I'm not a big fan of the New York Times's 1619 Project, though I think its aims—letting people know that the aftereffects of slavery still weigh down America—are admirable. But I'm wary of its historical inaccuracies, called out by several prominent historians, of its main message that America is affected in nearly every aspect by "systemic racism", and, above all, by the efforts of the paper to propagandize American schoolchildren with its own unvetted view of history. (What other bit of NYT journalism has been explicitly designed to be part of a school curriculum?). In view of this, I thought it was a travesty that Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Project's creator, got the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her essay on the Project. It seemed to me that the Prize was given not for quality but for wokeness.
On the other hand, it's out of line for Trump to de-fund school districts who adopt the project into its curriculum, as school curricula are the ambit of local school districts, cities, and states—not the President. Here's his Big Threat.
Department of Education is looking at this. If so, they will not be funded! https://t.co/dHsw6Y6Y3M
But I was surprised to hear that in fact the Chicago Public Schools, as reported in this Tribune article (click on screenshot) have quietly adopted that curriculum, for I'd heard no intimations of it previously. And I don't know how it got adopted.
The report of Chicago's ideological curriculum came in one short sentence (my bolding):
Mayor Lori Lightfoot fired back at President Donald Trump’s weekend threat to cut federal funding for public schools that teach the “1619 Project,” calling it “more hot air.”
. . .The New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project” looked at slavery and how it shaped America. Although widely celebrated, the Pulitzer Prize-winning project has drawn criticism from some conservative politicians and scholars. [JAC: It's not just conservatives who have criticized the project, so this sentence is editorializing.]
But Chicago Public Schools has adopted it as part of its curriculum, which Lightfoot defended on Tuesday by saying it’s important for students of all backgrounds to understand slavery. Lightfoot also said Trump has “no power to try to take funding from any school district.”
“If he does, obviously, we will see him in court,” she said.
Now I like Mayor Lightfoot: she's tough and a straight shooter, and she even called out violence and looting when they occurred as part of the demonstrations in Chicago. But I wonder if she was able to get that curriculum adopted on her own. For it's not just an understanding of slavery that the project teaches, but also some aspects of Critical Race Theory, including the prevalence—indeed, ubiquity—of racism in every aspect of American life. It's also historically inaccurate, but neither Hannah-Jones nor Lightfoot seem to care too much