Like most presidents of the past 30 years, Donald Trump issued a proclamation that recognizes February as Black History Month, however, it is what the proclamation doesn’t mention that has sparked protests from historians and other experts concerning the proclamation’s sanitized version of Black people’s place in American history.
According to The Huffington Post, Shaun Harper, a professor of education, business, and public policy at the University of Southern California, believes Trump’s Black History Month proclamation is “sanitized” and “incomplete.”
For starters, Trump fails to address the country’s history of racial discrimination.
“America’s Black history includes slavery, Jim Crow, separate and unequal schooling, redlining, racial violence, and far too many well-documented inequities,” Harper told the outlet. “A sanitized proclamation that fails to acknowledge any of this is incomplete and inconsistent with prior years.”
As Harper pointed out, Trump’s latest Black History Month proclamation contains a vague celebration of “black American patriots who have indelibly shaped our Nation’s history,” only mentioning Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and Tiger Woods by name.
In his comments to the Huffington Post, Harper alluded to Trump’s actions gutting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at the federal government and his proclamation affirming Black History Month as disrespectful to Black “heroes and sheroes” of the past.
“On his first day in office, Trump swiftly dismantled government offices and federal programs that aim to right America’s past and
present wrongs against Black people,” Harper said. “Don’t wish us a Happy Black History Month after having spat on the graves of Black heroes and sheroes who died in pursuit of unfulfilled promises to us. It’s offensive.”According to Dr. Kevin Gaines, the interim director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia, the very reason that Black History Month exists is due to efforts by Woodson and others to combat the kind of whitewashed history that Trump’s proclamation appears to present to the nation.
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