Make America White Again
By 
For years, a National Park Service webpage introduced the Underground Railroad with a large photograph of its most famous “conductor,” Harriet Tubman. “The Underground Railroad — the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil War — refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage,” the page began.
Tubman’s photograph is now gone. In its place are images of Postal Service stamps that highlight “Black/White cooperation” in the secret network and that feature Tubman among abolitionists of both races.
The introductory sentence is gone, too. It has been replaced by a line that makes no mention of slavery and that describes the Underground Railroad as “one of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement.” The effort “bridged the divides of race,” the page now says.
Oh yes, nothing bridged the divide of race like slaves escaping white masters!
The executive order that President DonaldTrump issued late last month directing the Smithsonian Institution to eliminate “divisive narratives” stirred fears that the president aimed to whitewash the stories the nation tells about itself. But a Washington Post review of websites operated by the National Park Service — among the key agencies charged with the preservation of American history — found that edits on dozens of pages since Trump’s inauguration have already softened descriptions of some of the most shameful moments of the nation’s past.
Somewere edited to remove references to slavery. On other pages,statements on the historic struggle of Black Americans for their rights were cut or softened, as werereferences to present-day echoes of racial division. The Post compared webpages as of late March to earlier versions preserved online by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
Changes in images, descriptions and even individual words have subtly reshapedthe meaning of notable moments and key figures dating to the nation’s founding — abolitionist John Brown’s doomed raid, the battle at Appomattox and school integration by the Little Rock Nine.
This will go on.
About 6 weeks ago, I briefly heard a bit of NPR, and the person speaking was a Black woman, asking, perhaps rhetorically, to what extent a Black person can even talk about the Black experience in the Trump years.
The answer is none. Not at all. That’s racism against whites, the truly oppressed group in global history. The extent to which this administration wants to attack Black people can be debated within certain parameters (obviously the answer is at least somewhat), but the extent to which this administration wants to attack all aspects of blackness is unquestioned–it wants that completely eliminated from American life, now and then.
We’ll see to the extent Americans care.