Gerald Horne—an organizer, activist, and author of more than 30 books, including, most recently, The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century, talked with Stephen Magro, at Democratic Left, a publication of the Democratic Socialists of America. They spoke, about the controversial 1619 Project initiated by the New York Times, the history profession, and the need for socialists to be antiracist and internationalist in their theory and practice….
Magro: The 1619 Project—and much of your work—puts settler colonialism, slavery, and white supremacy at the center of the unfolding history of the United States. It seems straightforward, so how do we account for resistance to the Project among some historians?
Horne: The 1619 Project stirred controversy in part because it unsettled the widely accepted “creation myth” of the founding of the United States. Countless numbers of those of European descent profited handsomely from the founding. They—along with historians who have shaped the dominant narrative—have managed to convince too many that this “immaculate conception” idea of the creation of the slaveholders’ republic is also a universal and undeniable “truth.” This “truth” ignores the immense losses suffered by Native Americans after the republic was founded….
Read the interview at Democratic Left
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