Should Nebraska schoolkids learn 1776 or 1619 as the nation's birthday?
Ricketts called the 1619 Project "revisionist history of the American founding" and tied it to critical race theory. "Make no mistake: critical race theory is an attack on our countrys core values," he wrote. Two Republican candidates for governor, Jim Pillen and Charles Herbster, have called for keeping critical race theory and the 1619 Project out of schools. Although it's hard to tell whether a teacher somewhere in Nebraska has used the project or theory in the classroom, 14 large and urban districts told The World-Herald they don't currently teach either as part of their formal curriculum. The 1619 Project presents slavery not as a blemish on an otherwise good country but as a chronic disease that infected the whole of society, drove an economy that made White people rich and was preserved and protected by the founders. According to the project's authors, its stated goal was "to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nations birth year. Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country."