To The Reader’s Forum:

Rich Lowry’s dismissal of Hulu’s “The 1619 Project” (“No, Slavery Didn’t Create Capitalism,” 2/24/2023) as “cartoonish”–likening it to Disney–is as problematic as it is misguided.

First, the episode in question doesn’t assert that American capitalism and slavery were synonymous; the first line is literally “capitalism is complicated,” followed by the challenge, “we need a better definition.” The episode’s assertion that American slavery cannot be compartmentalized from the history of capitalism may be debatable, but Lowry doesn’t engage in that debate.

Instead, his disingenuous analysis recalls others’ attempts to separate Hitler’s economic efficacy from the undeniable horrors of Nazi Germany. For that matter, Lowry’s characterization of Robin D. G. Kelley as a “Marxist academic” (which part of that label is a greater slur in Lowry’s vocabulary?) smacks of knee-jerk McCarthyism.

Second, if Lowry means that the documentary is “cartoonish” in the sense that the term has connotations of the lurid and grotesque, he may be on to something. The history that it confronts is inherently lurid, its barbaric details grotesque. It’s not a documentary in the sense of a detached study that takes pains to be “fair and balanced”–attempts to make it so would lead to callous rhetorical questions like “were enslaved Africans better off in some respects?” Spoiler: they weren’t.

Finally, a critic who throws around the term “cartoonish” as a wholesale condemnation probably hasn’t picked up a copy of Art Spiegelman’s Maus–or anything by Alison Bechdel. From Daumier to Doonesbury, cartoons have been a powerful medium for social critique and critical history. In any case, “The 1619 Project” doesn’t employ cartoonish hyperbole to make its points. It’s an unflinching discussion of legitimate, if inconvenient, American history–one that every American should learn, now more than ever.

Eric Jackson-Forsberg

Jamestown