James Oakes on What’s Wrong with The 1619 Project - #46

Steve and Corey talk to James Oakes, Distinguished Professor of History and Graduate School Humanities Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, about "The 1619 Project" developed by The New York Times Magazine. The project argues that slavery was the defining event of US history. Jim argues that slavery was actually the least exceptional feature of the US and that what makes the US exceptional is that it is where abolition first begins. Steve wonders about the views of Thomas Jefferson who wrote that “all men are created equal” but still held slaves. Jim maintains many founders were hypocrites, but Jefferson believed what he wrote.

Topics: Northern power, Industrialization, Capitalism, Lincoln, Inequality, Cotton, Labor, Civil War, Racism/Antiracism, Black Ownership.

James Oakes (Bio)
https://www.gc.cuny.edu/Faculty/Core-...

Oakes and Colleagues Letter to the NYT and the Editor’s Response
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/ma...

The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc...

The World Socialist Web Site interview with James Oakes
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019...

Benjamin Lay, the first revolutionary abolitionist
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...

Oakes, J. (2016). Capitalism and Slavery and the Civil War. International Labor and Working-Class History
https://doi.org/10.1017/S014754791500...

Wright, G. (2020), Slavery and Anglo‐American capitalism revisited . The Economic History Review
https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12962

John J. Clegg, "Capitalism and Slavery," Critical Historical Studies 2
https://doi.org/10.1086/683036

Olmstead, Alan L. & Rhode, Paul W., 2018. "Cotton, slavery, and the new history of capitalism," Explorations in Economic History
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2017.12...

For those interested in exploring Jefferson’s and Lincoln’s views further Professor Oakes recommends the following books:

John C. Miller, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
  / 143116.the_wolf_by_the_ears  

Graham A. Peck, Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom
  / making-an-antislavery-nation  

man·i·fold /ˈmanəˌfōld/ many and various.

In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point.

Steve Hsu and Corey Washington have been friends for almost 30 years, and between them hold PhDs in Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Theoretical Physics. Join them for wide ranging and unfiltered conversations with leading writers, scientists, technologists, academics, entrepreneurs, investors, and more.