Fellas, is it “woke” to say slavery was bad? President Donald Trump seems to think so.
The president unleashed a lengthy tirade Tuesday against the Smithsonian Institution, and all museums across the country, claiming that they were “the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE.’”
“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,” Trump wrote. “Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”
Trump has criticized education efforts that focus on racism and slavery since 2020. Instead, he prefers a white nationalist vision of the future of history that focuses on the role of white Americans above all others and diminishes the sins of slavery, segregation, and violence as mere bumps on the path toward a future that Americans ought to spend a lot more time celebrating.
In fact, the Smithsonian Institute celebrates a wide variety of accomplishments by a range of historical figures from different backgrounds. For example, the Tuskegee Airmen are immortalized alongside Neil Armstrong’s first walk on the moon at the National Air and Space Museum.
But Trump can’t seem to see past the variety of skin tones shown in the backward-looking lens of a history museum, and wants to tell a different, “brighter” story. Trump’s efforts to rewrite history are not only despotic, they’re plainly racist.
“I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made,” Trump said in his post.
Earlier this month, White House officials laid out detailed plans to eliminate exhibits that they determined represented “improper ideology,” threatening to yank funding if they refused. The memo accused the Smithsonian directly of advancing a “divisive, race-centered ideology.” The White House had previously notified the Smithsonian of a White House initiative to ensure its museums’ “alignment” with a history-whitewashing executive order that Trump signed in March.
Clearly, the president considers teaching the reality of United States history to be fundamentally unpatriotic—when just the opposite is true.
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