Conservative black leaders are pushing back against the revisionist history of the New York Time’s “1619 project” with the “1776 Unites” curriculum for high school students that tells a more “complete” history of the country’s past, from the “legacy of slavery” to the “legacy of excellence” in the black community.
Bob Woodson, civil rights activist and founder and president of the Woodson Center, and Ian Rowe, a resident fellow for domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, spoke to reporters about the project in a zoom call on Wednesday, and on Thursday Betsy DeVos, Secretary of the Department of Education, expressed support for the effort.
“All of what we’ve done over these 40 years are being threatened now with the 1619 project from the New York Times that I think has released a very corrosive and very dangerous challenge to traditional values,” Woodson said on the call.
“In essence what they are saying is because slaves arrived to America’s shore in 1619 “America should be defined as a racist society, all whites are guilty and culpable of having privilege and, therefore, should be punished, and all blacks are victims and should be compensated,” Woodson said.
Instead, the “1776 Unites” curriculum will “provide a more complete and inspiring story of the history of African Americans in the United States,” Rowe said on the call.
Rowe comes to the project following ten years as the CEO of a network of charter schools in the Bronx and the Lower East Side of Manhattan attended by mostly low-come black and Latino students.
Rowe said parents chose the schools he was in charge of because they knew what a good education can provide for their children. He added:
They did not believe that there children are doomed to be shackled by the horrors of America’s legacy of slavery. They knew that if teachers had the highest of expectations and were empowered with a curriculum that could help their children develop character-based strengths, like integrity, resiliency, and agency.
“The belief that you could be the master of your own destiny,” Rowe said. “And those children could lead their lives on their own terms, even in the face of structural barriers.”…
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