Taylor’s Reviews > The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story > Status Update

Jonathan Lee Walters described the preaxhing style of black churches as stemming from “a deep love for, and thus a deep disappointment in, a country that too often fails to affirm the self evident truth in our nation’s creed: that all people are equal and endowed by God with certain unalienable rights.”

“When a White person kills an African American, it is 281% more likely to be ruled a justifiable homicide than a White-on-White killing..the consequences are predictably deadly and unequal.”

“America has a way of dancing with its own delusion, unable to keep count of its murders because it then would have to keep count of its murderers.”

These actions speak to how the threads of history tie past and present together. The assault on the legitimacy of non white political actors, are downstream of ideas and ideologies that came to fruition in defense of human bondage and racial segregation. As long as there are enough Americans who don’t trust democracy to protect their privilege, and those who believe in political equality, are a path to power.”

“If liberty cannot be materially secured through landholding, at least it can be somewhat felt.”

“Houses do not attempt to become non property by running away. Cattle do not stage revolts. But humans treated as property, constantly do both.”

“The institution of American slavery and the events of Indian removal, were, in both cause and effect, twin evils.”

“My troops already occupy many positions, and thousands and thousands are approaching from every corner to render assistance and escape alike, hopeless. Will you, then by resistance, compel us to resort to arms, or will you, by flight, seek to hide yourselves in the mountains and forests, and thus oblige us to hunt you down?”

Learning about Hopewell and Indigenous/Black coalition and assimilation is so fascinating to me. “Slavery was no longer a bridge between Indigenous and African people, struggling to survive in similar straits, but a wall of division.”

“The true age of sugar had begun, and it was doing more to reshape the world than any ruler, empire, or war had ever done.” / “As production grew and the market increased, the craze for the sweetener gradually trickled down from elites to the laboring poor../the single most important addition to the British working class diet.”

“Black women have always embodied if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to White male rule and have actively resisted its end roads upon them and their communities, in both dramatic and subtle ways.” These women are not sexually licentious, they are victims, and the horrors depicted in this chapter makes my heart and blood boil.

Also, how ironic a part of Virginia was named Point Comfort.