
The 1619 Project - flexie
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html
======
portmanteaufu
> The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the
> 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe
> the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing
> the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the
> very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.

------
danso
Note that if you're having trouble navigating the scrolly-animated
presentation, you can go to the NYT Magazine's landing page to see a more
straightforward listing of articles and links:

[https://www.nytimes.com/section/magazine](https://www.nytimes.com/section/magazine)

~~~
duxup
NYT tries a lot of things. I like that.

But they're bound to fail, this one is a bit much on the scrolling.

~~~
danso
The NYT arguably popularized the technique when its 2012 "Snow Fall" won a
Pulitzer [0]. My impression has been that, thankfully, people have realized
that scrolly-heavy stories are more trouble than its worth. But it wouldn't
surprise me if it's still seen as a way to signal "This Project is a Big Deal"
even at the cost of accessibility. At least nowadays, most of the project's
individual articles can find plenty of traction through non-landing-page
clicks (e.g. social media), so the risk of poorly-used landing page is less of
a concern than it was 5+ years ago.

[0]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/new-y...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/new-
york-times-snow-fall-feature/320253/)

~~~
smacktoward
_> it wouldn't surprise me if it's still seen as a way to signal "This Project
is a Big Deal" even at the cost of accessibility._

It also looks really slick when shown on a big wall-mount monitor in the
conference room where the Important People gather. I dunno about the _Times_ ,
but I've seen plenty of places where that carried a lot more weight than
usability or accessibility did.

(Sigh.)

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danso
The only article in this project I've read so far is the history about how the
sugar industry became economically viable through slavery, leading one
Louisiana politician to boast the state's sugar industry was "without parallel
in the United States, or indeed in the world in any branch of industry."

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/suga...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/sugar-
slave-trade-slavery.html)

------
nilkn
Personally I would like to see a broader and less American perspective on
slavery. While chattel slavery in the American antebellum South went away,
slavery in general certainly didn't, and it also didn't begin in 1619. To
illustrate that latter point, in 1619 slavery was a general practice in
Africa, and many of the first slaves imported by Europeans were already
enslaved in Africa as a byproduct of endemic warfare. Even today many
industries' profitability depends on slavery in the undeveloped world -- it's
just no longer visible to Americans.

Certainly this isn't meant to diminish this piece. American slavery became
particularly incendiary because it developed a racial component that long
outlasted its abolition and continues to have ripple effects today not just in
America but elsewhere due to the wide export of American culture. But I also
don't want to be so quick as to equate slavery in general with one particular
(and, indeed, relatively small-scale) instance that _did_ end when we have
other larger instances still active today -- instances that we even depend on
and make use of.

~~~
martey
You stated that you don't want to "diminish this piece", but then go on to
describe American slavery (this project's sole focus) as "one particular (and,
indeed, relatively small-scale) instance". Your comment also contains multiple
points (e.g. "slavery wasn't invented in America", "American slaves were
enslaved in Africa", "slavery still exists in non-American places today") that
are regularly used by people trying to diminish or erase the impact of slavery
and racism on American culture today.

Because the project is investigating the _legacy_ of _American_ slavery, I
think discussing current global slavery is at best off-topic.

~~~
nilkn
I acknowledge whole-heartedly that this is a difficult topic, but I really
_don 't_ think it's that off-topic. The articles available so far focus a lot
on the economic incentives involved in slavery and how the American economy
was boosted because of it. The observation that those same incentives are
still sustaining slavery and that the economy is still boosted by it seems
relevant to me.

~~~
mcguire
You are dancing perilously close to what-aboutism, though. The context of
American slavery within global and historical slavery _is_ an important topic,
but within _this_ context, it sounds like an attempt to minimize the effect
and power of American slavery.

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credit_guy
This appears to be a great project, not in small part because, for my taste,
great web design. I haven't read the articles yet, but I plan to.

That being said, allow me to share a regret that I have about the Civil War. I
find it a tragedy that the institution of slavery was terminated in the United
States via such a violent solution. This lead to resentments and scars and
continuation of race discrimination and racial issues until this day. It's
such a tragedy. Compare the slavery in 19'th century America with the
situation depicted in the "War and Peace" early 19'th century Russia, where
peasants were slaves in all but formal legal status (for example they were
called "souls" and they were pretty much the unit of account when describing a
prince's wealth). Two hundred years later, that slavery in Russia left no
scars, and the same story was repeated in many European countries. In the
country I come from slavery was abolished at various points in time (in
various provinces and for various social strata) ranging roughly from 1775 to
1850. The last people to be freed from slavery were the gypsies, and one can
say that even today there is some racism in my country against gypsies, but
nothing like the issues that America sill faces .

I don't really have any point to make, it's just an observation.

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khawkins
This reads not as a respectful remembrance of the history of the brutal
practice of slavery, but an attempt to suggest slavery is a consequence of
capitalism and is thus also evil. That since they are both fundamentally
exploitative, today's capitalism, in many ways, causes just as much human
suffering as its child, slavery did. The conclusion, whether its stated or
not, is that capitalism needs to go, replaced with socialism.

But what every analysis like this fails to recognize is that capitalism
doesn't take away the autonomy of the people who have power, they can choose
to wield it responsibly or irresponsibly. Changing the system from capitalism
to socialism doesn't change the fact that there will be vast disparities in
the power, it just changes the system by which people obtain power.

