Oprah Joins Plot To Convince Americans Their Country Is Racist

This effort to extend the 1619 reeducation program into popular culture is particularly dangerous because stories have the power to change minds through emotion instead of reason.

Oprah Winfrey is partnering with Lionsgate to turn The New York Times’s 1619 Project into feature films and television programs.

The 1619 Project is a series of essays and multimedia creations produced by The New York Times and one of their leading writers, Nikole Hannah-Jones. The purpose of the project is to reframe American history by claiming that America’s founding is based on racism instead of equality and liberty. Hannah-Jones’ goal in creating the project was to show how slavery and racism have had a lasting effect on all of America’s institutions.

Much of the 1619 Project is repackaged critical race theory, which argues that America and its laws, systems, and institutions are innately racist. This effort to extend The New York Times’s reeducation program into popular culture is particularly dangerous because stories have the power to change minds through emotion instead of reason.

The campaign to legalize gay marriage is a perfect case study in how entertainment can change the minds of a generation on a particular topic more quickly than any legislation or social protest movement. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2004 polls showed that 60 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage privileges, but by 2019 that number shrank to 31 percent.

Many social scientists agree it was the growing visibility of gay people in popular culture that was responsible for the shift, reports the Washington Post. Once people began to relate to and feel compassion for either fictional gay characters on shows like “Will and Grace” or actual gay people like Ellen DeGeneres, it wasn’t long before their minds swayed on related policies.

This is the power of pop culture. As is often said, it is more important to write the songs of a nation than its laws. As historian Wilfred McClay writes in “Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story,” “We need stories to speak to the fullness of our humanity and help us orient ourselves in the world. The impulse to write history and organize our world around stories is intrinsic to us as human beings. We are at our core, remembering and story-making creatures, and stories are one of the chief ways we find ...

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