The President has issued yet another Executive Order. The order is “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” He targets the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened under the Obama Administration in 2016.
The Smithsonian Institution is headed by Lonnie Bunch, formerly the director of the Chicago History Museum. The total budget for the museums is $1 billion. In 2019, these museums attracted 15 to 30 million visitors per year. Bunch is the 14th Secretary of all of the Smithsonians in the United States.
What will happen to the Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the Women’s History Museum? Trump labels such museums as “divisive.” American history is diverse. The Indians are Native Americans. Black Americans were enslaved. Trump cannot whitewash American history, no matter the executive order. Where is the truth?
The Executive Order states that the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology. This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive. There is no race-centered ideology. There is only the truth of America. It is dark, it is sinful, but it is real. Trump cannot erase the truth of American history as he projects the future.
It further states that the National Museum of African American History and Culture has proclaimed that “hard work,” “individualism” and the “nuclear family “ are aspects of “White Culture.” Bunch responds to Trump’s “To advance this policy, we will restore the Smithsonian Institution to its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness.”
Trump describes the programs and exhibits at the museum as degrading to American values and divisive among Americans based on race.
Trump is attempting to ignore and rewrite American history by completely overlooking the reality of American slavery. Black Americans faced discrimination through Jim Crow laws and Black codes that prevented them from fully participating in American society.
Trump introduced a new racism to the American scene. Ignore it, don’t recognize it. His thinking is Black America is contrary to White American values. Inherently in this thinking is the idea of Blacks being non-humans. The counter-argue to this is that some Black Americans suggest that they be labeled as “non-whites“, rather than by race identity.
What does Trump mean when he says, “Make America Great Again?” It is sit the restoring of racism, segregation, rape, lynching, and servitude.
Trump’s views are not truthful. I hope Americans rebel and rise against ignorance.
