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January 27, 2022 Volume XXIX, Number 21 As Boulder County's only independently owned newspaper, Boulder Weekly is dedicated to illuminating truth, advancing justice and protecting the First Amendment through ethical, no-holds-barred journalism, and thought-provoking opinion writing. Free every Thursday since 1993, the Weekly also offers the county's most comprehensive arts and entertainment coverage. Read the print version, or visit boulderweekly.com. Boulder Weekly does not accept unsolicited editorial submissions. If you're interested in writing for the paper, please send queries to: editorial@boulderweekly.com. Any materials sent to Boulder Weekly become the property of the newspaper. 690 South Lashley Lane, Boulder, CO, 80305 p 303.494.5511 f 303.494.2585 editorial@boulderweekly.com www.boulderweekly.com Boulder Weekly is published every Thursday. No portion may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. © 2021 Boulder Weekly, Inc., all rights reserved.
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Looking through the Lens of ‘The 1619 Project’ by Tina Eden
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n 2019, The New York Times published The 1619 Project, a collection of essays, short stories, and poems intended to revisit United States’ history through the lens of slavery and racism. The creators of The 1619 Project hoped that it would be used in public schools. This has happened in over 4,000 schools, mostly in urban areas such as Washington D.C., Newark, New Jersey and Chicago. However, use of the project has been sparse in other parts of the country, partly due to opposition by local school boards and state legislatures in places such as Arkansas, Iowa and Mississippi. Was such opposition entirely due to the rural-urban divide or was something else at work? One must note that the original version of The 1619 Project was criticized on several fronts. Historical scholars criticized it for certain factual inaccuracies and for overJANUARY 27, 2022
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reaching analyses. The World Socialist Web Site repudiated the project stating, “The historical slogan of the socialist movement is ‘Workers of the World, Unite!’ not ‘Races of the World, Divide!’” (December 2019, wsws.org) However, the economic divide between white households and African-American households remains extreme. A 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances sponsored by the Federal Reserve Board found that Black families’ median and mean wealth are both less than 15% those of white families, at $24,100 and $142,500, respectively. The famous historian Eric Williams (first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago) writes in his book Capitalism and Slavery (1944), “Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery.” The 1619 Project details how racism has been used to BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE
