#VelshiBannedBookClub: Revisiting “The 1619 Project” with Nikole Hannah-Jones

“The 1619 Project”, named for the year the first enslaved African people arrived on the shores of Virginia, began as an editorial franchise for the New York Times. It has since grown to include the best-selling book, a children’s picture book, class curriculum, a podcast, and now, a new Hulu documentary series. The body of work asks us to reexamine and reframe what we know to be true of U.S. history. “The books that have stuck with me most in my life are the ones that have unsettled me,” says Nikole Hannah-Jones. Since its inception, “The 1619 Project” has faced a relentless firestorm of calls for its ban -- from school libraries, state senates, and even the Trump White House. “Countries do great things, and countries do terrible things, and we have to deal with it all,” says Hannah-Jones. Being exposed to new ideas and information is in fact, “the purpose of an education.”


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#The1619Project #BannedBooks #Books

[Dvco]

"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it."
Orwell

[Dvco]

"None of us should be sending our children to school simply to have their worldview affirmed in every way,
it should be challenged."
Hannah - Jones

[berthabridges]

"I've always maintained that black people and women suffer from a presumption of incompetence. The burdens of proof are different. It just gets so tiresome."

~ Carol Moseley Braum, American diplomat, politician, and lawyer

[berthabridges]

"Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty."
~ Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

[berthabridges]

"Those who can not remember the past is condemned to repeat it."

~ George Santayana (1863-1952), Spanish born writer, essayist, poet, novelist, philosopher, and Harvard Professor

[wendygermain]

Ali Velshi's Banned Book Club is the most important show right here right now

[peterrobertson]

To me, the teaching of "CRT" is the same as understanding your health history, and what your ancestors died from. These represent risks to your own health and will help you make positive life style changes and better monitor your well being. Your mother died in her thirties of breast cancer? Any woman who can say that should be following a more active surveillance regimen at an earlier date related to her susceptibility to that disease. You don't think of that as making you "responsible" for your mother's death, its just an artifact of who you are and where you came from. We seem to be able to accept that, which makes it all the more curious as to why we cannot do the same thing with racism. Racism is an indisputable and present condition that continues to underpin social practice, policy and structure. It may not be who you are as a person but without question, it is who Americans are as a people. Trying to suppress honesty and transparency about this is, in effect, a racist act. Those who say that our children will "feel responsible for slavery" underestimate their children. They will learn that bigotry, cruelty, and inequity has a long history here with those who came before and happens here to this day because a lack of awareness, vigilance and understanding.

[jaybz]

How to be a racist and a victim at the same time.

[victormuhammad]

Two things . Black people were here in slavery as early as 1555 and also traveled to here and already lived here as early as the late 1490s and early 1500s .

[keatssamson]

History is not about belief in the way religion is about belief

[Mike_Honcho_]

"Mostly peaceful" Velshi thinks it's okay to have prawn-o-graphic material in grade school and middle school libraries. There are dozens and dozens of documented cases of this obscene, not fit for children, trash being found in school libraries. Apparently Velshi is against banning such books.

[debock]

Slavery seems to have existed for the 14, 000 years indigenous people have lived in the Americas. They enslaved each other. Slavery did not begin in the Americas in 1619. Slavery did exist for 79 years in southern United States. 230, 000 dead Union soldiers and the 13th. Amendment then ended 14, 000 years of slavery in all the United States; a remarkable achievement.

[kimbaldunsmore]

Loved listening to Nikole here and I will be looking out for her work. As an Australian I cannot believe that in the 21st century, in a first world country (that purports to be the most advanced in the world) the words 'book ban' would even be uttered.

[drowningpooralice]

This book has been overwhelmingly panned and shown to be incredibly inaccurate to flat out false. Hundreds of historians have come out to say so, including many historians of color. Slavery isn't a uniquely American institution and it's not a white black phenomenon.

[Derguz]

As I've written elsewhere.. A societys degree of insecurity in its own values, it's own ideas and its identity, can be discerned by the degree of censureship that is imposed upon its educational institutions and professions.. The US must be an exceptionally insecure society.

[beckyhenkel]

Why are people so sensitive?
None of us were here three or four hundred years ago!
That means we're not to blame for what happened. Let's learn about it guys, don't be offended because you weren't involved.

[bcstones]

Interesting...reminds me of "Crossing the Bok Chitto"( about a young Choctaw girl & a young black enslaved boy) prior to the Civil War & the Trail of Tears) by Choctaw Storyteller & Author, Tim Tingle....he has written stories for young readers about Choctaw history & the US government treatment of these People...there is a series "How I Became a Ghost" about a young Chocttaw boy walking the infamous Trail of Tears...There is also a story, "Salty Pie", a personal story of how TIm Tingles GrandMother was trreated by young white boys....I'm guressing that these books will also be banned - especially in Texas.
And what about exposing young readers & students about the "true"meaning of

What I'm trying to say is that these books are also at risk of becoming unavailable to students AND the Authors of all colors being banned from schools at any level.

[berthabridges]

"I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having, at one time, been ashamed."

We must never allow a little Black child to be ashamed again. Thank you for your work.

~ Ralph Ellison ( 1914-1994), American writer, literary critic, and scholar

[AngelaShawWestoven]

Every book that Republicans ban, I buy for my grandchildren, my daughter, and myself. My grandchildren are homeschooled so The 1619 Project and CRT are taught to them every day. I want them WOKE.

[berthabridges]

Thank you, Ali, for all you're doing to guarantee freedom of speech. You can't force people to read and expand their thinking 🤔 but many are willing to at least listen on a Kindle, which is great also. This is a landmark study, and it's going to help so many young people. I sure wished we had this tool when I was in school. The history books we were taught out of only showed Blacks as slave's in the cotton fields. I remember how everyone looked at me when we studied the civil war. I was so ashamed.