The New York Times has recently been running a series of articles marking the 400th anniversary of the arrival of African slaves in the New World that they are calling the 1619 Project. The approach that they took on these essays is original and commendable. Each of them illustrates a different aspect about how slavery and then racial discrimination shaped various aspects (e.g., cultural, social, legal) of present day America. I have enjoyed reading these essays, which gave me a different lens to view some modern issues.
At the same time, the essays tap into a larger academic sociological debate about the relationship between “society” and the individual. That is, to what extent can we explain social phenomenon with reference to social institutions and structures? The authors of the 1619 Project essays mostly take a stand on this debate, attributing many of our present social woes and challenges to “the system.” Thus, a few of the essays use the metaphor of “DNA,” as in, the United States has a particular racist DNA at its core.
My own scholarly proclivity is to treat such arguments and analogies with a great deal of skepticism. Societies are unlike living organisms and while they do hand down certain laws, institutions, and norms, they do not have a DNA. Societies don’t act on their own; the individuals who make comprise them are the actors.
I wrote a letter to the New York Times along these lines, which was published yesterday and which I reprint here:
To the Editor:
I very much appreciate and enjoy the 1619 Project, both as a necessary corrective to the way that American history is often portrayed and as an impetus to productive change. At the same time, I take issue with a metaphor of “DNA” that appears in several essays, such as “Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.” The metaphor is misleading and perhaps pernicious, as it obscures agency.
Every generation receives traditions, found in laws, customs and institutions, but every person in every generation has significant leeway in how to understand and live those traditions. Traditions — perhaps the meaning of “DNA” in this metaphor — make racism easier, but ultimately it is the quotidian choices that we have and continue to make that cause racism, as they will its eradication.
Michael Satlow
Providence, R.I.
The writer is a professor of religious studies at Brown University.
For centuries, we have seen Americans who have put their lives on the line to challenge and defeat racism. Your comment is well taken. There is no DNA to a country. To suggest that there is invites racism.