Hannah-Jones has a way of letting slip her actual goals. The 1619 Project was distributed in New York Times Magazine to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans in Jamestown, where it “reframed” American history by replacing 1776 with the year 1619 when our actual Founding — as a “slavocracy” — actually started.
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In her Oct. 13 comments, she confirmed this project is advocacy journalism. She gave the game away when calling the project a “narrative.” She further remarked, “the narrative allows for policy.” The policy she was referring to was reparations.
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The bestowal of the Roosevelt Institute award came just weeks after Hannah-Jones gave the annual Kops Freedom of the Press lecture at Cornell University and worked as a featured speaker at “Banned Books Week” events. The stream of accolades is astounding. Yet, they have a lot to do with the image of persecuted speakers of truths Hannah-Jones has cultivated through social media and television appearances.
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The performative ritual was displayed at the Oct.13 ceremony as Dorian Warren, president of the nonprofit Community Change and cohost of a Nation magazine podcast, interviewed Hannah-Jones. He marveled at her “resilience.” How are you “holding up?” he asked.
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Hannah-Jones acted as if she were being pursued by the U.S. attorney general and the FBI — like the parents voicing objections at school board meetings to the kind of curricula she backs. It depends “on the day,” she explained. She took the hostile responses as a “testament” to the power of journalism.
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The work of a journalist, you see, is to make “an impact on society,” which she takes to heart. She made “connections,” insisting it was not incidental that the same states passing these laws were passing laws restricting voter and women’s reproductive rights. “As somebody who has studied history,” she announced, she knew that rights are taken away “a bit at a time,” as was the case after Reconstruction with the enactment of Jim Crow laws.
Actually, Hannah-Jones picked up her view of history — as the constant and unmitigated oppression of white against black going back to 1619 — in a high school black studies class when she presented the writings of Lerone Bennett, a drastic magazine writer. He coined the term “Black Power” in 1966.