Scholars Call on Pulitzer Board to Revoke Prize Given to 1619 Project Author Nikole Hannah-Jones
“the article itself was false when written, making a large claim that protecting the institution of slavery was a primary motive for the American Revolution, a claim for which there is simply no evidence”
Nikole Hannah-Jones has admitted that her ‘1619 Project’ was more about controlling the narrative than presenting an accurate portrayal of history. She and the New York Times have also already scrubbed central aspects of the project, angering progressives.
Now, a group of scholars is calling on the Pulitzer board to revoke a prize awarded to Jones last spring.
Peter Wood reports at the National Association of Scholars website:
Pulitzer Board Must Revoke Nikole Hannah-Jones’ Prize
We call on the Pulitzer Prize Board to rescind the 2020 Prize for Commentary awarded to Nikole Hannah-Jones for her lead essay in “The 1619 Project.” That essay was entitled, “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written.” But it turns out the article itself was false when written, making a large claim that protecting the institution of slavery was a primary motive for the American Revolution, a claim for which there is simply no evidence.
When the Board announced the prize on May 4, 2020, it praised Hannah-Jones for “a sweeping, deeply reported and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, prompting public conversation about the nation’s founding and evolution.” Note well the last five words. Clearly the award was meant not merely to honor this one isolated essay, but the Project as a whole, with its framing contention that the year 1619, the date when some twenty Africans arrived at Jamestown, ought to be regarded as the nation’s “true founding,” supplanting the long-honored date of July 4, 1776, which marked the emergence of the United States as an independent nation.
Beginning almost immediately after its publication, though, the essay and the Project ran into controversy. It has been subjected to searching criticism by many of the foremost historians of our time and by the Times’ own fact checker. The scrutiny has left the essay discredited, so much so that the Times has felt the need to go back and change a crucial passage in it, softening but not eliminating its unsupported assertion about slavery and the Revolution.
Stanley Kurtz, who is one of the signatories on the letter calling for the revocation of the Pulitzer Prize, writes at National Review:
The letter revisits the sorry tale of the 1619 Project’s errors and distortions and invokes these in calling for the revocation of the prize. The recent revelations that The New York Times stealthily edited out the signature claim of the project—that the advent of slavery in the year 1619 constitutes our country’s “true founding”—were, however, the immediate occasion for this letter. As Phillip Magness (another signatory) has shown, Nikole Hannah-Jones has several times denied ever claiming that 1619 was our true founding, although in fact she has made this latter claim repeatedly…
Imagine that a Pulitzer Prize for Literature had been awarded to a novel for which it later emerged that the most famous passage had been plagiarized. At that point the prize would rightly be revoked. Now imagine that a Pulitzer Prize for Literature had been awarded to a novel whose author, after receiving the prize, surreptitiously edited out the most famous passage from the e-book and denied repeatedly that the passage had ever been in the novel to begin with.
Hat tip to Glenn Loury:
A group of scholars, myself included, are calling on the Pulitzer Board to revoke the prize awarded earlier this year to Nikole Hannah-Jones for her "1619 Project" essay:https://t.co/PHKJx614Q6
— Glenn Loury (@GlennLoury) October 6, 2020
On a related note, Hannah-Jones has altered her Twitter profile in a somewhat predictable fashion:
The author of the 1619 Project has put "Slanderous & nasty-minded mulattress" in her bio, a slur used in the 1894 @NYTimes to describe Hannah-Jones's alter ego Ida Bae Wells, which is odd since Hannah-Jones is not actually Wells and Hannah-Jones works for the Times. pic.twitter.com/fGS5S5fMVT
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) October 6, 2020
The New York Times sounds like a pretty racist institution. https://t.co/pUS2CO6LzP
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) October 6, 2020
You work for the New York Times and you are not Ida B. Wells. https://t.co/9gqhs2NBze
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) October 6, 2020
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Comments
When you pander and give these things on the come it loses value and you lose credibility.
A Moral Narrative to Foil Our Wokey Tormentors
“…..Codevilla says the same, only different.
More and more, America’s ruling class, shaped and serviced by an increasingly uniform pretend-meritocratic educational system, claimed for itself monopoly access to truth and goodness, and made moral as well as technical-intellectual contempt for the rest of Americans into their identity’s chief element…”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/a_moral_narrative_to_foil_our_wokey_tormentors.html
Saying “that protecting the institution of slavery was a primary motive for the American Revolution” seems more like an unsupported assertion than a false claim. I mean Hannah-Jones didn’t claim Thomas Jefferson wrote something that he didn’t really write, did she?
It’s a false claim, totally unsupported by the evidence.
Do we know it’s false? The political movement to abolish slavery in the British Empire didn’t start until after the American Revolution, but suppose Thomas Jefferson had psychic powers that allowed him to astraly project into the future and find out what was going to happen? Can you prove that didn’t happen?
You don’t prove negatives. The burden of proof is on the assertion and the asserting party.
True enough, in a historical/legal/scientific context. On the other hand many faith communities believe things that can’t be proven by evidence. Don’t the beliefs of sjw types about like racism and stuff belong more in the ladder category?
If I write a “history” book claiming that Hitler invaded France for the purpose of controlling the production of French wine, and then produce no evidence to that effect, it’s not history – it’s speculation (and not well-informed speculation at that).
