A Kentucky black history museum known for “shackling” patrons and posting “white guilt” videos is expected to receive a $1 million grant from the local city government.
The Roots 101 African-American Museum in Louisville is set to receive the large sum from the local government as a part of a recently proposed budget.
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said the funds will be used to establish a permanent home for the black history museum.
“With this budget, we’re sharing more of our history, with all of its depth and complexity,” Greenberg said last month.
The museum aims to “to empower visitors to recognize and appreciate the resilience, creativity, and contributions of African Americans.”
But it also recently went viral for a well-meaning but bizarre practice of “shackling” – where visitors are put in a pair of shackles in an effort to teach about the effects of slavery.
Awkward video of the practice has been shared around on social media.
The routine shows Roots 101 CEO Lamont Collins stating “welcome to America” before dropping a pair of 400-year-old shackles onto the wrist of visitors.
Posts online shows Collins “shackling” several different people – including local Councilman Ken Herndon.
One video, where an older white lady was “shackled,” quickly went viral.
The woman becomes emotionally distraught immediately after having the shackles dropped onto her wrists – and then launches into a bizarre ramble about white guilt.
“I’ve always been interested in history and the history of black people,” the woman says through tears.
“I took all the Afrocentric classes at [the University of Louisiana]” the woman says, while also mentioning to the black CEO that she currently attends a church that’s “primarily African-American.”
The video drew mixed reactions online, with some claiming that the sole purpose of the “shackling” was to promote white guilt.
“This is peak white guilt theater. It’s not education. It’s emotional manipulation designed to make one group feel perpetual shame and another group feel perpetual victimhood,” columnist Ann Stossel wrote in Red State Nation.
But Collins has defended the practice of physically “shackling” people to show the horrors of racism, saying it provides visitors with a more immediate way to “physically feel the resistance” slaves had to endure.
“I have people cry on a daily basis, black or white, because they never experienced the hate that had to go into creating that,” Collins said.
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