THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

The project, which in the six months since its launch has already been incorporated into select curricula across the country, has its merits. Skillful storytelling forces readers to reckon with the horror of human beings ripped from their homes, families, and communities, only to find themselves -- if they survived the excruciating journey across the ocean -- in forced-labor camps in a distant land surrounded by strange people and practices. Short essays highlight the connections between the abominable institution of slavery and the economic development of the nation; Wall Street and the finance industry, for example, acquired vast sums mortgaging and insuring enslaved people as property. The essays also explore the widespread racial discrimination that persisted long after slavery was formally abolished -- the effects of which, the project argues, still linger.

Recovery of the truth about slavery and its painful legacy is laudable. But many of the Times' 18 original articles advance a false and inflammatory contention. That claim, which is rooted in fashionable academic theories about structural oppression, is that slavery -- not the idea of fundamental rights belonging to all persons heralded in the Declaration of Independence -- is the defining feature of America's founding.

The ambiguity at the core of the 1619 Project -- whether its goal is to recover the truth on behalf of the public interest or to promulgate a hyperbolic critique for partisan advantage -- is on display in the project's lead essay. Nikole Hannah-Jones, a New York Times Magazine staff writer, asserts harshly but, in one sense, accurately, "The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie." The ideal is, "'all men are created equal' and 'endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.'" The founding lie, according to Hannah-Jones, is twofold: First, that "the white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst"; and, second, that unalienable rights "did not apply to fully one-fifth of the country."

But Hannah-Jones's description of the lie distorts a complex reality. Yes, the American Constitution gave legal protection to slavery in violation of the Declaration's radiant promise. Yet, many of those who signed the Declaration -- among them principal drafter Thomas Jefferson -- believed that black Americans, like all people, possessed "unalienable rights." The government whose foundations those signers helped lay, moreover, provided the framework in which slavery would be outlawed. The lie at the founding was that black people were deprived of fundamental rights that, according to the principle inspiring the Declaration, did apply to them by virtue of their humanity. It was for this reason that, many years later, Jefferson wrote, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." [...]

Although she obscures the role of white people who were on the side of justice in the centuries-long struggle to secure the rights of black Americans, Hannah-Jones writes powerfully about the larger and inspiring significance of that struggle. "Yet despite being violently denied the freedom and justice promised to all, black Americans believed fervently in the American creed. Through centuries of black resistance and protest, we have helped the country live up to its founding ideals. And not only for ourselves -- black rights struggles paved the way for every other rights struggle, including women's and gay rights, immigrant and disability rights."

With this crucial observation, Hannah-Jones confirms the centrality to the American experiment, and the continuing vitality, of America's founding principles. For her critique would have little force in a dictatorship or in a society dominated by an aristocracy based on blood and land -- or where racism permeated political idea and institutions. Only in a country dedicated to the Declaration's central convictions -- that all human beings are created equal, that we are endowed with certain unalienable rights, and that the chief purpose of government is to secure those rights -- could her dire assessment appear in a marquee venue, singe her readers' consciences, and prompt fellow citizens to carry forward the work of improving the alignment of American practices with American ideals.

To preserve such an America, it will be necessary to tell the truth -- disguising none of the betrayals but also concealing none of the luster -- about the Declaration's essential truths and the nation's inspiring progress, born of shared struggle, in honoring them. 

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