight in part to preserve their privileged positions and sources of income.
......
In the end, the American Revolution, as modern revolutions go, was a tepid one. It ended British rule only to put the colonies’ rich slave-owning leaders, the people who ran the 13 colonial governments, in charge of running the new nation-state. But this was not a failure. The revolution was always aimed at preserving – and not uprooting – the social order that placed the Founding Fathers and those like them on top and enslaved Africans at the bottom.
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the practitioners of Critical Race Theory ...... are confronting and debunking all such myths and misrepresentations of America’s beginnings in quick succession. And they are not attempting to be apolitical or objective while doing so. They have a strong bias against social injustice and are very much activists working hard to show the world how deeply embedded systemic racism has always been in the DNA of the US and the West.
Full article at: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/...ace-theory
Visiting Professor of African American History with Loyola University Maryland
Published On 9 Jun 2023
......
One of the biggest dustups over Critical Race Theory among leading historians was in 2021.
......
That September, veteran American historians Richard D Brown, Gordon Wood, Carol Berkin and three others published an open letter on Medium critiquing both The 1619 Project and those historians who have defended its work.
......
the six wrote, “The [American] Revolution was a complicated event, subject to different interpretations; but the idea that the colonists – or even, in the Times’s amended version, ‘some of the colonists’ – revolted in order to protect slavery is beyond farfetched.”
......
What all critics ...... including those who penned this letter, seem to have in common is an unwavering belief that the American Revolution was a good thing. They all appear to see it as a world-changing event that forged a nation-state based on equality, freedom, and “the pursuit of happiness”. Thus they treat the existence of chattel slavery and the litany of laws that were in place to protect it in the 13 colonies as a mere aberration. They view the years between 1763 and 1789 as a sacred space, too sacred to sully with the accusation that preserving slavery – or really, systemic racism – might have been a motivating factor for independence.
This is why US historians like the ones who signed the open letter were so enraged by Hannah-Jones’s claim that “one of the primary reasons [some of] the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.”
......
The British threat to American slavery at the time was perhaps only indirect. Yet Hannah-Jones and other experts are correct in their interpretation that those who wanted the American Revolution joined the fight in part to preserve their privileged positions and sources of income.
......
In the end, the American Revolution, as modern revolutions go, was a tepid one. It ended British rule only to put the colonies’ rich slave-owning leaders, the people who ran the 13 colonial governments, in charge of running the new nation-state. But this was not a failure. The revolution was always aimed at preserving – and not uprooting – the social order that placed the Founding Fathers and those like them on top and enslaved Africans at the bottom.
......
the practitioners of Critical Race Theory ...... are confronting and debunking all such myths and misrepresentations of America’s beginnings in quick succession. And they are not attempting to be apolitical or objective while doing so. They have a strong bias against social injustice and are very much activists working hard to show the world how deeply embedded systemic racism has always been in the DNA of the US and the West.
Full article at: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/...ace-theory
