The 1619 Project (1619), without most of the scholarly vernacular, provides an excellent example of CRT's memetic/mimetic journalism. Such journalism has no detectable boundaries and quickly becomes akin to evangelism, if not propaganda. As part of journalistic ethics codes, accuracy resides as a central notion because it bonds the field together under the concept of reporting events as straightforwardly as possible. The introduction of this methodological chapter briefly examines The New York Times's partnership with the Pulitzer Center to present 1619 as a form of a memetic/mimetic historical curriculum. However, both journalistic institutions seem to overlook their ethical bond to reporting with accuracy. 1619 exists as an illustrative case of how CRT's ideological possession inspires overly determined, Arendtian-predicted action, even in journalism.
If you look at the laws that are being passed, the argument isn’t that we can’t teach this because these are not factually accurate. What they’re saying is that if we teach this to kids, our kids might think we are a racist nation. So think about what that is saying. That if we teach the true history of our country, if we teach these facts, then the logical conclusion that our children will come to is that we are fundamentally a racist nation. And so, we cannot teach those facts.
Nikole Hannah-Jones (2021), What’s Really Behind The 1619 Backlash, The New York Times
As I reread chapter 1, I realized how it might be too theoretical, too deeply entrenched in the modern university language. Even being part of today’s university, I am often at a loss to provide a critique of CRT that resides outside the bookish terminology. Academic cant becomes the communication of a specific sect, and any insight about how CRT ideologically possesses adherents may get lost in the university jargon.
TheNew York Times’s (NYT) The 1619 Project (1619), however, without most of the scholarly vernacular, provides an excellent example of CRT’s memetic/mimetic journalism. Such journalism has no detectable boundaries and quickly becomes akin to evangelism, if not propaganda. As part of journalistic ethics codes, accuracy resides as a central notion because it bonds the field together under the concept of reporting events as straightforwardly as possible. The introduction of this methodological chapter briefly examines The NYT’s partnership with the Pulitzer Center to present 1619 as a form of a memetic/mimetic historical curriculum. However, both journalistic institutions seem to overlook their ethical bond to reporting with accuracy. 1619 exists as an illustrative case of how CRT’s ideological possession inspires overly determined, Arendtian-predicted (1948) action, even in journalism. Although this chapter is not about 1619 or, for that matter, solely about journalistic ethics, 1619 survives as an evocative case illustrating CRT’s ability to possess ideologically. Journalists, scholars, and in the case of TheNYT and the Pulitzer Center, institutions endure vulnerable to totalitarian thought.
As argued in chapter one, CRT doesn’t have a specific language; CRT has the language. Or phrasing this Jungian (1983) insight for Gotham’s elite news institution: TheNYT doesn’t have 1619 — 1619 has The NYT. Nikole Hannah-Jones (2021) understands resistance to 1619, as seen in the quote above, as the inability to teach the ‘facts’ about racism. Nonetheless, Hannah-Jones, a trained journalist, tends to overlook the complexities required to enact new curricula in America’s schools and equally seems unacquainted with her journalistic duties for accuracy. 1619 lingers as memetic/mimetic journalism at the conceptualization level. Also, in the quote above, Hannah-Jones ascertains that America doesn't teach enough about slavery. Hannah-Jones’s claims can’t be substantiated since New York State teaches abundantly about slavery. However, in the recent book TheWar on the West, Douglas Murray (2022) extensively details how American schools have always taught about slavery and focus only on the Trans-Atlantic iteration and not the equally large Arab-African trade.