Did anyone else take the time to read through “
The 1776 Commission’s Report”? It weighs in at a meager 33 pages (
including appendix) and reads like Tucker Carlson’s American History term paper.
No matter how eager we may be to turn the page on this catastrophic administration, the sheer impudence of releasing
this on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day should not get lost in the shuffle:
In essence, this report does to American history what Trump's mob did to the Capitol Building. It's difficult to fathom a greater affront to the legacy of Dr. King than a Presidential Commission, in the year 2021, comparing him, and his contemporaries, to
John C. Calhoun, and, as if that weren't despicable enough, claiming that compensatory or redistributive policies designed to foster social justice and equality run contrary to "Dr. King's hopes." Why not just take smiling selfies on the Lorraine Hotel Balcony while you're at it?
For reference: in his 1964 book,
Why We Can’t Wait, King unequivocally states that, “it is impossible to create a formula for the future which does not take into account that our society has been doing something special against the Negro for hundreds of years. How then can he be absorbed into the mainstream of American life if we do not do something special for him now, in order to balance the equation and equip him to compete on an equal basis?” He adds, "whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner."
For those whose research expands beyond brainyquote.com, Dr. King's position on this issue could not be clearer. An interviewer for Playboy magazine broached the subject directly: “Along with other civil rights leaders, you have often proposed a massive program of economic aid, financed by the federal government, to improve the lot of the nation’s twenty million Negroes. Just one of the projects you’ve mentioned, however – the HARYOU-ACT program to provide jobs for Negro youths – is expected to cost 141 million dollars over the next ten years, and that includes only Harlem. A nationwide program such as you propose would undoubtedly run into the billions.” Dr. King responded by clarifying, “About fifty billion, actually – which is less than one year of our present defense spending. It is my belief that with the expenditure of this amount, over a ten-year period, a genuine and dramatic transformation could be achieved in the conditions of Negro life in America.”
Then there's the caption's implication that there was only
one "Civil Rights March on Washington." The sheer disrespect of this section is difficult to overstate.
As if that weren't heinous enough, the report also manages to whitewash
slavery:
While slavery was not, itself, unique to America, White Americans developed a racial caste system to facilitate and justify the institution of slavery. (The legal mechanisms of which were drawn upon by the Nazis: see
Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (2017), by James Q. Whitman.) This is less an account of history than a whiny teenager's excuse for breaking curfew. "All the other countries were doing it! I hate it here! Brazil's mom and dad let him do whatever he wants!"
The report's loathsome authors go on to pat the U.S. on the back from eventually and begrudgingly calling an end to slavery after nearly annihilating the union and its population over it: " Indeed, the movement to abolish slavery
that first began in the United States [emphasis theirs] led the way in bringing about the end of legal slavery."
Here in reality, we know that the U.S. was
nowhere near the first nation to abolish - or initiate a movement to abolish - slavery, lagging far behind, among many other nations, Mexico, Haiti, Denmark. France, and the United Kingdom. Even when it was finally ratified, the Thirteenth Amendment, as we all by now know, notably included an exception for criminal punishment.
But wait: there's more! They devoted an entire section in this deranged diatribe to bashing America's universities:
I won't further belabor the point, but if you care at all about history, pedagogy, or the competing visions for the future of our society vis-à-vis its understanding of the past, you unfortunately need to read this abomination for yourself before it is justifiably scoured from the White House website:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-conte...nts-Advisory-1776-Commission-Final-Report.pdf
It's everything you'd expect, save for the sharpie. Think Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, only with military school poised as a
reward rather than a punishment. It makes Inside the NBA's celebration of Dr. King look respectful, substantive, and dignified by comparison.
The timing of its release cannot reasonably be considered accidental, representing an affront to Black Americans in particular and fundamental human decency in general.
I'll return you now to the excruciating inauguration countdown, already in progress:
Countdown to Biden Harris Inauguration
countdowntobidenharris.com
www.google.com
