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President Donald Trump is railing against the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture for their discussions of slavery and how it negatively portrays America. He has stated that he may use the same tactics to pressure them into changing its exhibits, like he’s done with colleges with respect to funding.
If you didn’t know, the Smithsonian owns a number of museums, and the one that he’s particularly targeting is a museum specifically made for African American history. It is called the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Now, African Americans actually first came to the United States in large numbers through the slave trade. Their history in America, which is what the museum focuses on, is about everything they’ve gone through and accomplished. So it only makes sense that one of the most horrific moments in their history in America — literally the beginning of it too — is spoken about in detail.
It’s not right. Look at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It focuses on the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust. The National Museum of the American Indian focuses on moments of their suffering, too. This is not something that should be erased, and it’s certainly not woke or DEI to talk about it.
Trump has so many things to focus on, and making this an issue is just nonsensical and wrong. Trump gets it right about DEI in other places, like in government, in colleges, in schools across the country, but in a museum, particularly one that is specifically an African American history and culture museum, it just doesn’t make any sense.
Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also a part-owner of The Baltimore Sun.