#jake silverstein

As explained in a prior post, in August 2019, the New York Times Magazinepublished what it called “The 1619 Project” to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the first slaves brought to the British Colonies in North America and to “reframe American  history by considering . . . 1619 as our nation’s birth year . . . when a ship arrived . . . in the British colony of Virginia, bearing a cargo of 20…

Though the Times claimed an interest in dialogue, Silverstein’s response avoided engaging with the scholars’ critiques and made no corrections. “We are not,” Silverstein conceded, “ourselves historians.” (This admission should give pause to any school district tempted to adopt the Times’s new history curriculum.) Silverstein offered no defense of the Desmond essay on capitalism and slavery; of the other two topics raised in the historians’ letter, he breezily asserted that “there are often debates, even among subject-area experts, about how to see the past”—without explaining why the Times chose to take such a one-sided approach. Hannah-Jones implied that she might have been open to the criticism if the scholars had “contacted me” rather than going public. Instead, however, they tried to “get people to sign on to a letter that was attempting really to discredit the entire project without having had a conversation”—as if doing so made their concerns any less relevant, or as though it were necessary for them to seek permission from her to express their doubts.

Silverstein concluded by excusing Hannah-Jones’s tweet about “white historians,” contending that the Project’s creator “was trying to make the point that for the most part, the history of this country has been told by white historians (some of whom, as in the case of the Dunning School, which grossly miseducated Americans about the history of Reconstruction for much of the twentieth century, produced accounts that were deeply flawed).” Linking the concerns of scholars like Oakes, Wilentz, or McPherson to the racist legacy of the long-discredited Dunning School is beneath the dignity of the Times.

NYT | The Displaced: War has driven 30 million children from their homes

Bruno Barbey/Magnum PhotosTHE DISPLACED | INTRODUCTION War has driven 30 million children from their homes. These are the stories of three of them. Nearly 60 million people are currently displaced from their homes by war and persecution — more than at any time since World War II. Half are children. This multimedia journey in text, photographs and virtual reality tells the stories of three of…

Two Sets Of Identical Twins, One From Each Set Switched At Birth

This is an amazing story from Columbia…two sets of identical twin boys born at the same hospital…one twin from each set gets switched, goes home with the wrong family…and the whole story is unraveled after a chance meeting.

The story is in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine. Check out an interview here with the magazine’s editor Jake Silverstein.