On the occasion of Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the end of slavery, President Trump took a moment to complain that the national holiday even exists.
“Too many non-working holidays in America,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, just hours after his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, made a point of noting that White House staff had shown up to work.
The president’s decision to snub Juneteenth — a day that has been cherished by generations of Black Americans before it was named a federal holiday in 2021 — is part of a pattern of words and actions by Mr. Trump that minimize, ignore or even erase some of the experiences and history of Black people in the United States. Since taking office in January, he has tried to reframe the country’s past involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing that history or at times denying that it happened.
Government websites have been scrubbed of hundreds of words, including “injustice” and “oppression.” Federal agencies eliminated or obscured the contributions of Black heroes, from the Tuskegee Airmen who fought in the military, to Harriet Tubman, who guided enslaved people along the Underground Railroad. School libraries were purged of writings by pre-eminent Black authors like Maya Angelou. Mr. Trump has assailed the Smithsonian Institution for what he characterized as “divisive, race-centered ideology” in its exhibits on race. He ordered the renaming of monuments to honor Confederate soldiers who fought to preserve slavery.
And on Thursday, instead of marking the day when the last enslaved people were informed of their freedom from forced labor, Mr. Trump lamented that Americans had a day off from work and suggested that the holiday was little more than a drain on the economy.
Taken together, Mr. Trump’s actions are part of a larger cultural and political battle, in which diversity has become an all-purpose target for society’s ills.
“Trump’s behavior around Juneteenth isn’t isolated at all — it speaks to how he views our community, and everyone who doesn’t look like him or isn’t as wealthy as he is,” said Derrick Johnson, the president of the N.A.A.C.P. “It’s why he’s stripping away our rights, erasing our history and silencing our voices.”
The White House has defended its actions as part of an effort to put merit ahead of diversity, and to focus less on divisions among Americans. On Inauguration Day, Mr. Trump promised to usher in a “colorblind” society.
“The Black community is more interested in results than in performative messages that do more to check a box than anything else,” Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. Black Americans, he said, “lined up to support President Trump in historic fashion because of policies that transcend race and align with common sense.”
But to critics, Mr. Trump’s decision to brush off Juneteenth smacks of hypocrisy.
He signed Juneteenth proclamations in his first presidential term. And in 2020, while he was campaigning for re-election, Mr. Trump agreed to reschedule a campaign rally that he was supposed to hold on Juneteenth because it was perceived as insensitive.
The rally was in Tulsa, Okla., the city where in 1921 white people carried out a racist massacre in an area known as Black Wall Street. Later, he tried to claim credit for drawing attention to the holiday, saying he “made Juneteenth very famous.”
But on Thursday, in a year with no votes on the line, he did not even say the name of the holiday.
The decision not to issue a proclamation honoring Juneteenth was made by a senior Trump administration official, according to a person familiar with the internal deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The person said the president and his senior staff were too preoccupied with the escalating conflict in Iran to mark the holiday.
Mr. Trump also spent Thursday posting on his social media account, including an executive order that extended the use of TikTok, another attack on Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, and his approval of emergency for storm-ravaged states. He also reposted other accounts that boasted about his economy numbers and blamed former President Barack Obama for the Iran conflict.
By the end of the night, he had posted two videos of his entrance to an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout, and praise for a court decision in his favor.
In the past week alone, he’d issued proclamations commemorating Father’s Day, Flag Day and National Flag Week, and the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill — none of which are among the 11 annual federal holidays.
Since Mr. Trump came back to office, historians and civil rights leaders have noticed an attempt to sanitize the country’s history of racism.
Chad Williams, a historian and professor of African American and Black diaspora studies at Boston University, said Mr. Trump’s actions, taken as a whole, showed that the administration was seeking to craft a “propaganda version of history.”
“They’re trying to erase the history of Black struggle and Black resistance by denying the realities of racism and white supremacy,” Mr. Williams said. “They’re crafting a history that romanticizes the past at the expense of a true telling of the complexities and nuances of the American experience.”
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed the commemoration of Juneteenth into law in 2021, after the nationwide protests that followed the police killings of Black Americans including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The holiday recognizes the day when a Union general arrived in Galveston, Texas, nearly two and a half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, to inform enslaved African Americans there that the Civil War had ended.
Mr. Trump has been vocal about what parts of the nation’s history he believes deserves recognition.
Since taking office, he has declared new, unpaid (and unrecognized because they have not been certified by Congress) federal holidays. Mr. Trump also announced that he would be “reinstating” Columbus Day, even though it was never canceled as a federal holiday.
He also established “Gulf of America Day,” to recognize his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, on Feb. 9; “Victory Day for World War II,” on May 8; and renaming Veterans Day, on Nov. 11, as “Victory Day for World War I.” Mr. Trump said in his announcement that he would not be closing down the country to observe the days.
Mr. Fields, the White House spokesman, said the president was focused on improving the lives of Black Americans rather than virtue signaling.
“We did Juneteenth, we did the D.E.I. thing, we had the diverse cabinet, and what did that do for us? Absolutely, nothing,” Mr. Fields said. “Inflation tore through households. More Black people were on food stamps. Education never prospered.”
Bruce LeVell, a former adviser to Mr. Trump who led his diversity coalition for his 2016 campaign, said Mr. Trump’s support among Black voters demonstrated that they were not looking to him for validation of their history, but rather to improve their futures.
“We vote for the wallet,” he said. “The emotions come when we’re trying to pick our next pastor for our church.”
Mr. LeVell, a business owner from Ft. Hood, Texas, whose family has been celebrating Juneteenth for decades, said that he and other Black Americans were more concerned with things that Mr. Trump could change, like the economy and immigration.
“That particular historic day when they liberated the slaves in Texas, nothing will ever erase that, it’s there for eternity,” he said. “Whether you like it or dislike it, or celebrate or don’t, it’s still part of what happened and nothing takes that away.”
But Melanie L. Campbell, chairwoman of the Power of the Ballot Action Fund, an advocacy group focused on policies for Black Americans, said that larger issues were at play.
“He’s clear that he wants a white America,” Ms. Campbell said of Mr. Trump, “and what white America looks like for him does not include anybody of color.”
Aishvarya Kavi contributed reporting.
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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