Slavery In America Did Not Begin In 1619, And Other Things The New York Times Gets Wrong

1. In the most enslaved parts of America like South Carolina, slavery largely began with the enslavement of Native Americans.
2. The 1619 Project isn’t mostly about helping Americans understand the role of slavery in our history.
3. It was not until South Carolinians fought the Yamasee Wars of 1715-1717, and sold between 20,000 and 50,000 kidnapped Native Americans into slavery into New England and the Caribbean, that South Carolinians had the capital to buy enough African slaves to get rice and indigo plantations up and running.
4. From its earliest moments in the Spanish colony of 1526, Puerto Rico in 1513, or even Jamestown in 1619, the truth is that America was a footnote to a larger world of slavery.
5. But zoomed out from the mostly mundane minutiae of individual articles  in the absence of slavery and thus without as much African influence in our music, what would American music sound like?  a larger concern animates the 1619 Project.
6. In essence, the 1619 date for the beginning of slavery sets up a story of America as an essentially Anglo project that African-Americans were forced into and now claim their share of.
7. Slavery in America began with Spanish enslavement of Native Americans.
8. This story of slavery as something somehow “foreign” to many Americans will read as a bit much to many enthusiasts of the 1619 Project.
9. The American story is not a story of a country defined by slavery, but a country defined by trying, in fits and starts, with faltering and hesitance, but also with moments of glory, to figure out what it means to live with liberty and self-government.
10. Furthermore, a serious accounting for slavery has to wrestle with the experience of Native Americans and Hawaiian islanders, and especially the status of their ancestral lands and sovereign rights.
11. The New York Times has published a series of essays about slavery, race, and American politics under the heading “1619 Project.” These essays cover an enormous amount of terrain: music, constitutional theory, economics, management, ethnic identity, and more.
12. Many people enslaved in America, most notably the first slaves, Native Americans, are not of African descent.
13. The American story is not a story of a country defined by slavery, but a country defined by trying to figure out what it means to live with liberty and self-government.
14. Like Americans whose origins are in non-Anglo colonies, so too the 1619 Project’s narratives seem to miss a significant part of the legacy of slavery: Native Americans, who remain significantly poorer than African-Americans, less educated, and often with shorter life expectancies.
15. But beyond that, the 1619 Project bills itself as helping Americans see the real story of American origins.
16. In other words, the history of slavery is not one of some evil creativity unique to Americans.
17. Any argument for a 1619 date implicitly suggests that the American project is an inherently Anglo project: that other regions, like Texas, California, Louisiana, and Puerto Rico, have subordinate histories that aren’t really, truly, equal as American origin stories.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/23/slavery-america-not-begin-1619-things-nyts-project-gets-wrong/