1619

The NYT is running a series of essays connected with the the broad history of slavery and racism in the US.  (Slavery here and in all the articles I have read so far is black slavery.  Nothing about the enslavement of Indians or of Mexicans.  That is understandable and is legitimate  The latter are less significant because involving far fewer numbers and not sinking as deeply into the social structures.)  All of the essays so fr have been interesting.  They are all well-written, and well-illustrated.  It is best to keep in mind they are magazine pieces, pieces for the NYT Magazine.  It is an important point.  NYT Magazine pieces are really forms of entertainment.  They are not scholarship, and they are not usually efforts to write accurate popularizations of science or history.  I dwell on this point for a reason.  I have read three of the essays and the introduction, and expect to read the rest shortly.  They all share a common feature -- they are quite misleading and inaccurate, and also interesting and potentially informative.  Democracy did not start in the US with the Civil Rights Movement.  The Movement certainly broadened the US democracy, enlivened it and improved it, projects still underway.  But women voting involved more people, by percentage if not numbers.  The disappearance of property limits on voting rights was pretty important.  As a democracy, the labor rise of the late 19 and 20th centuries had a large impact.  So the essay overstates its case, or at least states it in a way that is not really accurate.  I am not sure that is a bad thing.  The overall series seems aimed at being a kind of tonic for what the editors think is a giant and pernicious gap in the knowledge or awareness of the nation, or the White portion anyway.  Or, perhaps it is just intended as a kind of mirroring of the way the history of the country is seen by some significant portion of Whites.  Consider the essay on the history of slavery, which has a title "A Brief History of Slavery That You Didn't Learn in School" (the essay is here).  Nice title.  It is true that I did not know all of the names and individual stories included in the essay.  But it is not materially different from the history of slavery I learned in high school.  The two are pretty close, virtually identical on all the key points.  I suppose I went to unusual high schools -- both were public schools in pretty solidly middle class places.  The colonial conquest of West Africa, exploitation of resources, extraction of human beings as slaves, the ongoing resistance and rebellion of slaves in the US, the role of slavery in the economic and political power of the South, the fundamental contractions of the political order and political rhetoric, was all there.  I get that it is just a title, designed to lure one into reading.  That is fine, indeed the right way to title the essays.  Of course, the level of historical knowledge in the US is quite low, and so I would expect the piece will be quite new for many people.  The factual defects in the article on slavery and capitalism has been discussed elsewhere. Lubet's critique is much more focused on inaccuracy and ideology, and valid.  As some of the comments on the essay on medicine point out, it is error to think that ethnicity and the rough classifications of race are irrelevant to medical treatment.  There are different rates of kinds of cancer and different risks that go with different ethnicities. And some of the listed myths are not even myths because no one in medical school is taught anything of the sort.  On the other hand, there are differences in pain treatment and other health outcomes and diagnoses that look to be the result of racist thinking.  I don't think that makes the essay a failure.  I think that one should also think about what the overall aims are for the set of essays.  But maybe I have too low a standard for magazine articles.