Trump is taking aim at the Smithsonian and while leftist outlets like The New York Times and the Washington Post have complained that this is authoritarian, they had nothing but good things to say when history was rewritten under the Biden administration to claim that whiteness was the root of all evil. What the leftist outlets and pundits are now calling authoritarian is simply the rejection of the racist, backwards ideas they pushed onto Americans and into American institutions.
In 2020, the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture put out a poster blasting "whiteness" for upholding "rugged individualism," "family structure," the "emphasis on scientific method," "history," the "Protestant work ethic," and even being on "time" or viewing time "as a commodity."
That graphic was taken down after what the Washington Post called "criticism from Trump Jr. and conservative media." But in their article about the removal of the chart, they quoted interim director Spencer Crew, who said at the time that the poster was not racist.
"We're trying to talk about ideology," he said, "not about people. We are encouraging people to think about the world they live in and how they navigate it. It's important to talk about it to grow and get better." He took it down, he said because it wasn't "working the way we intended."
The Post gave the last word to the chart's author, Judy H. Katz, who said about it in her 1978 book "White Awareness: Handbook for Anti-Racism Training," that the attributes listed "have been normalized over time and are now considered standard practices in the United States. And since white people still hold most of the institutional power in America, we all have internalized some aspects of white culture, including people of color."
The chart about the evils of whiteness was penned at the end of the tumultuous and violent civil rights era by a white woman trying to understand what she believed was her own complicity in racism and racist attitudes in the United States, and it was held up as the forefront of the thought on racism 42 years later in 2020. It's no wonder that 21st century Americans would find the ideals contained in it abhorrent.
The New York Times reported on the museum in September 2020, emphasizing the "new developments" that had begun to "unfold in the nation's history" after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 of that year. Secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie G. Bunch said at the time that the African American Museum the story "that America can be made better."
The Museum began to plan "Voices of Resistance and Hope" focused on the Black Lives Matter movement, which staged riots across the country, costing billions in damage. BLM was the "hope" the black history museum sought to highlight.
White critic Holland Carter penned his own missive in the Times claiming that American museums weren't doing enough to address issues of race, race consciousness, police brutality, and the legacy of racism. The Washington Post called for more states to pen legislation mandating anti-racist curriculum and calling for the "decolonization" of the syllabus—the museum was to be part of the effort.
In 2022, the Times spoke to Bunch, who said that it was essential that slavery play a major role in the Museum. "I knew that slavery had to be at the heart of the museum," he said. Slavery, of course, is only one aspect of American history and the legacy of that institution is only a small part of the legacy of black Americans in the United States.
"Every nation is ambivalent about slavery," Bunch said. "The people of color are ambivalent: Is this something to be embarrassed by? Is this something that is better left unsaid? So basically, I knew that slavery had to be at the heart of the museum." Bunch also said that he would prioritize hiring black staff after staffers complained there were too many white people working at the museum.
The contributions of black people and black culture to America and the world—both in bondage and freedom— are impossible to quantify. In arts, sports, sciences, entrepreneurship, politics, civil rights and activism, there is no realm of society that hasn't been influenced by black Americans. So why should slavery be "at the heart" of a museum about African Americans? Why should anti-whiteness be a component of that? And why should these notions be celebrated by the nation's leading newspapers and media?
Trump has now said that the Smithsonian spends too much time showing "how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been," and for this, he has been roundly condemned by the same outlets that praised Bunch for putting slavery "at the heart of the museum."
In a post, Trump said "The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the ‘HOTTEST’ Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums."
The White House has taken up his mission, sharing works found in Smithsonian museums that they say "undermine our values and rewrite the American story through a lens of grievance and exclusion." These include a black, transgender "Statue of Liberty," the aforementioned posters on the evils of "whiteness," the prevalence of the "Progress Pride Flag," which flies alongside the American and Smithsonian flags, commemorating everything from the intersex condition to being a gay black trans person.
The call from the White House to bring "brightness" to the museum is not a call to downplay slavery, it's a call to talk about literally anything else, to uphold the goodness of America, and to stop dwelling in hate, division, and the so-called original sin of enslavement. History has rewritten to suit a narrative of American decline, and what Trump wants is to celebrate the potential for a beautiful future.