Well but, NHJ has always been upfront about the fact that the 1619 Project isn’t history. It’s about history, but that not the same thing. Isn’t criticizing her for a lack of historical rigor kind of like criticizing Mel Gibson because the Scottish kilts in Braveheart weren’t correct for the time period?
The absence of evidence is evidence? There is no evidence of structural diversity, let alone involuntary exploitation and redistributive change (i.e. slavery) in American history. The exception, State history, yes, but that progressed and clocluded with the civil war, then revived under various diversity doctrines, and people are, once again, standing up to diversity. It is an ongoing effort to mitigate its progress.
Quite a lot territory previously held by Spaniards, Mexicans, and indigenous peoples was involuntarily redistributed to the United States at the point of a gun. Of course the next questions is, how did the people we stole land from get that land in the first place? The answer is almost always conquest, subjugation, and genocide. That’s how the world is, most of the time. Our forefathers were playing the same dirty game as everybody else. They weren’t more evil, just more successful.
All living spaces are taken…by humans from other humans, by animals from other animals, by animals from plants, by plants from other plants, etc. etc.
Sovereignty is claimed by a nation, and that nation defends its sovereignty. I’m sorry if that’s an uncomfortable history and nature lesson, but it is apt and doesn’t conjure up a whole lot of regret based on context of the times.
I’m not saying we should regret anything. I just think we shouldn’t kid ourselves about the fact that a good bit of our society’s wealth is the proceeds of wholesale theft.
Look at the bright side — Michael Bellesiles may be able to get dates now.
Just say NO, for a Pulitzer for BOZO.
My view exactly.
“Now, a group of scholars is calling in the Pulitzer board to revoke a prize awarded to Jones last spring”
“Okay, good idea. We’ll look into that as soon as we complete the investigation of the PP given to Walter Duranty”
The Pulitzer prize statement
Statement on Walter Duranty’s 1932 Prize
After more than six months of study and deliberation, the Pulitzer Prize Board has decided it will not revoke the foreign reporting prize awarded in 1932 to Walter Duranty of The New York Times.
https://www.pulitzer.org/news/statement-walter-duranty
Speaking of funny things going on lately with black women of some achievement, it looks and sounds like 1619 Project author “Ida Bae Wells” (alias Nikole Hannah-Jones; formerly the Beyonce of Journalism), too, has a psychological-identity problem.
Just as it’s recently been revealed that several women born white adopted and even profited from a life posed and postured being black, so NHJ found refuge and comfort in the hagiography-cloak-identity of a 19th century black female pioneer in race relations, suffrage, and politics — a noted woman of great accomplishment and distinction — Ida Bell Wells.
Okay, NHJ, who are you, really, and what, then, is the alleged, prize-winning truth about the year 1619? It follows that we ask, What is the difference between fact and fiction, historical fact and later-period-applied “historical” narrative (read: imagined interpretation; revisionist review, not history, to be charitable), and Ida Bell Wells and Ida Bae Wells, if any?
If right-minded, historian-researchers examine and conclude this right, by the science, of course, the singular cause of this multi-person, multi-dimensional, time-spanning phenomenon involving the adopted identities of exclusively black women — it’s gotta be racist, you see — will no doubt turn out be the autocratic, divisive, supremacy-minded white and sexist ways and means of masculotoxic PDJT.
It’s a white, disease-repelling, strong and pushy male thing, I guess.
“He must go!” shout the woke but muddled many. “He must not be reelected, for the sake of our country and its democracy!” cry the lying and ignorant, infantile nihil-anarchists.
Uh, in fact, no. Do you see, then, what I see?
Another example of Black Liars Matter just as much as any other.
“Black Liars Matter”
Good one
“Black Olives Matter ” on my favorite pizza
How about:
Black Losers Matter
Black Leaches Matter
I am extremely fed up with black BS and their enablers/users, Dems/Marxists.
“I am extremely fed up with black BS and their enablers/users, Dems/Marxists.”
Hear, hear. And can I add sick to death of snarling mouths
Another civil rights movement (e.g. feminism, abortion rites, transgender “=”) founded and progressed on a false premise.
Every time that picture comes up I think there’s a breaking story that Carrot Top has emerged from obscurity.
What has happened, in the US since 1964, is that slavery has been raised to be the most influential force in our society. In fact, it has always been a minor force used mainly to advance other aspects of society, such as the economy and political power. The PTB [powers that be] destroyed the cultures of the Native American inhabitants of this country, for economic gain, and literally no one cares. Asian workers were horribly exploited, for economic gain, and, again, no one cares. The same is true of virtually every immigrant group which graced our shores [Italians, Irish, Central Europeans, Latin Americans, etc.] and, still, no one cares. But, when it comes to Black Americans, politics made it essential that this group be recognized and protected by the very political party which had subjugated them since before the Civil war, for economic and political power reasons, the Democrats. When the Republicans, backed by white America, passed the Civil Rights Act, the Democrats had to maintain control of the Black population by other means.
Well did Gibson ever say the klits were the correct ones for that time period …. Ever… Repeatedly …. Nationally and make money doing so
I hope this succeeds. Hannah-Jones is a lying hack.
Carrot top got a Pulitzer?
She says: “In 1894, the NYT called Ida B. Wells a “slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress” for daring to tell the truth about lynching. 100 years later she earned the Pulitzer Prize. These efforts to discredit my work simply put me in a long tradition of BW who failed to know their places.”
Yet another example of the Galileo gambit logical fallacy.
Also, what’s with the red hair?