Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The bit that's at the heart of the offense (not controversy) some have taken against The 1619 Project is the discovery of evidence that shows preserving slavery served as a motive for some colonists to join the war for Independence. Freedom, independence and liberty were not the sole motivations for the war of Independence. Preserving slavery was not the only motive for pursuing independence from Britain, and it was not the motive for everyone. And 1619 Project makes that clear. But it did serve as a motive that scholars say helped tip the scales in the decision to pursue independence from Great Britain. Britain offered to liberate enslaved Africans who escaped bondage and fought for Britain. Colonial slaveowners did not want that. This fact must surely come as a great, and perhaps demoralizing, shock to many Americans, for those who have been taught since birth that America is a land dedicated to freedom and liberty for all. This ideal, however, has never been fully realized and applied to all Americans. Not even in our founding documents. America's legal stance toward enslaved Africans, and also Native Americans, cannot be seen as other than a dramatic, and even hypocritical, departure from those cherished values. There is value in excavating the past. When we see the social justice issues that stubbornly remain in America, and the great difficulty in rousing the nation's conscience to address them, it helps to remember America has always been ambivalent about applying its belief in individual liberties to all individuals. And that ambivalence predates the Constitution, and even the Declaration of Independence. It goes back to the campaign to mount the War of Independence itself. Yes, America is a land of freedom and liberty.... That's just not the whole story. Acknowledging where America has fallen short is the only way we can reckon with the path that lies still before us... to make those founding - ideals - real - finally - for all Americans.