{"id":36619,"date":"2020-07-16T22:15:25","date_gmt":"2020-07-17T02:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/?p=36619"},"modified":"2021-03-23T12:56:57","modified_gmt":"2021-03-23T16:56:57","slug":"radical-racial-rhetoric-at-the-smithsonian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2020\/07\/16\/radical-racial-rhetoric-at-the-smithsonian\/","title":{"rendered":"Radical Racial Rhetoric at the Smithsonian"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture has produced educational materials about \u201cwhiteness.\u201d<\/a> Its website promotes alleged premises of white privilege and systemic American racism used against blacks and other minorities. And, as Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham noted, \u201cyou \u2013 the American taxpayer \u2013 are paying for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Project 21<\/a> Co-Chairman Horace Cooper<\/a> recently faced off against a very smug and quite disrespectful Scotty Smart on \u201cThe Ingraham Angle\u201d about the appropriateness of a public museum suggesting<\/a> that alleged virtues attributed to white people \u2013 including \u201chard work,\u201d the goal of a \u201cnuclear family\u201d and \u201crespect[ing] authority\u201d \u2013 are specific to a \u201cwhite culture\u201d to which other races in America are \u201ccompared.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horace remarked: \u201cThe norm that you are presenting as mainstream is extremely radical and\u2026 a result of a lack of understanding of actual history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smart began by saying that he didn\u2019t like Fox News \u201cpitting blacks against each other.\u201d But then he turned on Horace, calling him \u201cthat token black friend that only a few white people have.\u201d Ingraham rebuked Smart, saying that his comments were \u201cbackhanded\u201d and \u201cdehumanizing.\u201d Yet Smart doubled-down, claiming that it is \u201cnot the norm\u201d for blacks to share Horace\u2019s values. He again suggested that a critical discussion of radical racial ideas are \u201cnot a conversation two black men should be having.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not true,\u201d Horace responded. \u201cThat\u2019s absolutely not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pointing out that addressing the facts about the museum\u2019s polemic is \u201cexactly what I want to do,\u201d Horace added:<\/p>\n

I would like to focus here on the facts\u2026<\/p>\n

One of my museums that I enjoy the most is the Smithsonian Museum of American History. It is not a place where you go and you learn all about how evil America is… What you learn about are all of the great things that are in America.<\/p>\n

If you want some context, if you\u2019re gonna have this museum, where is the part about slavery? Because today, on Planet Earth, in Africa, dominated by black people, that is ground zero of where slavery is. And if you had a history museum about it, it would show the role that those countries and that continent played in getting it started in the rest of history.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the fact, and it has nothing to do with tokenism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But the National Museum of African American History and Culture seems to be operating without that perspective \u2013 feeding detrimental fringe elements that are trying to dominate the discussion about race. And public money is paying for this endeavor:<\/p>\n

So you have a $500 million\u2026 structure\/edifice that apparently thinks its purpose is to offer advice to cripple black America.<\/p>\n

To say to black America the very tools that black Americans, like white Americans, have used to succeed and become prosperous \u2013 hard work, tenacity, faith, the types of success skills that work \u2013 to call those somehow a racial category would make David Duke proud.<\/p>\n

This is really, really sad if that\u2019s the direction this museum is trying to go.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After backlash from people such as Horace, the museum has removed<\/a> some of the controversial information from its website.<\/p>\n

Rather than \u201cpushing [white privilege] under the rug\u201d as Smart suggested, Horace explained that Smart and the Smithsonian were actually silencing the voices of the vast majority of Americans \u2013 including black Americans \u2013 who respect and follow the norms that are now being pushed as part of an oppressive white culture:<\/p>\n

The radical view that you are expressing is actually the minority view. That is not the popular view.<\/p>\n

More black Americans than white Americans are\u2026 people of faith. More black Americans believe in the value of having law enforcement protect their communities. Many of the very things that you are sitting here saying are the opposite of what surveys say that black Americans think.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Responding to Smart\u2019s claims, Horace retorted: \u201cSo let\u2019s stick with you have an opinion \u2013 you have a radical, minority opinion \u2013 but it\u2019s just an opinion. Not informed by history at all.\u201d<\/p>\n