Touré has a new article out in The Grio where he says, in summary, “F*ck Independence Day”:
OPINION: Black people are critical to America moving closer to living up to its promise. But it’s still f**k Fourth of July for me.
✍🏾 @Tourehttps://t.co/XIkmTCgt49
— theGrio.com (@theGrio) July 4, 2021
Now, that’s bad enough but the rest of his historically ignorant argument that “the whole reason the Colonies wanted independence was because Britain was moving toward abolishing slavery” makes it a whole lot worse:
Who wants to tell him? This was a since-debunked argument made by the 1619 project:
quick explainer: this is 1619 project-level thinking. “the whole reason the Colonies wanted independence was because Britain was moving towards abolishing slavery.” that has been debunked by historians across the board and even corrected in the 1619 project itself.
— Siraj Hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) July 4, 2021
Touré really should read this article in The Atlantic:
"During the weeks and months after the 1619 Project first appeared … historians, publicly and privately, began expressing alarm over serious inaccuracies," writes @seanwilentz: https://t.co/1yE43057U6
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) January 22, 2020
It’s worth a read if you missed it when it came out last year, but this is the gist of it: “What Hannah-Jones described as a perceptible British threat to American slavery in 1776 in fact did not exist”
The project’s lead essay, written by the Times staff writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, includes early on a discussion of the Revolution. Although that discussion is brief, its conclusions are central to the essay’s overarching contention that slavery and racism are the foundations of American history. The essay argues that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.” That is a striking claim built on three false assertions.
“By 1776, Britain had grown deeply conflicted over its role in the barbaric institution that had reshaped the Western Hemisphere,” Hannah-Jones wrote. But apart from the activity of the pioneering abolitionist Granville Sharp, Britain was hardly conflicted at all in 1776 over its involvement in the slave system. Sharp played a key role in securing the 1772 Somerset v. Stewart ruling, which declared that chattel slavery was not recognized in English common law. That ruling did little, however, to reverse Britain’s devotion to human bondage, which lay almost entirely in its colonial slavery and its heavy involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. Nor did it generate a movement inside Britain in opposition to either slavery or the slave trade. As the historian Christopher Leslie Brown writes in his authoritative study of British abolitionism, Moral Capital, Sharp “worked tirelessly against the institution of slavery everywhere within the British Empire after 1772, but for many years in England he would stand nearly alone.” What Hannah-Jones described as a perceptible British threat to American slavery in 1776 in fact did not exist.
Recommended
And, to be clear, this isn’t a criticism from people on our side:
Eminent Princeton historian writes a very brutal critique of the NYT's "1619 Project" at @TheAtlantic. And nobody will get far trying to call Wilentz's progressive credentials into question. https://t.co/GcMSRRJi9O
— Jeff B. tried to do his best, but he could not (@EsotericCD) January 22, 2020
"…In the long and continuing battle against oppression of every kind, an insistence on plain and accurate facts has been a powerful tool against propaganda that is widely accepted as truth. That tool is far too important to cede now."
— Jeff B. tried to do his best, but he could not (@EsotericCD) January 22, 2020
Screenshot for if/when he deletes it:
blocked, but the List comes for all, @toure.
✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼 pic.twitter.com/JRdbSX4FY1
— Siraj Hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) July 4, 2021
***
Join the conversation as a VIP Member