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Trump's and MAGA's Own Identity Politics: White, Preferably Racist -- Harold Meyerson - TAP
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-04-01-trumps-maga-identity-politics-white-preferably-racist/Today on TAP: The ‘race-centered’ Smithsonian exhibits are bad, but there’s nothing race-centered in restoring Confederate statuary.
Donald Trump is giving whitewashing a bad name.
His executive order of last Thursday directed Vice President Vance, who’s a member of the Smithsonian’s board, and budget director Russell Vought “to ensure that future appropriations to the Smithsonian Institution prohibit expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”
“Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement,” Trump continued, “the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology … It is the policy of my Administration to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage.”
To that end, in the same executive order, Trump also instructed Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to “determine whether, since January 1, 2020, public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology,” and to “take action to reinstate the pre-existing monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties.”
For the sake of brevity, let’s skip over the distortions of American history inherent in ignoring such unpleasantries as slavery, the Oriental Exclusion Act, the Japanese mass internment of World War II, colonial witch burnings, lynchings, laws enforcing racial segregation, State Department policies that turned away Jews seeking to escape Nazi Germany, that sort of thing. (Good thing Vance isn’t also on the board of the Holocaust Museum.) Let’s just focus on Trump’s professed opposition to “divisive, race-centered ideology,” and his directions to Burgum, in the very same executive order, to rebuild and reinstate the statues of Confederate military and political leaders.
. . .
“Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement,” Trump continued, “the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology … It is the policy of my Administration to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage.”
To that end, in the same executive order, Trump also instructed Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to “determine whether, since January 1, 2020, public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology,” and to “take action to reinstate the pre-existing monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties.”
For the sake of brevity, let’s skip over the distortions of American history inherent in ignoring such unpleasantries as slavery, the Oriental Exclusion Act, the Japanese mass internment of World War II, colonial witch burnings, lynchings, laws enforcing racial segregation, State Department policies that turned away Jews seeking to escape Nazi Germany, that sort of thing. (Good thing Vance isn’t also on the board of the Holocaust Museum.) Let’s just focus on Trump’s professed opposition to “divisive, race-centered ideology,” and his directions to Burgum, in the very same executive order, to rebuild and reinstate the statues of Confederate military and political leaders.
. . .