Scholar says Trump's efforts to reframe U.S. history is 'reminiscent of McCarthyism'

Transcript

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Amna Nawaz: Yesterday, in a post on TRUTH Social, President Trump described the Smithsonian Institution’s 21 museums and National Zoo as — quote — “out of control” for emphasizing, as he put it, how bad slavery was.

The president said he’d instructed his attorneys to review museum exhibits. That post is part of a larger pattern by the president in his second term to reframe historical narratives, in particular about America’s history of racism and discrimination.

As part of our series Art in Action, exploring the intersection of art and democracy, and part of our Canvas coverage, I’m joined now by historian Peniel Joseph. He’s from the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy.

Professor Joseph, welcome back to the “News Hour.” Thanks for joining us.

Peniel Joseph, University of Texas at Austin: Hi, Amna. Great to be here.

Amna Nawaz: So the president complained online that the Smithsonian focused on how horrible the country is, in his words, how bad slavery was.

He also said this as part of that post. He said: “The museums don’t focus enough on the success and on the brightness and on the future.”

As someone who studies history and looks at this intently, what do you make of those concerns?

Peniel Joseph: Well, Amna, this is really part of an ongoing narrative war that we have had in American history between those who are supporters of Reconstruction, multiracial democracy, and then redemptionists who are supporters of the racial status quo that existed long in this country, both during slavery and then during the period of Jim Crow after.

So when we think about what the president is saying, what he’s saying is that the real unvarnished truth about American history hurts too much for all of us to understand and to know and to learn lessons from those truths. And that diminishes our democracy.

It diminishes American history and it diminishes the postwar American order that has really created the most effective multiracial democracy in American history. And that history is both a tragic history, but it’s also a triumphant history.

And as somebody who’s been a huge attendee at the Smithsonian since I was a boy, that history is always told in a very balanced way, where we talk about the evolution of American democracy, not just slavery and racial segregation, but also the civil rights movement and the suffrage movement and the women’s movement and LGBTQIA, how queer folks transformed this country, the disability rights movement, immigrants.

Amna Nawaz: You know, the museums are just one piece of a larger conversation around this. The conversation and reframing of slavery as part of America’s history is just one piece of it too.

But the president has focused on race a lot even on previous attacks on the museum, and he’s called them divisive. You have heard this argument before. It feels like we’re hearing it more and in more public spaces, where people will argue that, look, only a small percentage of white Americans were enslavers during the period of slavery, that slavery is thousands of years old.

This idea that even talking about it is divisive in and of itself, what do you make of that?

Peniel Joseph: Well, this whole subject is the subject of my newest book, which is called “Freedom Season: How 1963 Transformed America’s Civil Rights Revolution.”

And 1963, we remember it because of President Kennedy’s assassination, Birmingham and Martin Luther King Jr., the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, but it’s really a year of debate and discussion and dialogue on what does American history mean and what does American identity mean?

The bestselling book of that year is James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time.” And what that book argues is an argument that the only way America can achieve a multiracial democracy is to confront that history of racial slavery.

And it’s confronting that history not by trying to create new scapegoats in this age of Jim Crow, but by saying the exact opposite, saying that all Americans should have access to dignity and citizenship, but because Black people historically have been marginalized and have been oppressed, it’s only through Black dignity and Black citizenship that all communities of color and white people will access that dignity and citizenship.

So when we think about what President Trump is saying, he’s really saying the exact opposite. 1963 ushered in a 50-year racial justice consensus with legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that gave us the most robust multiracial democracy in world history.

What we have seen over the last 12 years, ever since the Shelby v. Holder decision ended Section 5 preclearance of the Voting Rights Act, is a post-consensus America where we see Charlottesville and tiki torches. We see the January 6 riots, which have been reinterpreted in our current context.

We see the suppression of voices that allow the United States of America to really be this transformational nation and this beacon for hope and liberty and dignity and citizenship all across the world. So we are turning back, but we have always been in these narrative wars.

When we think about the end of the Civil War, over 700,000 Americans died to create a second American republic. Instead of amplifying those voices of dignity and citizenship, we’re heading back to the old days of Jim Crow, of racial exclusion, instead of really embracing the best that America can be.

Amna Nawaz: So the president says he’s ordered his attorneys to review those museum exhibits, right, that we could see changes in the future. We don’t know yet.

But how do you look at that piece of it? Could there be some changes made in the way that we present our history in these museums? And, also, should the president be allowed to weigh in on these things? I mean, these are federally funded institutions. They are free to the public. Have we seen that kind of thing before?

Peniel Joseph: We have. This is reminiscent of the age of McCarthyism, the age of the Cold War years, where speech was suppressed.

Folks who were cultural producers in Hollywood and academics lost their jobs, but average people lost their jobs too for speaking out for social justice. And, certainly, a president should not have the right to do it, because the whole success of the American revolution is that we have no kings. We shouldn’t have oligarchs either, even though we do, but we have no kings in the United States of America.

And a president should not be allowed to stifle or suppress voices, whether those voices are on the left or on the right or moderate voices.

Amna Nawaz: Peniel Joseph from the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas at Austin, thank you for joining us.

Peniel Joseph: Thank you, Amna, for having me.