Who’s cancelling who?
10th May 2021 · 0 Comments
By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Columnist
Republicans seem to enjoy accusing liberals and progressives of practicing so-called cancel culture. It’s their go-to response to being called out for offensive name-calling, lies, misbehavior, racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and voting rights violations. They holler cancel culture to distract audiences when news breaks about their misadventures.
Several Republicans said major corporations wanted to “cancel” them because the companies released statements opposing their voter suppression bills.
Based on their actions over a lengthy period, it appears that Republicans are the originators of cancel culture.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is the leader of the cancel culture movement. He’s been running the cancel culture mob since President Barack Obama was in office. He tried to cancel Obama by promising to make him a “one-term president.” When that didn’t work, he canceled Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, D.C. Circuit Court Chief Judge Merrick Garland, and Obama’s proposed legislation.
McConnell and his Republican cohorts tried to cancel the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, but the late Senator John McCain, who gave a dramatic thumbs down, canceled the Republican effort.
So, who is canceling whom? It is undeniable that it is the Republicans who are the ringleaders of cancel culture.
They tried to cancel true justice, the Black Lives Matter movement, Voting Rights, Reality, and Black History.
For centuries, white historians have glossed over the truth about American history and Black Americans in the U.S. They wrote about Blacks sparingly, skimming over the horrors of slavery, lynching, Jim Crow (legal Apartheid), voter suppression, structural racism and Blacks’ contributions. Still, for them, there would be no America.
Carter G. Woodson, the father of Black History, and successive Black publishers have documented the Black experience. Unlike white historians, none of their writings appeared in the U.S. History books used in schools.
The fact that white historians write American History books is an obvious example of cancel culture. White elected officials don’t want the truth about enslaved Africans taught in schools.
Nope. Instead, whites glorified the “founding fathers,” many of whom owned slaves. They built monuments honoring Confederate leaders who tried to overthrow the U.S. government. They elected Supreme Court Justices who keep white supremacists in power and Black people separate and unequal.
White people, especially those in leadership, ignored the truth about the origin of this nation. Enslaved Africans were the builders of America and never got paid. They were sold, beaten, raped, abused and sometimes lynched.
So, McConnell’s campaign to “cancel” the 1619 Project is par for the course.
In her introduction to the 1619 Project, founder Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote, “No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed.” The New York Times Magazine scheduled publication of the special edition to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Africans in Virginia.
The 1619 Project features investigative journalism, poems, short fiction and a photo essay that gives readers a panoramic view of slavery and the impact enslaved Africans had on America. According to The New York Times Magazine, the 1619 Project “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”
Nikole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for her commentary in the 1619 Project.
Last week, however, McConnell vociferously criticized the 1619 Project.
“Years like 1776, 1787, and 1861 to 1865 were important to U.S. history,” McConnell told Louisville reporters, but he didn’t think 1619 was as noteworthy.
McConnell’s comments were a naked attempt to whip up public opinion against the scholarly work. It was the second salvo launched by McConnell. On April 29, McConnell and 38 Republican cancel culture crew members signed off on a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
In the letter, the Republicans expressed “concern with the Department’s effort to reorient” civics and history education programs “toward a politicized and divisive agenda.”
After decrying the need for more civics programs, McConnell cited a 2020 survey and a 2019 study that found that only 51 percent of Americans could name the three branches of government and that “majorities of Americans in 49 states and the District of Columbia would earn an “F” on the U.S. Citizenship Exam. McConnell’s letter didn’t name the source of the anonymous survey and study.
He accused Cardona of doubling down on “divisive, radical, and historically-dubious buzzwords and propaganda” instead of strengthening the teaching of Civics and American History.
The irony of that statement is that it’s the Republicans who double down on divisive, radical buzzwords and propaganda. They have fine-tuned the psychological device of projection where they project their behavior onto others.
“For example, your Proposed Priorities applaud the New York Times’s 1619 Project. This campaign to ‘reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding’ has become infamous for putting ill-informed advocacy ahead of historical accuracy,” McConnell wrote.
The Kentucky senator went on to claim that trained, credentialed historians “debunked” the project. Interestingly, he again cites unnamed sources. There seems to be a pattern here of making claims without attributions.
Cardona counted the 1619 Project among his proposed priorities. McConnell’s letter not only condemned the 1619 Project and leveled all kinds of bogus accusations against it, but the senator went on to speak for voters and taxpayers: “Families did not ask for this divisive nonsense. Voters did not vote for it.”
McConnell concluded by requesting that Cardona withdraw his Proposed Priorities, which, of course, included the 1619 Project.
One does not have to get into the mind of McConnell to understand the Kentucky senator and his political philosophy.
While Kentucky was the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd, it was also the birthplace of the Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis. When Kentucky seceded from the Union, it was the last state to join the traitors’ effort to overthrow the federal government to keep Black people enslaved and working for free. After all, the founding fathers and quite a few presidents got rich from the unpaid labor of imprisoned Africans. Kentucky is the 13th star on the Confederate Flag.
McConnell’s insults and divisive propaganda about the 1619 Project drew criticism from his alma mater, The University of Louisville, according to WDRB, the Fox News affiliate in Louisville.
“The University of Louisville has issued a rare rebuke of one of its most famous and powerful graduates, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, over McConnell’s comments on Monday about the significance of slavery in America,” WDRB reported.
“A senior U of L administrator and the head of the committee overseeing the university’s new antiracism initiative snapped back at McConnell in a university-wide email.”
V. Faye Jones, the interim senior associate vice president of diversity and equity at the university, rebuked McConnell: “To imply that slavery is not an import part of United States history not only fails to provide a true representation of the facts, but also denies the heritage, culture, resilience, and survival of Black people in America.”
Jones said University President Neeli Bendapudi shared her view.
But the history project is only one of McConnell’s targets for cancelation. McConnell last Thursday said, “Republicans are focused 100 percent on stopping this new administration.”
This article originally published in the May 10, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
