Joe Biden will issue an executive order to dissolve the 1776 commission, a panel stood up by President Donald Trump as a rebuttal to schools applying a more accurate history curriculum around slavery in the US.
The commission had been formed as an apparent counter to The New York Times’ 1619 Project, a Pulitzer Prize-winning project aimed at teaching American students about slavery that Trump, speaking last fall, had called “toxic propaganda.†The announcement comes just two days after the commission issued an inflammatory report on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and just hours before Biden will take over from Trump, whose time in office was marked by racist statements and actions.
In its report released Monday, the commission asserted that “the Civil Rights Movement was almost immediately turned to programs that ran counter to the lofty ideals of the founders,†specifically criticizing affirmative action policies and arguing that identity politics are “the opposite of King’s hope that his children would ‘live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’â€
Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College, who had drawn criticism for his comments in 2013, when he said state officials had visited the college to see whether enough “dark ones†were enrolled, was chosen to chair the commission. Carol Swain, who once wrote that Islam “poses an absolute danger to us and our children,†was chosen as vice chair.
