I'm speaking academically. I had and I have zero say in the course of history. That's fine. That's a view one can have from a position privilege as well.
Casting a broad net over history and exposing all its warts should help define what cultural traits our country inherently possess and what it needs to move forward. I take a lot of cues w/ this from Germany. After the war, they were torn in half while knowing they perpetrated the (then) worst worldwide calamity across humanity. They could pretend it never happened and rolled over to their occupiers, but instead they recorded and exposed the horrors they committed for some sense of future generation not repeating the same crimes. There's a lot of German guilt for nazism but the opposite mentality would likely crush its current success as a worldwide economic and manufacturing leader. They can move forward somewhat without feeling confined to their history. So what's the point Cotton makes? Is it "slavery made us great"? As an entire nation, slavery and exploited peoples were the backbone of creating America's infrastructure during its infancy, but one could also argue that the scourge of slavery and the aftermath of the civil war did the Deep South no favors. Several states are still in "developing nation" status in benchmarks such as high school graduation or income level. It's a bit depressing to see coastal areas of the South squander away their geographical position and wealth in resources. They've become stuck in time unwilling and unable to break the chains of their proud history. So now America is "great", except it's still pouring more federal money into those cultural sinkholes hoping for some return on investment. If I were a poor white southerner born at a time where my family's peak was hundreds of years ago, knowing that it got there by exploiting large groups of people, yeah maybe I'd wish slavery never existed. That's cultural baggage as well when living in a town with no promising future. But given this idea of "pride" how how it has been taken away w/o my consent, I'd probably flip the other way and want to get back to the high living great grand pappy got.
I stand corrected. I really need to read up on the ins and out and find out if and who wants to add this to the curriculum for the record as a history teacher I don't know if it is relevant.
Sean Wilentz has won the Cooley Book Prize: https://reason.com/2020/08/17/princetons-sean-wilentz-wins-the-2021-cooley-book-prize/ Wilentz was an early critic of the 1619 Project: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/1619-project-new-york-times-wilentz/605152/
