1619 Project, touted as racial reckoning, ignores Democratic Party racism

Democrats who advanced a bill in June to remove statues of white supremacists from the U.S. Capitol ignored a central fact about those figures: All of them had been icons of their party, from Andrew Jackson’s adamantly pro-slavery vice president, John C. Calhoun, to North Carolina Gov. Charles B. Aycock, an architect of the white-supremacist campaign of 1898 that ushered in the era of Jim Crow.

At a time when governments, sports teams, schools and other bastions of American society are rushing to expunge legacies of slavery or racism, this was another instance of the Democratic Party’s failure to acknowledge that it did more than any other institution in American life to preserve the “peculiar institution” — and later enforce Jim Crow-style apartheid in the Old South.

“I think it’s absolutely fair to criticize the history of the Democrat Party when we’re literally changing the names of birds because they’re named after racists,” said Jarrett Stepman, author of “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past,” referring to a new racism-cleansing push in, yes, ornithology.

Democrats’ circumspection in the face of this trend is especially noteworthy because it comes at a time when they are criticizing Republican legislation to block the teaching of critical race theory on the ground that the GOP wants to whitewash American history. But one of the most noteworthy efforts to reframe American history in terms of race, the New York Times’ 1619 Project, virtually ignores the Democrat Party’s role in advancing and sustaining racism in the United States.

Named after the year slaves from Africa were first brought to North America, the curated collection of essays on race in America presents even the most complex modern issues – from obesity and traffic jams to capitalism itself – as being primarily a consequence of America’s history of slavery and racial injustice. The 1619 Project has been widely adopted as an historical framework on the left despite criticism from eminent historians, being repudiated by the 1619 Project’s own fact-checkers, and mangling basic facts.

Yet, in the essay texts, the Democratic Party is named only three times, in passing. The Republican Party, the political entity formed to fight slavery, also receives little mention. But when the GOP is mentioned, it is excoriated as the 21st century heir to 19th century racist ideology.

Here’s what Trumpet executive editor Stephen Flurry wrote in 2019 about the New York Times’ radical left-wing agenda in pushing the 1619 Project: 

Enslaving Africans was indeed one of the great sins the United States committed at its founding. But racism was far from being the principle upon which the nation was founded, as the Times would have you believe. It was in fact a hypocritical failure to live up the biblically based principle of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.”

What is motivating the New York Times is not journalism. It is an agenda! The Times is seeking to divide this country over race. The mainstream news media are “imaginatively” revising history for political purposes. They want to weaken President Trump and his supporters so Democrats can regain control of the country. And they will resort to stirring up and manufacturing race hatred and dividing the nation to do it.

These journalists and politicians are hastening the fulfillment of the terrifying prophecy of Isaiah 1: “Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers [Gentiles] devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers” (verse 7). This is about race wars destroying our cities. And God is allowing this destruction because of America’s sins—because the nation is “laden with iniquity” (verse 4).

The Times is fomenting racial hatred that will end in death and suffering and the burning of America’s cities. Abraham Lincoln was right when he quoted Jesus Christ: A house divided against itself cannot stand (Matthew 12:25). The nation’s only hope is to look to the same God Lincoln did and seek the Eternal while He may be found, and call upon Him while He is near (Isaiah 55:6).