As the 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump, has begun to come into the full force of his presidency, he’s also begun to make big changes to what the American people are able to call history. The Smithsonian, one of the institutions that he’s targeting, in his words is “too woke,” and you might ask why, so let’s dig into that.
The most important thing to understand is that the Smithsonian is founded on the basis of preserving knowledge, cultural heritage, and natural awe. But, to me, its main privilege is that it’s able to use government resources in order to disseminate knowledge across the country using different methods. The first (and only one I’ll be talking about) is museums, which is the most important, because the Smithsonian operates 21 of them, all teaching or spreading information about different parts of American history. Some of the most notable are the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of American History, and then the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Today I’m going to be highlighting the last one, because of comments the President made recently on the social media platform X.
The comments made were that some of the African American museums were “OUT OF CONTROL,” quote unquote, adding on that “everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been – Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.” Trump wrote these exact words on his social media platform to millions of people, not understanding the nuance and mission of the Smithsonian. But he’s also misunderstanding what it means to be a modern American–specifically, a modern African American.
There is no doubt, and it is undebatable, that slavery was bad, because it was. No opinion, no stats, nothing, can show otherwise, and it’s the job of museums–specifically, the Smithsonian’s–to disseminate this knowledge to everyone. It’s not “woke ideology” to say that millions of African Americans died on the middle passage and were forced into labor that was unimaginable in scope for economic gain.
So to frame this as “anti-American” is not only misleading, but it’s also super dangerous. Museums like the National Museum of African American History and Culture do not exist to shame America, but to tell its full story, meaning the good and the bad, the triumphs alongside the tragedies. To strip away the pain and tragedies is to strip away the resilience, the resistance, and the brilliance that bloomed in spite of unimaginable circumstances.
And for students or people who are being raised in a society where their government is actively aiding in a removal of their own history, it’s impossible to even know what will become of the future generations.
The truth is that by preserving the history of slavery, Jim Crow, and other ongoing inequities, the Smithsonian is not erasing American greatness, it is contextualizing it. Every invention, every cultural movement, every act of defiance that came out of the African American experience is proof of success and achievement precisely because it was born out of struggle. To deny that is to deny the foundation on which much of this nation rests.
So when President Trump declares these institutions are “out of control,” what he is really attacking is the right of African Americans, and all Americans, to see the past honestly. To me, he’s attacking the power of truth to educate and to liberate. As for why this is, we’ll get into that next week; however, make no mistake: the REAL truth will outlast politics. The Smithsonian’s mission is older than any administration and greater than any single leader’s agenda.
History does not bend to comfort or to presidents, and if America is to have a future worthy of its ideals, then we must protect and uplift the places where truth is told, even when it is inconvenient, and especially when it is hard. That is the real patriotism.
