The opening scene sets the stage for what is to come in The 1619 Project: Born on the Water is an example of nearly perfect irony. The very first image of the narrative inside the book is of a young black girl sitting at a school desk with a look on her face almost impossible to identify relative to the emotion she is feeling. The succeeding page broadens the viewpoint to show that the student is reacting to an assignment being given to the class by the teacher. That assignment is to draw a flag representing the ancestral homeland of the students according to their genealogical roots. In other words, this addendum to the infamous 1619 Project which is directed at elementary school students starts off with a school assignment that, in the case of at least one student, is inevitably going to lead back through the history of slavery in America.
The irony carries the potential of being almost unsustainable. In the wake of the zeitgeist of the nation at the time of its publication, it was not just potentially possible but almost inevitable that at some point in some school in some district somewhere in America a teacher would be handing out an assignment to read this very book. That assignment would, in turn, stimulate a negative reaction among some parents of some students in that school. That negative reaction would create an effect of dominos toppling one after the other until this very book would be banned from use for the purpose of teaching the dreaded and feared “critical race theory.”
The controversy seems bizarrely misplaced. As with the original publication, there is nothing in this version aimed at younger readers which is actually controversial. The conceit of the framing device is that the young black girl learns all about her ancestors as they were abducted from their freedom in Africa and pressed into slavery. The story that the young girl learns that becomes the actual centerpiece of the narrative is one told by her grandmother in the form of verse. The very first lesson the young girl learns—the very first words of the very first poem—does nothing more controversial than relate a simple cultural truth.
“They say our people were born on the water,
but our people had a home, a place, a land
before they were sold.”
In that opening can be located the foundation of what this book is really about. What it is most definitely not about is creating propaganda by rewriting a false history. In fact, it is just the opposite: creating an honest narrative by inserting into history a part too often left out. The “controversial” message this children’s book seems to be putting across is that the story of African Americans is not one of the slaves but of previously free human beings who were enslaved by other human beings. The succeeding page reinforces the idea that those referred to as “slaves” descended from human beings born into freedom who had no conception of the idea that one person might own another. An illustration of a happy, smiling mother and father and their children are accompanied by the reminder that “Before they were enslaved, they were free.” Why this information should be considered so dangerous as to produce organized efforts to keep it out of schools is not clear.
On the other hand, the section of the book detailing the history of “The Tuckers of Tidewater, Virginia” might offer a clue as to why some are so offended. The fact that the first Black child born in America—before it even became America—was named William Tucker is probably not known by most people and almost certainly comes as a surprise to critics of learning the history of slavery in America. A man named Anthony and a woman named Isabella who were forced into bondage on a plantation in Virginia owned by a man named Tucker fell in love.
Atypically, they were allowed to marry and produce a family and actually raise a son named William. Typically, William was given the last name, not of his father or his mother, but by the plantation owner. It is not the story of William Tucker that is likely to inspire outrage and draw the ire of those fighting so desperately to keep the true story of slavery from being taught in schools. It is rather the characterization of his birth which is asserted by the author that is simply too great an outrage to be contained by the more impulsive opponents of critical race theory. “
“The first Black child born in the land
that would become the United States.
The first truly American child.”
In a country literally constructed upon the foundation of belief that only white men who owned property were citizens to whom no restrictions of legal rights could be mandated, the assertion that a Black child born to slaves should be singled out as the first “truly American” child is no mere critical theory but a subversion of the entire concept of American ideals. It is an assertion that simply cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. And, more importantly, for those opposing critical race theory, it is a defining example of why such texts cannot be allowed into the curriculum.
