History under siege

When it feels like the ground is shifting beneath our feet, we need to remember who we are and where we come from.

It’s not just the chaos, it’s also the substance.

In the spate of executive orders, it’s worth pausing to reflect on the kinds of things President Trump wants to accomplish with his unprecedented use of executive power.

The list is long and growing longer by the day, and I encourage you to peruse it yourself.

As a historian, one of the things I’ve been tracking is Trump’s efforts to control our national memory. In his “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” Trump targets alleged “anti-American ideologies” that “sow division, confusion, and distrust,” including but not limited to “discriminative equity ideology.”

What does “discriminative equity ideology” entail?

It’s quite expansive:

“Discriminatory equity ideology” means an ideology that treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals, and minimizes agency, merit, and capability in favor of immoral generalizations, including that:
(i) Members of one race, color, sex, or national origin are morally or inherently superior to members of another race, color, sex, or national origin;
(ii) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race, color, sex, or national origin, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously;
(iii) An individual’s moral character or status as privileged, oppressing, or oppressed is primarily determined by the individual’s race, color, sex, or national origin;
(iv) Members of one race, color, sex, or national origin cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to their race, color, sex, or national origin;
(v) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race, color, sex, or national origin, bears responsibility for, should feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of, should be discriminated against, blamed, or stereotyped for, or should receive adverse treatment because of actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex, or national origin, in which the individual played no part;
(vi) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race, color, sex, or national origin, should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment to achieve diversity, equity, or inclusion;

(vii) Virtues such as merit, excellence, hard work, fairness, neutrality, objectivity, and racial colorblindness are racist or sexist or were created by members of a particular race, color, sex, or national origin to oppress members of another race, color, sex, or national origin; or
(viii) the United States is fundamentally racist, sexist, or otherwise discriminatory.

The order also reestablishes the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission and promotes “Patriotic Education.” Here, too, definitions are in order:

“Patriotic education” means a presentation of the history of America grounded in:
(i) an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America’s founding and foundational principles;
(ii) a clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history;
(iii) the concept that commitment to America’s aspirations is beneficial and justified; and
(iv) the concept that celebration of America’s greatness and history is proper.

At his appearance before the National Prayer Breakfast, President Trump also reinstated his executive order to create a “National Park of American Heroes.” He had initially proposed a “National Garden of American Heroes” against a backdrop of “conservative backlash against efforts to take down statues dedicated to Confederate leaders and slave owners in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and subsequent protests,” and the current order includes provisions to ensure the protection of monuments, memorials, and statues. It’s important to place Trump’s affection for (certain) historical commemoration alongside his desire to dictate the kind of history that is acceptable to teach.

Trump will also be presiding over the nation’s 250th anniversary and he has plans to create a yearlong “Salute to America 250” celebration. Given what we know from his executive orders, it will likely be a celebration of a whitewashed history written by the current victors, one that tells those in power exactly what they want to hear.

In related news, Trump fired the head of the National Archives this week. Why? In part, he wasn’t happy with the role the National Archives played in the DOJ investigation over his Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.

Here’s more from Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney at Politico:

A former director of litigation at the Archives, Jason R. Baron, said he was troubled by Shogan’s ouster. He noted that federal law says the Archivist must be appointed “without regard to political affiliations and solely on the basis of … professional qualifications.” The statute also says the president must notify Congress about why the archivist was dismissed.

“No good reason exists for firing Dr. Shogan, as she has faithfully carried out her duties in a nonpartisan fashion in the short time since being appointed U.S. Archivist by President Biden,” said Baron, now a professor at the University of Maryland. “Dr. Shogan had nothing to do with the prior actions NARA staff took in connection with the successful return of boxes of presidential records that had been improperly transferred to Mar-a-Lago at the end of President Trump’s first term.”

“Notwithstanding what President Trump might choose to believe, NARA is a completely nonpartisan agency, and NARA staff at all times have conducted themselves thoroughly professionally in ensuring that our Nation’s history is properly preserved,” Baron said.

As part of its role overseeing the preservation of federal records, the Archives also sets schedules dictating when various types of records can be destroyed and investigates claims that records have been lost, stolen or disposed of in violation of those requirements. The agency also preserves presidential records and handles requests for them from Congress and the public after a president’s term in office concludes.

It is not yet clear to me what all of this will mean for historians committed to accurately documenting and critically analyzing the American past, although I can guess what may be in store: bans, purges, punitive lawsuits, restrictions on what can be published, and targeting those who dare to defy the new mandates. All of this would of course run afoul of the First Amendment, but it remains to be seen whether that will matter.

What can you do? Find a way to protest any and all of this. Call your representatives. (Calling is much more effective than emailing; showing up in person is far better than that.)

And educate yourself. Educate yourself about what’s happening, and about what has brought us to this point—by reading exactly the books that are likely to be targeted by this administration.

I’ve been curating a collection of some of my favorite books at Bookshop.org. Feel free to check them out. (No need to buy them here—check your local library or ask them to order them for you!) If you look through the history books I include, I’m not sure that any one of them would pass Trump’s litmus test. Are they “unpatriotic”? Quite the contrary. They tell the truth and in doing so, inspire Americans to live up to our founding ideals.

I also want to draw your attention to a new podcast produced by a friend of mine, David Swartz. (Two of his books are featured among my favorites at by Bookshop storefront.) Rebel on Main tells the story of a Confederate statue in his hometown in Jessamine County, Kentucky, sensitively documenting how members of a community grapple together with their shared past:

Cast in bronze, he clutches a rifle. His left foot thrusts forward. His eyes stare defiantly past the courthouse yard to the north.

​But this soldier with a Confederate belt buckle also wears a Union hat. He is not what he seems…

As anti-statue protests erupt in 2020, a colorful cast of characters emerges. A Black preacher-turned-activist. A sixteen-year-old homeschooler. An armed statue-defender. A local judge caught in the crossfire. 125 years after it was erected, this statue made of granite and bronze has flesh-and-blood implications.

​​​Over seven sound-rich episodes featuring first-person narration, deep historical and field research, and an original music score, find out what the statue's fate reveals about the soul of this divided southern community.

Listen to the trailer here, and access all episodes here. Good history presents the past—and reckons with the past—with nuance and complexity. It allows us to wrestle with what has happened and with what we commemorate, with what we choose to remember and forget, with whose stories get told, and with what it means to love our neighbors in the midst of all of this.

If we genuinely want a nation united across difference, one committed to liberty and justice for all, we need our histories to be messy, to contain light and dark and more often than not, muddled gray. We need our histories to reveal our blindspots and challenge us to create a more perfect union. This is truly patriotic education.

When it feels like the ground is shifting beneath our feet, it has perhaps never been more important to remember who we are, and where we come from. And to hold fast to the Constitutional principles devised to reign in our worst impulses.