‘1619 Project’ Has No Place in South Dakota, Kristi Noem Says

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has voiced stern opposition to teaching the “1619 Project” curriculum in the state’s schools.

Noem, a Republican, took to Twitter on Friday to criticize the “1619 Project,” saying it “claims that America was founded on racism and slavery, not on an ideal of equality. It seeks to incorrectly re-frame the nation as a story of ‘us versus them’ rather than ‘We the People,’” she wrote.

The “1619 Project,” inaugurated with a special issue of The New York Times Magazine, attempts to cast the Atlantic slave trade as the dominant factor in the founding of America instead of ideals such as individual liberty and natural rights. The initiative has been widely panned by historians and political scientists, with some critics calling it a bid to rewrite U.S. history through a left-wing lens.

Noem said that, according to many historians, the “1619 Project’s version of American history is full of errors and misstatements that should be avoided, not embraced.”

“The 1619 Project relies upon the concept of Critical Race Theory to further divide students based on the color of their skin,” Noem wrote. “This is inappropriate and un-American. It has no place in South Dakota, and it certainly has no place in South Dakota classrooms.”

In a recent interview on NTD’s “Focus Talk,” Yiatin Chu, an Asian mother of two and co-chair of the New York chapter of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), described critical race theory as pushing the idea that disparate outcomes, such as academic competency scores, can be reduced to a single variable—race. Advocates of the theory, which she said is increasingly being taught at pre-college levels, push the socialist notion of equality of outcome, and blame differences in outcomes on entrenched privilege while dividing people into “oppressors” and their victims, the “oppressed.”

BY TOM OZIMEK

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