Trump’s whitewash is a stain on U.S. history
For a long time Asians were excluded by law, minorities of all sorts were banned from occupations, colleges, housing communities, even cemeteries.
To give him the benefit of every doubt, it’s just possible that President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to whitewash American history is lodged in his belief that cancelling the shameful stuff makes us look better.
He’s wrong.
You may recall that the Department of Defense removed numerous webpages highlighting the contributions of Black, Native, and female service members, including pages on Jackie Robinson and the fabled Tuskegee Airmen.
This was part of Trump's campaign to remove content related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The Department later restored some pages, claiming their removal was "by mistake.” The pages were returned after loud protests from Americans.
Locally, Trump would like Independence National Historical Park to remove references to the slaves who worked in President George Washington’s household.
Acknowledgement of the Africans’ presence followed a lengthy campaign by the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, which prevailed. ATAC launched its campaign in 2002, and was successful in 2010 in having slavery acknowledged on explanatory materials at the George Washington house display.
“The victory in 2010 wasn’t permanent,” I was told by ATAC founder Michael Coard, a Philadelphia attorney. “The battle has resumed 15 years later thanks to the ahistorical orange asshole in the White House.”
Some decades ago I visited Thomas Jefferson’s magnificent Monticello home, and the guide talked about the slave quarters. And this was long before DEI.
Trying to bury the past is a hallmark of cowardly authoritarian regimes, like those found under communism, where people were vanished from reviewing stands, and from history. It was the ultimate cancellation, and provided the prototype for the “memory hole” anti-communist author George Orwell wrote about in his landmark “1984.”
America is a great country, and a good country.
But some things it tolerated were not good.
No. 1 was the evil practice of slavery. Nothing else comes close.
Slaves got freed before women got the vote (and still don’t get equal pay); the City of Brotherly Love hosted anti-Catholic riots in 1844; Irish, Italians, Jews, Greeks, Albanians — you name it — all suffered the lash of bigotry.
For a long time Asians were excluded by law, and minorities of all sorts were banned from occupations, colleges, housing communities, even cemeteries.
Wow. Ugly.
Do we want that out there?
Yes.
For one overwhelming reason — it is history. It was that way, but we fixed it.
(Of course some bigotry remains, as it does in every country, alas.)
We remain dynamic, ever-changing, ever-improving, striving to achieve the promises in our Founding documents.
Celebrate the good, acknowledge the bad.
Promise to do better. Don’t push any of our history down the memory hole.
We are better than that.
