“1619 Project” creator Nikole Hannah-Jones defended her revisionist history of the United States of America, Saturday, claiming the fact that millions of Americans are wary about Critical Race Theory means conservative, pro-white propaganda has spread.
Hannah-Jones also went after Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, R-Va., for his efforts to remove CRT-based curriculum from the state’s schools, accusing him of providing a “sanitized” version of history for “white kids.”
Hannah-Jones made her claims on the latest episode of MSNBC’s “Velshi,” speaking to host Maria Teresa Kumar, who was filling in for regular host Ali Velshi.
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Hannah-Jones created The New York Times’ controversial, race-centric “1619 Project,” a research project alleging that America was founded in 1619 in order for American colonists to preserve the institution of slavery.
She used her time on “Velshi” to repudiate people, like Governor Youngkin, who are using legal means to remove the ideas pushed by the “1619 Project” and CRT from state schools.
Kumar began their conversation by mentioning how Youngkin has used executive orders to ban Critical Race Theory from Virginia school curriculums, and asked Hannah-Jones if she is surprised that this is happening.
Hannah-Jones responded, “No. I mean, absolutely not. We know that Glenn Youngkin ran his campaign on this idea of teaching a more sanitized history that would protect the feelings of white children. We know that history and how it’s taught has always been contested in the United States.”
She described the anti-CRT version of American history as a selective memory that ignores the controversial parts of the country’s past. She said, “That so much of what we call history is really memory. It is selectively putting certain things into curricula that gives us a certain concept of what America is.”
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Hannah-Jones accused Youngkin and his conservative allies of teaching history that leaves out crucial things which happened. “And this new curriculum is occurring in Virginia was crafted largely by conservative groups, including the Fordham institute. And it’s very clear by what they’re leaving out and what they’re putting in, what vision of America they want school children learn,” she said, implying they’re leaving out the truth about race in America.
Elsewhere in the segment, Hannah-Jones warned of how successful conservatives’ anti-CRT fight has been. She told Kumar, “The fact that so many Americans now know the term Critical Race Theory is the sign of a highly successful propaganda campaign by the conservative movement often aided and abetted by journalists.”
Hannah-Jones tried to deny it exists in schools, claiming CRT belongs to a school of “legal analysis.” She insisted, “But critical race theory is a highly sophisticated legal analysis of structural racism. It really seeks to answer why some sixty years after we banished discrimination by law, why do we still have so much inequality, particularly amongst Black Americans, but amongst other marginalized groups.”
She declared, “So, no, most schools are not teaching this,” echoing a line of defense much of the media has used against conservatives worried about this issue in recent years.
Though, at the same time, Hannah-Jones admitted that progressives have failed by not pushing the principles of CRT and the “1619 Project” hard enough in society. She said, “But I think the problem with how progressives tried to combat this campaign, was to run away from it. It would actually have been a good thing if we were getting a sophisticated analysis of structural inequality in America in our classrooms.”
She added, “It is not an evil we need to run away from.”
