Revisiting the 1619 Project
By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, April 1, 2026 – Remedial education that aims to correct real and perceived errors of prior educational efforts, show a tendency to replicate the errors of the past, rather than erase and replace them with perfectly measured lessons free of personal and racial prejudice.
The 1619 Project is a good example. It was begun by Nikole Hanna-Jones, who, as an undergraduate at Notre Dame in 1995, published an article in the student newspaper titled “Modern Savagery” wherein she writes, “The white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager and thief of the modern world….The crimes they committed were unnecessarily cruel and can only be described as acts of the devil.”
That unfortunate phrasing both erased her Czech mother and misidentified herself as a non-white person. It also convicts her mother and all her non-black relatives of crimes they were never asked to defend themselves against.
That is the fatal flaw at the core of C.R.T. and all re-interpretations of history. They practice fake justice via ex post facto show trials. Neither can you lynch the corpse of someone who got away with murder, nor can you resurrect someone once they’ve been lynched.
What had made her upset, was usage in another article of the adjective “savage” to describe Indians. Had she familiarity with such American writers as historian Henry Adams, professor Richard White, or novelist Herman Melville, Ms. Hanna-Jones would have realized that “savage” used to mean untamed, or ignorant of (European) civilization, rather than indifferent to human suffering.
Indeed, the friars who accompanied 16th and 17th century Catholic French fur trappers, who traded with and married into native villages, often referred to their “praying savages” – those natives who had consented to Catholic indoctrination.
What still confuses me, though, since she already says “The crimes they committed … can only be described as acts of the devil.” then what is the true measure of human responsibility? So far as I know, Catholicism portrays ordinary people of all races as being no match for the Devil. So, why all that anti-white animosity? Shouldn’t Ms. Hannah-Jones direct her anger and animosity at Satan, Old Nick, Lucifer, Beelzebub, the Tempter, the Prince of Darkness?
Please don’t pin historic sins on my soul, nor on the arid souls of my ancestors!
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