Race/Related: ‘No People Has a Greater Claim to That Flag Than Us’

2019年9月7日星期六

Race/Related: ‘No People Has a Greater Claim to That Flag Than Us’

SEPTEMBER 7, 2019

We are re-sending this newsletter because of earlier technical issues.

By Pierre-Antoine Louis

The headquarters of The New York Times is in a busy area of Manhattan where the sidewalks are always bustling. But on the Thursday before the Labor Day weekend, there were larger-than-usual crowds in front of our entrance. And they were after copies of one of the most exciting pieces of journalism we've produced in a while.

New Yorkers lined up to pick up a copy of the 1619 Project outside The Times's headquarters.Sydney Okolo/The New York Times

We were handing out 2,000 free copies of our 1619 Project, which has caused quite a sensation in the three weeks since it was published.

As a black man born and educated in the United States, I found that the 1619 Project — comprising a special edition of our Sunday magazine, a section of the newspaper, a kids section, a five-part podcast and a curriculum — opened my eyes to the impact slavery has had in America far beyond what I was taught in school. It was conceived by Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer for the Times Magazine. I sat down with Nikole, who is a friend, to discuss the project and the reaction to it.

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Who was the audience you had in mind?

Americans who are not black, so that they could understand this history and ongoing legacy and really reckon with our true identity as a country and who we really are. I wanted to reframe the way that we see this history and the way that we see ourselves.

I also did it specifically for black folks. I think my opening essay is really written to black Americans. We have always been treated as a problem here, made to feel as if we are not full citizens of our country, been made to feel ashamed of the fact that our story here starts with enslavement.

I really wanted us to be liberated of that and to understand the pivotal role that we have played in this country, and to believe, as I argue in the piece, that no one has a greater claim to this flag and this country and patriotism than we do, because we have fought for it the hardest.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, right, speaks about the 1619 Project with a festivalgoer at Afropunk in Brooklyn.Keiona Williamson/The New York Times

Is the reaction all that you had hoped for?

I am completely shocked and overwhelmed by the responses. I did not expect it at all. I profoundly believe that we were creating something important and powerful, and we're attempting to kind of shake the table on the way that we've been taught this history, in the way that we have been taught to think about black Americans and our role, but it's also an entire project about slavery, the thing that we don't ever really want to grapple with.

So, no, I had no idea that it would take off like it did. People were driving from store to store looking for copies, people were stealing the magazines out of the paper.

Why was it important for you to have mainly black contributors for the project?

Every original piece of artwork that was in there, every original piece of poetry and fiction, most of the essays, and the entire special section are all written by people of African descent, and that was really important to us.

It also sends what I hope is a message to journalistic institutions, that you can produce the most fantastic, amazing-quality journalism about people who are not always centered and done by people who are not always centered.

In your essay, you say, "Black people have seen the worst of America, yet, somehow, we still believe in its best." This is a very hopeful sentence. Would you describe this project as hopeful?

I'm going to answer that in two ways. Would I describe myself as hopeful? No. Would I describe the project as hopeful? Yes. Because, again, you don't do this work if you don't have hope that this work can have an impact. And you don't institute a project that says we seek to reframe the way that we see our history, and not hope that that reframing occurs.