Late in January, we learned that the National Park Service had begun to dismantle exhibits at the President’s House in Philadelphia. The exhibits honored nine enslaved people kept at the house by George Washington while he was president. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Trump and his lackey, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, had ordered all displays at national parks that “inappropriately disparage” the U.S. to be reviewed for potential removal. The City of Philadelphia promptly sued the Trump administration to stop the dismantling. The Interior Department countersued, saying Philadelphia’s suit was frivolous and that the exhibit was “demeaning [to] our brave Founding Fathers who set the brilliant road map for the greatest country in the world.” In a ruling on Presidents’ Day, a federal judge sided with Philadelphia and ordered the exhibit to be restored.

 

Nauseated by Trump’s effort to pervert history, I wanted to show readers that as disgusting as the skirmish in Philadelphia was, it was only a part of Trump’s broader strategy to erase anything that celebrates America’s diversity or reminds us of our hideous history of racism.

 

The best way to understand the Trump administration’s mission to whitewash (no pun intended) our racial history is to examine it through different lenses. Looking through one lens, we see that covering up troublesome facts, particularly those about racism, is a guiding tenet of Trump’s governing philosophy. He tells us that we’ll never be great again if we wallow in the great national shame of chattel slavery and its aftermath. He wants an America like the one portrayed in Norman Rockwell’s illustrations — a noble land populated by white, solidly patriotic, up-by-the-bootstraps people on whom God shed his grace. Trouble is, historical reminders of America’s past and present racism and inhumanity give the lie to the America Trump imagines. America was far from a land of milk and honey for enslaved black people and their descendants. For Trump, historical facts don’t get in the way. He and his people simply erase them, sanitizing away our crimes against people of color that continue to this day. 

 

A second lens brings into focus how the administration uses government mind control to further his racist agenda. Controlling minds on a massive scale sounds like something aliens from another planet might do in a B-grade dystopian movie, but read on.  Think Big Brother in Geroge Orwell’s 1984. Like Big Brother, the Trump administration is hell bent on turning us into a nation of jingoistic lemmings. The administration has attacked universities about what they teach and who they teach. It is trying to put religion (only one, mind you) back into schools from pre-K through 12. It is building up the nation’s 250th birthday in mindless ways to reinforce the hubristic refrain that pols from both parties endlessly repeat: We are the greatest, most powerful nation on earth. Indeed, plans are in the works for a preposterously massive “Independence Arch” near Arlington National Cemetery. At a height of 250 feet, it would be 8 stories higher than Paris’s Arc de Triomphe. 

 

A third lens — the one I choose for looking at what happened in Philadelphia (and many other places, notably the Smithsonian) is the lens of Black History. Just yesterday, Lucy and I went to a Tulane basketball game. Black History Month T-shirts were being given away. (see opening photo) Getting mine made me think of how my view of Black History Month and Black History in general had changed over the years.

 

In the fall of 2019, I wrote a piece entitled My Southern Education — A Confession. I confessed to having reached adulthood with all the absurd and hurtful prejudices of the Lost Cause myth of the noble South still distorting my view of our history. Sure, I was all for the Civil Rights movement but I didn’t know a thing about Black History. Had I known more there would have been no lingering racist Lost Cause BS floating around in my head. Here’s a link to that blog.

 

https://thequixoticdeacon.com/quixotic-thoughts/my-southern-education-a-confession/

 

When Black History month was declared by President Gerald Ford in 1976, I didn’t give it much thought. Unaware of the history of the U.S. from the point of view of the Black man or woman, I paid no attention. Februarys came and went without me bothering to learn about it. I’m sure I wasn’t the only white person who ignored the month’s significance.  I could tell you a lot about the history of Haiti, the first Black republic, but I knew much less about Black History in America. I assumed I’d learned enough about it by studying American history in school. But I’d studied through the eyes of white teachers. I didn’t realize how much “catchin’ up” I had to do to learn the real American history. 

 

I began catching up about 7 years ago when I read the book Disunion, which I mentioned in the blog referenced above. Disunion made me wonder about my education, and when my sister and I began working with the ACLU in New Orleans on a project involving reparations, I had to catch up in earnest.  Collaborating with the ACLU energized the process, which included a walking tour through the French Quarter from the viewpoint of people brought there to be bought and sold and visits to places like Whitney Plantation in Edgard, LA, and The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, AL. At The Legacy Museum, the arc of Black History from slavery to mass incarceration is demonstrated brilliantly and visually. 

 

After a few years of reading and selective exploration, I am no longer ignorant about America’s Black History, yet I’m far from an expert. I have, though, developed expertise on shame, acutely personal shame. What I learned over that process filled me with shame. Why hadn’t I cared to learn about the experiences of Black people in this country long ago? And the shame was corporate. Why did our country cover up the wretched truth about slavery and its aftermath so completely for so long? The answer, of course, is that we have a problem with racism. And we’ll have it until future generations are taught the true history of the country from the point of view of those we have oppressed. 

 

In an earlier blog, I said that I had once thought that every high school student should study the Holocaust to sensitize them to the evil of anti-semitism. The same goes for racism. There should at least be a requirement that high school students are taught Black History alongside what we call American History, which really is White American History. If high schoolers were required to read only one book as a Black History elective, it might be Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson, or The Warmth of Other Suns by the same author. 

 

But what are the chances, in 2026 in the U.S., that educators would widely embrace mandatory Black History as a graduation requirement? Zero, I think. Rather, the soon-to-be extinct Department of Education is headed in the opposite direction, forcing jingoistic white nationalist curricula on any school that accepts federal funding. The Trump/Stephen Miller dream of a whitened America where everyone is an evangelical Christian is being promoted to school children by simply erasing shameful parts  of our history. Rather than promoting understanding and reconciliation through education, the Trump administration promotes division and misunderstanding among us. And they know exactly what they are doing. 

 

We’ve been too hesitant to call out overt racism, especially parts of MAGA’s agenda. Even informed and empathetic people among us, including journalists and opinion-makers, are skittish about the words “racist” or “racism.” One reason is that the labels have been tossed around too often and too freely. A black man caught in the act of stealing a car claims the white cop who arrested him is racist. A hopelessly unqualified job applicant who’s white claims the black hiring manager passed him over because he has it in for white people. Racism had nothing to do with either situation, but it’s a convenient excuse. 

 

Still, we have a moral obligation to expose obvious racism for what it is. MAGA’s disdain for Black History Month is a case in point. Federal agencies have stopped celebrations of  the month as part of their efforts to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Retailers have rolled back plans to celebrate DEI. When Trump addressed an annual Black History Month gathering in the White House, he kept mentioning prominent Black athletes who had been loyal to him — Mike Tyson and Herschel Walker, for example. The black governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, said Trump’s performance rendered him “speechless.” After posting the doctored image of the Obamas as apes, Trump blamed it on an unidentified aide and refused to apologize. Yet because Mike Tyson and Herschel Walker buddy up to him, he’s not a racist. Please. 

 

We can’t do much to change Trump’s malign influence on America or to get  Republicans to grow tiny consciences. But we can all do our part to honor Black America by learning its history ourselves. We can talk up Black History as something we need to learn to be good citizens. If you have kids, you can teach them after you’ve taught yourself. You can  recommend books or take them to a museum — The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, or the new International African American Museum in Charleston. We can all actively promote the study of Black History. It’s the right thing to do.  And, if you need further incentive, it is a good way to oppose the racist agenda of MAGA without name-calling. (But you can still name-call from time to time.)

• Top