Our history and our community are under attack.
President Donald Trump claims that there has been a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history” over the last decade.
Yet he is the one trying to erase our history with new executive orders to whitewash “improper ideology.” All to strip away civil rights protections and cut programs our community relies on.
We won’t let him.
The idea of “reverse discrimination” has been around since the 1980s under the Reagan administration. Notwithstanding passage of the Civil Rights Act, President Reagan and his administration condemned school integration busing, affirmative action and threatened to veto an extension of the Voting Rights Act.
Sound familiar?
Throughout American history, progress for our community has always been met with resistance from those who fear that fairness for everyone will mean less for them. They want to take our country back to mythical “good old days” when segregation and discrimination were 100% legal.
After electing the first Black president, America’s reaction was Trump, whose history includes denying housing to Black tenants, referring to non-white countries as “Sh**holes” and repeatedly failing to denounce white supremacists and their sympathizers, even appointing them to his cabinet. Donald Trump spent his first 100 days in office destroying due process, civil rights enforcement and diversity programs that remedy persistent and systemic discrimination. And he’s determined to decimate programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, which millions of Black Americans rely on.
This month, Rev. Amos C. Brown — a veteran activist of the Civil Rights Movement — said the Smithsonian Institution notified him that items he loaned to the National Museum of African American History and Culture would be returned in the new push to remove ‘improper ideology’ from Smithsonian museums. Trump wants to dismantle exhibits that document and teach the truth about America’s painful past.
The executive order aims to eliminate “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.”
In other words, sanitizing our history.
Black history is American history. It shows the violence committed against us — but it also shows our joy and unshakeable resistance in the face of unimaginable suffering. You don’t have to take any one person’s word for it — there is living proof in surviving civil rights activists. There is written proof in historical records. And there is physical proof in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which millions of people in our country and around the world visit each year to bear witness.
Trump is trying to erase that proof. He claims that the millions of historians, civil rights advocates, academics, and even those of us who have personally experienced racism are trying to “rewrite history” — but that’s exactly what he is trying to do.
The disconnect from reality, delusions and lies spread by Trump have infiltrated MAGA extremists right in our own backyard. Over the last few days, one of Trump’s most ardent supporters, Indiana’s Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith, claimed the Three-Fifths Compromise was a “great move.” “Great” to only count Black men and women as three-fifths of a person — but only for purposes of property values to their owners. Despite outrage from local Black leaders, clergy and historians, Beckwith is doubling down. He has yet to walk back his comments.
These actions aren’t just revisionist history. It’s a deliberate creation of false, national narratives to demonize some Americans and justify draconian cuts and policies that hurt Black communities.
Since January, Trump ordered an end to civil rights investigations, prosecutions and settlement agreements in Civil Rights Offices across the federal government. More than 250 attorneys in the Department of Justice’s civil rights division have either been fired, reassigned, or accepted deferred resignation offers. This division was created in 1957 to enforce US federal civil rights laws and is meant to enforce civil rights — from voting, education, housing, disability rights, and police accountability.
This administration is gutting civil rights protections by dismantling the Department of Education. This includes investigating cases, like one in California, where a parent said students called a Black child racial slurs and played whipping sounds from their cellphones during a lesson about slavery.
Trump made a campaign promise to wipe out Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, and unfortunately, that’s one promise he’s kept. Indiana educational institutions have been forced to close DEI offices or face loss of federal funding, reshaping private and public institutions across the country. He’s set up a federal snitch hotline to report any suspected DEI activity. One teacher was reported for having a poster in her classroom that said “Everyone Is Welcome Here.” Teachers shouldn’t be afraid to teach the truth and real history, not the whitewashed version Trump wants.
I’ve written in recent weeks about how cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare will disproportionately hurt our community. Our health and wealth are at risk.
This is what we’re up against. This is what we’re fighting.
In these confusing and chaotic times, the Trump administration wants us in chaos. They want us to not know where to look. They want us to lose focus and stop fighting.
But we must never stop fighting.
The path to freedom has never been easy. And it’s a long way from over. But as we face these new threats to our civil rights and our democracy, we must stay strong and focused, and keep moving forward. Keep fighting. Keep speaking up. Keep resisting.
Our history teaches us that we are smart and resilient. Let’s lean on our ancestors, learn their wisdom, and be inspired to protect the future we want for our daughters and sons, and let’s keep fighting together.
