What’s Really Behind the 1619 Backlash?
About this episode
Klein interviews Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates about their move to Howard University and the fight over how America teaches its own history. Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project, argues the furious backlash targets not facts but the project's displacement of white Americans from the center of the national story, linking the 'critical race theory' bills to the same states passing voter-suppression laws. Coates contends the backlash stems from a narrative of American exceptionalism that cannot admit slavery as foundational. They discuss why the period after Obama's election produced this collision, the relationship between cultural and political power, the craft of journalism — including skepticism toward authority — and how to tell a truer American story that can still inspire hope.