"Works like "The 1619 Project" ultimately use the past as a tool to save capitalism from itself." “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways. The point is to change it,” Karl Marx concluded in the famous final line of his Theses on Feuerbach. Walter Benn Michaels, English professor and literary theorist, says this axiom is due for an update: “The bourgeoisie have tried to understand history,” Michaels quipped in a recent interview. “The point, however, is to forget it.”

A new wave of liberal anti-racists, whose works currently dominate sales charts, reading lists, academic settings, and even the cinema, take the opposite approach. Although some differences exist among them, most theorize current racial injustices with references to those of the past, from “The New Jim Crow” to the New York Times’ 1619 Project. These liberals, whose arguments have been adopted by some on the Left, not only posit an unbroken chain of racism from the days of chattel slavery to today but also invoke the strategies and tactics of historic social justice movements as models for present-day organizing.