By April Ryan
BlackPressUSA Washington Bureau Chief and White House Correspondent
Following the direction of President Trump, the Smithsonian Museum Institution (The Smithsonian), the world’s largest museum, education and research complex, is being reviewed by lawyers who are tasked with identifying content that could be considered “woke,” particularly as it applies to the subject of slavery.
The president declared that he does not want the nation viewed in a negative light — either in the present or the past. As a result, a disproportionate portion of the review will be focused on the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), affectionately known as the “Blacksonian.”
The Smithsonian comprises nineteen museums and galleries and the National Zoo. Eleven of the sites are on the National Mall and include the Lincoln Memorial and the NMAAHC.
NMAAHC curators and staff research and assemble exhibits that accurately present history based upon fact. This includes some exhibits that truthfully depict aspects of the horrors of slavery.
It is no secret that a large percentage of the generational wealth enjoyed today by some of white America would not exist without the exploited free labor of enslaved Africans in this nation’s sugarcane and cotton fields and in other areas.
However, the White House has issued a statement saying that President Trump is right about the Smithsonian being “out of control,” saying that as it “increasingly prioritizes exhibits that undermine our values and rewrite the American story through a lens of grievance and exclusion, the Smithsonian’s embrace of woke ideology distorts history and erodes public trust.”
The statement provides examples of the Smithsonian’s “woke” agendas and exhibits, including a few that many might see as politically motivated, like the National Portrait Gallery commission of a stop-motion drawing animation that examines the career of Anthony Fauci.
Additional examples include:
- The National Museum of African American History and Culture debuted a series to educate people on “a society that privileges white people and whiteness,” defining “white dominant culture“ as “ways white people and their traditions, attitudes, and ways of life have been normalized over time” and portraying the terms, “the nuclear family,” “work ethic,” and “intellect” as white qualities rooted in racism. The exhibit featured content from Ibram X. Kendi, whom The Federalist described as a “purveyor of Woke History.”
- As part of an inclusive purview that the New York Times termed anti- “Wealthy, Pale, and Male,” the National Portrait Gallery featured a choreographed “modern dance performance“ detailing the “ramifications“ of the southern border wall and commissioned an entire series to examine “American portraiture and institutional history… through the lens of historical exclusion.”
- The American History Museum prominently displays the “Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride flag” at its entrance, which was also flown alongside the American flag at multiple Smithsonian campuses.
- The National Portrait Gallery features art commemorating the act of illegally crossing the “inclusive and exclusionary” southern border — even making it a finalist for one of its awards.
- The National Museum of African Art displayed an exhibit on “works of speculative fiction that bring to life an immersive, feminist and sacred aquatopia inspired by the legend of Drexciya,” an “underwater kingdom populated by the children of pregnant women who had been thrown overboard or jumped into the ocean during the Middle Passage.”
- The American History Museum’s “LGBTQ+ History” exhibit seeks to “understand evolving and overlapping identities such as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, queer, transsexual, transvestite, mahu, homosexual, fluid, invert, urning, third sex, two sex, gender-bender, sapphist, hijra, friend of Dorothy, drag queen/king, and many other experiences,” and includes articles on “LGBTQ+ inclusion and skateboarding“ and “the rise of drag ball culture in the 1920s.”
- The National Museum of the American Latino features programming highlighting “animated Latinos and Latinas with disabilities” — with content from “a disabled, plus-sized actress” and an “ambulatory wheelchair user” who “educates on their identity being Latinx, LGBTQ+, and disabled.”
- The National Museum of the American Latino characterizes the Texas Revolution as a “massive defense of slavery waged by ‘white Anglo Saxon’ settlers against anti-slavery Mexicans fighting for freedom, not as a Texan war of independence from Mexico,” and frames the Mexican-American War as “the North American invasion” that was “unprovoked and motivated by pro-slavery politicians.”
- According to the National Museum of the American Latino, “what unites Latinas and Latinos“ is “the Black Lives Matter movement.”
- The American History Museum’s exhibit marking the 50th anniversary of Title IX includes examples of biological men competing in women’s sports and argues in favor of “transgender” athletes competing in sports against the opposite biological sex.
- An exhibit at the American History Museum depicts migrants watching Independence Day fireworks “through an opening in the U.S.-Mexico border wall” and says America’s founders “feared non-White immigration.”
- The American History Museum features a display that refers to the founding of America as “a profound unsettling of the continent.”
- The American History Museum’s “American Democracy” exhibit claims voter integrity measures are “attempts to minimize the political power” of “new and diverse groups of Americans,” while its section on “demonstrations” includes only leftist causes.
- An American History Museum exhibit features a depiction of the Statue of Liberty “holding a tomato in her right hand instead of a torch, and a basket of tomatoes in her left hand instead of a tablet.”
- The National Museum of the American Latino features an anti-American exhibit that defines Latino history as centuries of victimhood and exploitation, suggests the U.S. is stolen land, and characterizes. history as rooted in “colonization.”
- The exhibit features writing from illegal immigrants “fighting to belong.”
- The exhibit displays a quote from Claudia de la Cruz, the socialist nominee for president and a director of an anti-American hate group, as well as another quote that reads, “We didn’t cross the border; the border crossed us.”
- The exhibit remains prominently featured on its website alongside a quote from the Communist Party USA’s Angela Davis, who was once among the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives.
- The National Museum of the American Latino describes the post-Mexican-American War California describes a “Californio” family losing their land to American “squatters.”
- The Museum of American Art uses American sculpture “to invite dialogue and reflection on notions of power and identity.”
- The American History Museum’s “Upending 1620” exhibit claims Pilgrims are a “myth,” instead framing them as colonizers.
- The American History Museum’s exhibit about Benjamin Franklin focuses almost solely on slavery, directing visitors to learn more about his “electrical experiments and the enslaved people of his household,” noting his “scientific accomplishments were enabled by the social and economic system he worked within.”
- The National Portrait Gallery was set to feature a “painting depicting a transgender Statue of Liberty” before the artist withdrew it.
- The former interim director of the future Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum declared the museum will be “inclusive” of biological men posing as women.
In a nation that was at least partially founded on the concept of free speech, the administration’s position challenges the boundaries of censorship at the same time that it begs the question, “Are there limits to the types and content of speech that is federally funded? If so, who should be the determinant of those limits?
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BlackPressUSA.com or the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