I'm not sure that living "free" under Stalin is necessarily preferable to
living a slave in the antebellum south. Of course, both are full of stories of
suffering and human misery, and I'm sure both can cite instances where things
weren't as bad as we imagine them. But I'm extremely frustrated with rhetoric
which cites the latter as evidence that we should move closer to a society
like the former.

~~~
yalogin
Where did you see that insinuation? Can you point me to the place where you
saw the conclusion about socialism? I feel like you are reading way too much
into it. Why attribute something the authors didn't intend?

~~~
seandoe
"If you want to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to
start on the plantation."

"Why doesn't the United States have universal health care? The answer begins
with policies enacted after the Civil War."

~~~
acdha
That seems like quite a stretch: neither of those is a global statement,
simply an accurate summary of how the culture in one particular country
developed. Most countries with universal healthcare are capitalist to a large
degree so it seems pretty clear that an explanation for the difference
between, say, the U.S. and Canada is going to have a different answer than
“capitalism!”.

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webwielder2
I'd like to see a similar feature on our extermination of the Native
Americans.

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jimdyer
This is a worthy effort but for a better educational experience it should
indicate at the beginning that slavery is still completely legal in the US per
the 13th amendment to the Constitution:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the
United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

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chrishenn
A similar and very powerful narrative can be found in _The Half Has Never Been
Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism_, by Edward E. Baptist.
The book is slightly problematic in some of its methods, but overall I would
highly recommend it to anyone who was taught the public school version of US
history.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14894629-the-half-has-
ne...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14894629-the-half-has-never-been-
told)

~~~
johnfactorial
Sounds great, what are the problems with its methods?

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gkilmain
I wouldn't have cared as much if I were not a parent - shitty to say but its
true - the thought of children tugging on their parents while the parent is
being shipped off or sold i mean. My gosh.

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em3rgent0rdr
> "If you wanted to understand the brutality of American capitalism..."

Stopped reading there. Not sure American capitalism is some evil brutal thing
to oppose in the first place. And we could have capitalism without having
slavery.

~~~
istjohn
In addition to slavery, American businesses have been behind exploitation and
despotism in Latin America and Africa. American capitalism has certainly been
brutal.

~~~
manfredo
I think the issue is the erroneous claim that slavery was a product of
capitalism. This is patently untrue, slavery predates capitalism by millennia.

Not only that, a strong argument can be made that capitalism ended slavery.
The American South was an agrarian society, with an economy based on crops.
The North was a capitalist society with industry forming a much larger portion
of the economy. It was the industrialist, capitalist North that voted an
abolitionist President into office and defeated the South's subsequent
rebellion.

This pattern holds true across global history. Agrarian societies have almost
always had some mechanism to lock large segments of the population into
agricultural or manual labor: caste systems, serfdom, slavery all filled this
role with some variation in their implementation. Abolition movements
predominantly occurred in the time range from 1750 to 1900, and in the same
time period many countries began to industrialize.

~~~
mcguire
I think you're confusing the difference between capitalism and industrialism.

~~~
manfredo
The two largely go hand in hand. You need capital to start new industries.
Industrialism, in turn, generates lots of capital that people are going to
want to invest thus leading to more capitalist activity. Industrialism without
capitalism has been attempted in the USSR and PRC, both of which ended up
adopting capitalism. No industrial society managed to remain non-capitalist
for more than 50-60 years which is incredibly short in the context of global
history.

~~~
aflag
You also need capital to start new plantations. Which, in turn, also generates
lots of capital that people are going to want to invest thus leading to bigger
and more plantations.

Industrialism did make slavery obsolete and, where still needed, easy to
offshore. Which I think is what described ended slavery in the US

~~~
manfredo
No, you don't need capital to start plantations. You just need land and labor.
People were running farms and plantations thousands of years before coinage
was invented.

Plantation owners are capitalists in the same vein that Romans were
capitalists when they conquered neighbors and cultivated this newly annexed
land. This is perhaps correct in a very abstract sense of capitalism, but it
is an alternative definition that is not shared by most people and most people
will say you are wrong if you try to claim that this is capitalism.

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40acres
Slavery is America's original sin, to this day it permeates every aspect of
this nation. Americans must continue to campaign to right the wrongs that
began in 1619, I'm really grateful for this project and it's motive of
reframing the origin of this country.

~~~
protomyth
_Slavery is America 's original sin_

Although providing a great line for The West Wing, I would say America's
treatment of the indigenous people is America's original sin.

~~~
mcguire
If we're going to be technical, America's original sin is being human. Humans
are pretty loathsome, especially when they're being hypocritical.

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jgalt212
It's become more and more difficult as a centrist to keep reading the NY
Times. And the NY Times probably considers itself centrist because it
publishes both very left wing views and very right wing views.

-10 + 10 / 2 = 0

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julienreszka
They confuse feudalism with capitalism. Slavery is no capitalism, it's
feudalism.

See this image to understand what I mean
[https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VbM3qZttnmI/XSIP33QGpUI/AAAAAAAAU...](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VbM3qZttnmI/XSIP33QGpUI/AAAAAAAAU-g/EZCC291tUOcp6KAN7CLdmtx9I5PbI_AxQCLcBGAs/s1600/political-
ideologies.png)

