President Donald Trump is right. The Smithsonian Institution is out of control, and our heritage is under assault.
The Smithsonian’s 19 museums and galleries in the Washington area are gems. But in recent years, they have peddled a relentlessly negative vision of American history that prioritizes grievance politics over historical accuracy.
For example, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture” asserts that “societies including the United States have used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege and disenfranchisement,” dismissing race as a mere “human invention” while promoting the idea that sculpture advanced “scientific racism.”
On the eve of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Trump administration is rewriting history through censorship and erasure.
This narrative is based on what’s called critical theory, a form of analysis developed in the 1920s and 1930s at the Frankfurt School in Germany. Its proponents blended Marxist ideas with concepts from philosophy and psychiatry to produce an ideological stew that might confuse Karl Marx. Critical theory is likely to persist in academia for years to come, but this approach has no place in our national museums.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016, produced an infographic branding “rugged individualism,” “hard work” and “the nuclear family” as hallmarks of “white culture.”
Oh, really?
Nearly 70% of Black babies are born to unwed mothers. With so many kids not having fathers in their lives, that’s a much bigger problem than “white culture.”
Listen now and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | RSS Feed | SoundStack | All Of Our Podcasts
When called on it, the museum offered a half-hearted apology.
Recent exhibits at the National Museum of American History have clammed American icons such as “The Lone Ranger” as tools of cultural imperialism. Even with modern interpretations, his core archetype — a lone hero righting wrongs — should continue to inspire. All I can say is, “Hi-Yo, Silver! Away!”
Another display on the American founding dwells endlessly on slavery’s horrors — valid history, to be sure — but conveniently skips the revolutionary ideals contained in the Bill of Rights that were a predicate to slavery’s demise.
At the National Museum of American History, the 2020 exhibit “Girlhood (It’s Complicated),” encouraged girls to “dismantle systems of oppression” represented by parents and teachers. Even weirder was the inclusion of transgenderism as part of the experience of American girlhood.
Transgenderism also is part of the coming American Women’s History Museum, which has pledged to include biological men in its narrative of female achievement, even as female athletes are being robbed of their accomplishments by biological men.
Critics howl that Trump’s criticism threatens the autonomy of the museums. The New York Times decried it as a “wholesale attack on the arts.”
But this overlooks the words of the Smithsonian’s own head, the woke historian Lonnie G. Bunch III. He boasted of embedding 1619 Project themes and critical theory. The 1619 Project aims to reframe American history by placing slavery and its consequences at the center of our past, arguing that 1619 marks the “true founding” of the United States, rather than 1776. In other words, America has been nothing but a massive system of slavery.
We don’t need a sanitized version of American history. We need an evenhandedness that celebrates our achievements and acknowledges our shortcomings. Since we are the greatest, most egalitarian and prosperous society that has existed, the equation must objectively favor the former. Narratives at taxpayer-funded museums should reflect this.
With most of its budget from federal taxpayers, the Smithsonian isn’t a private fiefdom. It’s a public trust obligated to reflect the past and passions of all Americans, not just the latest obsessions of elite academics.
Flaherty is the chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
Love
0
Funny
0
Wow
0
Sad
0
Angry
0
Catch the latest in Opinion
Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly!
* I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.