MLK Day, 2019: Now, More Than Ever

The New York Times' 1619 Project. as described by one of its critics, the National Review [bold added]:

The “newspaper of record” states that this “ongoing initiative” “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” It’s a conscious attempt to make the country’s “real” founding stem from when the first African slaves arrived in Virginia, rather than when the thirteen colonies declared their independence from Great Britain (or, say, 1620, when the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts, or 1607, when Jamestown was settled).

Clayborne Carson, Director of Stanford's Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, agrees with the criticism: [bold added]

That kind of gets back to the 1619 Project. A lot of their focus seems to be the founding of the United States as a nation. The way I would look at that, is that at that time, for a variety of reasons, you have a predominant group, white men, beginning to articulate a human rights ideal. We can study why that happened when it happened.

It had to do with the Enlightenment, the spread of literacy, the rise of working class movements. All of these factors led people to start talking in terms of human rights. It was both an intellectual movement from the top down and a freedom struggle from the bottom up. People begin to speak in terms of rights: that, I, we, have rights that other people should respect. The emergence of that is important.

And it does affect African Americans. We know that from Benjamin Banneker and lot of other black people who realized that white people were talking about rights and said, ‘well we have rights too.’ That’s an important development in history, and an approach to history that doesn’t say we should privilege only the rights talk of white people. There’s always a dialogue between that and oppressed people. You have to tell the story from the top down, that intellectuals began to articulate the notion of rights. But simultaneously, non-elites are doing that—working class people, black people, colonized people.

Clayborne Carson has made it his life's work to research and document the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Like Dr. King, Professor Carson fought against racism his entire life. But as an historian he praises the American experiment, not condemns it.

400 years ago there were only glimmers of the ideas that would lead to an overarching philosophy of human rights. It wasn't so much "racism" then, but the way everything worked--tribes conquering other tribes. The world view was that of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)--either accede to a sovereign which offered limited protection or, in a state of nature, have a life that was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Today most of us are blessed to live in a world where the biggest complaints are about inequality and privilege. But the answer, I believe Dr. King would say, is not to tear down the wealthy but lift up the poor. He would dream

that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

If we keep focusing on race--as the 1619 project does--we will never look past it.