President Donald Trump on Sunday said he would implore the Department of Education to investigate schools using The New York Times’ 1619 project, which teaches American history beginning with the arrival of slaves to Virginia in the year 1619 and focuses on the contributions of Black Americans.

“california has implemented the 1619 project into the public schools. soon you wont recognize america,” a Twitter user claimed in a tweet on September 1. Five days later, on Sunday, the president tweeted the message, writing “Department of Education is looking at this. If so, they will not be funded!” . . .

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“The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery,” according to The New York Times. “It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”

In May, New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her work on the 1619 Project. The project has drawn backlash from conservatives, who have “accused the writers of stoking racial division, pushing their leftist ideologies, and rewriting history through ‘a racial lens’ — meaning through the point of view of Black Americans,” as Vox’s J. Brian Charles wrote last year. . . .

“But the debates playing out now on social media and in op-eds between supporters and detractors of the 1619 Project misrepresent both the historical record and the historical profession,” Leslie M. Jones, a Northwestern University historian, wrote for Politico in March. “The United States was not, in fact, founded to protect slavery—but the Times is right that slavery was central to its story. And the argument among historians, while real, is hardly black and white.”

Trump’s tweet comes exactly one week after an editorial in The Wall Street Journal titled “California’s Radical Indoctrination,” published August 30, targeting California state legislation AB 331, which would require all school districts in the state to offer a semester-long ethnic studies course beginning in 2025.

Following the publication of the project, The New York Times partnered with the Pulitzer Center to develop free-to-download educational resources for teachers based on the project, according to the report. GOP Sen. Tom Cotton in July introduced legislation to prevent schools from teaching the curriculum, CNN noted.

(Excerpt from Business Insider. Article by Connor Perrett. Photo Credit: Unsplash.)

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