‘Evil and Cruel Intent’: Trump Demands Smithsonian Toe the Line and Do Its Part to Whitewash America’s Past—or Lose Funding As Outrage Mounts Over Attempt to ‘Erase History’

Friends:

I want to remind you that whitewashing the Smithsonian and other institutions is blatant censorship. And then calling it "divisive" is a deliberate attempt to silence historically marginalized voices and erase uncomfortable truths rather than engage in honest discourse about the past.

First, the reason these museums and exhibits exist to begin with, at least in part—if not in great part—is that our standard curriculum is already whitewashed. That's what my book, published 25 years ago, Subtractive Schooling (1999), critiqued as part of a larger systemic process of culturally and linguistically subtractive educational assimilation that is the norm, hardly the exception, in U.S. public education. 

Cultural and linguistic erasure is another way to express this.

Second, this illuminates how textbook bans and why deliberations over Texas state standards are so high stakes. They're about the reproduction of a critical consciousness in youth and practitioners. After all, greater inclusion in state curriculum is what we, as civil rights groups alongside various other coalitions and organizations, have advocated for, a number of us for decades. Right now, for example, is Christina Morales' social studies bill, House Bill 178, really needs a hearing.

Third, this attack exists because extremists don't want us, as Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, to have power. They don't want us to have a curriculum that will tell our children and youth that there are people and institutions in world history who, in their drunkenness with power, commit horrible acts like censoring knowledge and erasing the histories of marginalized communities. 

They fear an education that empowers our children to think critically, to question injustice, and to recognize the patterns of oppression that have shaped the world. By controlling the narrative, they seek to maintain the status quo—one where ignorance prevails, and the voices of Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities are silenced. 

Fourth, we refuse to be erased. Our own history already tells us that we will continue to teach, to learn, and to fight for a future where truth is not a privilege but a right. To draw on Dr. Dolores Delgado-Bernal, we will always have those "pedagogies of the home" that correct sins of omission and commission in state curriculum with the actual truths of history. 

I know my Mom and Dad taught us about their own experiences under McCarthyism with lessons that called out white supremacy while watching the evening news, having conversations at church or around the dinner table that served as correctives to history and social studies textbooks intended to tell us our story with incomplete or biased accounts. My mom always said she knew better than the textbooks because "I lived it," she would say. She could not be gaslighted.

I'm also always reminiscent of the late Gloria Anzaldúa who in her pathbreaking book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, stated correctly that there isn't a Tejana or Tejano alive who doesn't know that the lands were taken from them. She nailed it with that statement. It's in our genetic memory.

Here is another similar article to the one posted below that is about this censoriousness that I'm calling out. Trump Moves to Rewrite Black History at Smithsonian, Targets African American Museum and DEI in New Order

May cool heads prevail. This has happened before in U.S. history. Elections are a real solution to all this nonsense, by the way. Midterms are scheduled for November 2026 and involve every single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and one-third or so of the Senate. We must get the vote out.

-Angela Valenzuela

‘Evil and Cruel Intent’: Trump Demands Smithsonian Toe the Line and Do Its Part to Whitewash America’s Past—or Lose Funding As Outrage Mounts Over Attempt to ‘Erase History’

By Christian Boone | Atlanta Black Star | March 28, 2025

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President Donald Trump has claimed to have “saved free speech” and he’s issued an executive order empowering Vice President JD Vance to “eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from the 21 museums and learning centers operated by the Smithsonian Institution, including the National Zoo.

Vance, who currently serves on the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regent, will coordinate with the White House budget office to ensure future funding isn’t spent on programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy.”

Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally at the PPG Paints Arena on November 04, 2024 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. With one day left before the general election, Trump is campaigning for re-election in the battleground states of North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The order could have a chilling effect on programs or exhibits that chronicle shameful chapters in American history, such as slavery or Jim Crow laws.

Trump addressed what he called a “concerted and widespread” effort over the past decade to rewrite American history by replacing “objective facts” with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” adding that it casts the “founding principles” of the United States in a “negative light.”

During his re-election campaign, Trump threatened to withhold funding from schools that taught slavery was central to American history. The president’s pledge closely aligns with the stated goals of Project 2025, the right-wing policy document that Trump disavowed on the campaign trail but has widely implemented since reassuming power.

In his latest order, the president has specially targeted the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016 as President Barack Obama was concluding his second term.

Trump says the museum promotes “divisive narratives,” alleging the museum “has proclaimed that ‘hard work,’ ‘individualism,’ and ‘the nuclear family” are aspects of ‘White culture.'”

Trump has also put the spotlight on the Women’s History Museum, which he claimed planned to recognize “men as women.”

Trump had made no secret of his attempt to reshape the country’s culture, which he says has been corrupted by “wokeness.” He’s signed a slew of executive orders aimed at eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion measures within the federal government, which has elicited a number of legal challenges.

The president has already fired the board of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and installed himself as chairman. The move led to widespread criticism from actors and directors, causing several to cancel upcoming performances. Since then, Trump-friendly acts, like the J6 chorus and Lee Greenwood, have been booked in their place.

The president’s acolytes have also pushed to implement similarly themed, MAGA-friendly materials into public schools. In Oklahoma, teachers are encouraged to use content created by PragerU, founded by conservative radio host Dennis Prager and funded by right-wing donors. PragerU has more than 3 million subscribers on YouTube and calls itself “a free alternative to the dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media, and education.”

America’s troubled racial history is de-emphasized, if not whitewashed, in the PragerU curriculum.

According to Yahoo! News, a PragerU video features an animated Frederick Douglass calling slavery “a compromise” while criticizing abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison for being too strident. Another PragerU video, about the end of the Civil War, has Ulysses S. Grant complimenting Confederate general Robert E. Lee, calling him “a good man” who just happened to be caught on the opposite side.

In the “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” order, Trump has called for the interior secretary to restore federal properties, including parks, memorials and statues, which “have been improperly removed or changed in the last five years to perpetuate a false revision of history.” In most cases, the names or statues removed were of Confederate generals.

Recasting troubled times in a more positive light is at the heart of Trump’s agenda, which he said aims to promote “American greatness.” Vance will join the Smithsonian Board of Regents and to spearhead the purge. The Smithsonian museums offer free entry to up to 30 million visitors each year.

The blowback to Trump’s plan has been swift and hostile.

One volunteer at the NMAAHC noted that the museum helps people trace their genealogy back to slavery.

“The rest of the museum talks about the slave trade, slavery & Civil Rights,” he wrote on X. “Let that f****** piece of s*** try to change that.”

Another former volunteer wrote, “Sometimes history is hard and painful, but needs to be seen and heard so it’s not repeated and that is not anti-American as he claims.”

One critic described the order as “a direct attack,” while another pointed out that Trump’s order is “an attempt to erase history.” Another added, “Evil and cruel intent, always smh.”

“First Trump removes any reference of diversity from the present — now he’s trying to remove it from our history,” Texas congresswoman Jasmine Crockett wrote on X. “Let me be PERFECTLY clear— you cannot erase our past and you cannot stop us from fulfilling our future.”