The muddle at the middle of the 1619 Project

An unresolved contradiction still plagues the controversial history as it releases in book form

The Constitutional convention and slavery.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Library of Congress, iStock)

What does it mean to tell a country's story?

In August 2019, The New York Times Magazine proposed one answer to this question for the United States. A package of essays taking up an entire issue of the magazine aimed, in the words of an introductory statement, "to reframe the country's history" by treating the arrival of the first African slaves in 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."

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.