Historians tear off attacks on the “black smithsonian”

Atlanta (AP) – President Donald Trump order Accusing the institution of Smithsonian of not reflecting the notes of American history correctly that the founding fathers of the country declared that “all men are created equal”.

But he does not mention that the founders consecrated slavery in the American constitution and declared enslave of a person of a person For census purposes.

Friday, defenders of civil rights, historians and black political leaders brutally reprimanded Trump for his order, entitled “restoring the truth and the reason for American history”. They argued that its executive decree targeting the Smithsonian Institution is the last decision of its administration to minimize the way in which race, racism and black Americans themselves shaped the history of the nation.

“It seems that we are heading in the direction where there is even an attempt to deny that the institution of slavery even existed, or that the laws and the segregation and the racial violence of Jim Crow against the black communities, the black families, even took place,” declared the historian Clarissa Myrick-Harris, professor at Morehouse College, the historically black campus of Atlanta.

THE Thursday Executive Decree quotes the National Museum of African-American History and Culture by name and maintains that the Smithsonian as a whole engages in a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite the history of our nation”.

Instead of celebrating an “unrivaled heritage of advancing freedom, individual rights and human happiness”, the order maintains that a “divisor and centered ideology” has “reconstructed” the nation “as intrinsically racist, sexist, oppressive or otherwise imperfect”.

It allows the vice-president JD Vance to review all the properties, programs and presentations to prohibit programs which “degrade the shared American values” or “divide the Americans according to the race”.

Trump also ordered the interior secretary Doug Burgum to determine whether monuments since January 2020 “have been deleted or modified to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history” or “inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures”. Trump has long criticized the elimination of Confederate monuments, a movement that gained steam after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd.

Critics argued that the Order is the last decision of the Trump administration to cancel the recognition of black contributions to the Americans to the nation and to ignore the legal, political, social and economic obstacles they were confronted with.

Trump’s approach is “a literal attack on black America itself,” said Ibram X. Kendi, race historian and successful author. “The black smithsonian, as it is affectionately called, is indeed one of the heartbeat in black America,” said Kendi, and “also one of the heartbeat” of the nation as a whole.

The president of Congressional Black Caucus, Yvette Clarke, DN.Y., suggested that Trump wanted to distort the national story at racist ends.

“We do not flee nor pass or scare our story simply because we do not like it,” she said in a statement. “We embrace the history of our country – good, evil and ugly.”

Trump once praised the “black smithsonian”

The African-American museum, one of the 21 distinct Smithsonian entities, open Along the National Mall in 2016, last year that President Barack Obama held his duties as the country’s first Director General. The museum recounts the slavery of goods, the segregation of Jim Crow and its persistent effects, but also highlights the determination, successes and contributions of black Americans and black institutions through American history.

The former president of NAACP, Ben Jealous, who now directs the Sierra Club, said that museums that focus on specific or marginalized groups – slaves and their descendants, women, Amerindians – are necessary because the historical accounts of previous generations have distorted these individuals or completely ignored them.

“The attempts to tell the general story of the country are still too much omitted … and the place where we arrived by having these museums is so that we can, in total, do a better job to tell the complete story of this country,” he said.

And, indeed, Trump looked more like a jealous when he visited the African-American museum in 2017, at the start of his first mandate, and declared a national jewel.

“I am deeply proud to now have a museum that honors the millions of African-American men and women who have built our national heritage, especially with regard to the Unhappy American Faith, Culture and Spirit”, Trump said after a tour This included Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina, then the Urban Development Secretary and the Urban Development Secretary, Ben Carson, who are both black.

“I know that President Obama was there for the opening of the museum last fall,” said Trump. “I am honored to be the second president in office to visit this great museum.”

Trump’s war against “awakening” targets history

Trump won his candidacy for the White House with a notable increase to support non -white voters, especially in younger black and Hispanic men.

He concluded attacks during his campaign on What he labeled the “awake” culture And the initiatives of diversity, equity and inclusion, not only in the government but in the private sector. He also used racist and sexist tropes To attack the candidate and the democratic vice-president, Kamala Harris, the first black woman and person of South Asian origin to occupy a national post, and the accused regularly and other liberals of “hating our country”.

Since its inauguration of January 20, Trump has banned diversity initiatives through the federal government. The administration has launched surveys on colleges – public and private – which he accuses of discriminating white and Asian students with admission programs concerned with breed intended to combat historical inequalities in access to black students.

The Ministry of Defense, at some point, temporarily deleted training videos Recognize the aviators of Tuskegee and a Online biography by Jackie Robinson. The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, dismissed the chiefs Joint, General CQ Brown, champion of racial diversity in the army which talked about his experiences As a black man after the murder of George Floyd.

Administration has Licensed diversity officers Through the government, limited Celebrations of certain agencies of the month of the history of blacks and licensed subsidies and project contracts ranging from Plant trees in disadvantaged communities has Study the shortcomings of success in American schools.

Warning of a scary effect

Civil rights defenders and historians have expressed themselves at a scary effect in other institutions that study black history.

Kendi noted that many museums and educational centers across the country – such as the African African Diaspora Diaspora Museum in San Francisco: from slavery to mass incarceration in Montgomery, Alabama, and the African -American international museum in Charleston, in South Carolina – exist with little or no federal sources of African -American funding. Some have already struggled to keep their doors open.

“For me, that is part of the plan, hungry for these institutions which already die from resources so that the only institutions that tell the story of America only tell political propaganda,” said Kendi.

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Journalists from Associated Press Aaron Morrison in New York and Gary Fields in Washington contributed to this report.