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The Left has been wringing its hands this past week after Trump recently ordered a “comprehensive internal review” of several Smithsonian museums to ensure that the 178-year-old institution, captured by the Left, removes its relentless anti-American propaganda and provides some balance in its exhibitions and materials.
In an Aug. 12 letter from the White House to the Smithsonian’s woke chief, Dr. Lonnie G. Bunch III, the White House stated:
As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Nation’s founding, it is more important than ever that our national museums reflect the unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story.
The review is to help the administration “support a broader vision of excellence that highlights historically accurate, uplifting, and inclusive portrayals of America’s heritage.”
The letter cited one of Trump’s executive orders from March, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which bluntly called out the Left’s “revisionist movement… to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light” – especially as manifested at the Smithsonian. That E.O. noted that the museum complex had, “in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” promoting “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”
The ”recent years” under which that influence grew happen to coincide with the tenure of Lonnie G. Bunch III, who took over as the Secretary of the Smithsonian in 2019. Prior to that, he was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is nearly exclusively focused on the legacy of slavery, with exhibits such as “In Slavery’s Wake,” “Slavery and Freedom,” and “Make Good the Promise.”
You may remember that it was also in 2019 that the Smithsonian collaborated with the New York Times on its historical revisionist 1619 Project, which falsely asserts that the United States’ founding was grounded not in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all, but in racism and enslavement.
And then there was the 2020 controversy over a racist “whiteness” chart displayed in an online portal at Bunch’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, a chart that identified such traits as hard work and rational thought as being “white.” An accompanying graphic stated, in part,
White dominant culture, or whiteness, refers to the ways white people and their traditions, attitudes, and ways of life have been normalized over time and are now considered standard practices in the United States.
The Smithsonian removed the chart in the wake of public scorn and issued a tepid non-apology in which it asserted, “It is important for us as a country to talk about race.” For the Left, it’s important that we talk about race all the time, but not honestly – only from the false perspective that America is and always has been a systemically racist nation.
Currently in development at the Smithsonian are the National Museum of the American Latino and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum. It’s not difficult to imagine that, without White House oversight, these too will predominately push narratives of white male oppression, exploitation, and power inequity.
The August 12 letter says the White House review of Smithsonian materials will “assess tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals.” The aim is “to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”
The administration plans to look over current and future exhibitions, particularly those planned for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The letter concludes, “By focusing on Americanism – the people, principles, and progress that define our nation – we can work together to renew the Smithsonian’s role as the world’s leading museum institution.”
The Left, using language like “purge” and “chilling effect,” is predictably wailing that this development is some sort of evidence that Trump “supports slavery,” as worthless Congressman and Chinese honey trap enthusiast Eric Swalwell claimed ludicrously on X. The Left has always been fond of falsely accusing the Right of wanting to whitewash our history of slavery and stop teaching it in schools. Conservatives have never argued for this.
But as Elizabeth Weiss, a professor emeritus of anthropology at San José State University, wrote in The New York Post, “Trump isn’t trying to ‘erase history,’ he’s looking to reverse a woke movement that has indeed rewritten the American story to highlight suffering rather than providing a balanced picture of our past.”
Weiss confirms that Trump’s concern that the Smithsonian is obsessively focused on slavery is reasonable. “In nearly every exhibit, critical race theory in general, or slavery specifically, makes an appearance.” The new exhibit on Benjamin Franklin’s innovations, for example, declares almost hilariously that
Franklin held people enslaved during the time he pursued his electrical experiments. Their labor in his household helped make time that he could use to study electricity. Family, friends, and visitors directly participated in electrical experiments. The records are few and unclear, but enslaved people may also have directly assisted his research.
Weiss also notes that in the National Portrait Gallery, nearly every Founding Father’s description includes a statement linking that Founder to slavery. She adds that the Smithsonian’s searchable digital museum initiative begins with the museum’s “Slavery and Freedom exhibition.” And in the Smithsonian’s American Indian Museum in New York City, George Washington barely gets a mention, “but his silhouette is used in a description of him as a ‘town destroyer’ — supposedly a nickname that Native Americans still use to describe our first President”:
And yet there’s no mention in either of the American Indian Museums — in NYC or DC — about slavery practiced by Native Americans, both before Europeans’ arrival and afterward. For example, the Cherokee owned slaves. In 1835, 15,000 Cherokee owned 1,592 African slaves; by the Civil War onset, 17,000 Cherokee owned 4,000 African slaves.
The fact that slavery was universal throughout human history, even among the “noble savages” that the identity-politics Left so cherishes, is an inconvenient truth that the Left works assiduously to ignore. A related inconvenient truth, which the Smithsonian works assiduously to obscure, is that it was England and America that were the first to end slavery.
On Wednesday, Capitol Hill correspondent Jamie Dupree tweeted this question: “If you voted for Trump, did you really vote for him to spend time changing the museum exhibits at the Smithsonian about slavery?”
Yes, yes I did. That (and other initiatives to make America great again) is exactly what I and more than 77 million other patriots voted for: for Trump and his administration to root out the subversive wokeness that is gutting this country. We voted for an end to the Left’s fundamental dismantling of American exceptionalism. We voted for the Left’s divisive, race-baiting lies to stop, or at least be removed from our public cultural institutions like the Smithsonian. We voted to make America great again.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.