WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday (Aug 19) criticised top museums for their “woke” focus on subjects including “how bad slavery was,” his latest attack on the cultural institutions in a country that fought a civil war over the issue.
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been – Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Trump wrote.
He was referring to the Smithsonian Institution, an independent organisation that operates 17 museums, galleries and a zoo located across the country, which receives public funding, and which he has previously accused of espousing a “corrosive ideology”.
The translatlantic slave trade from Africa to the Americas spanned three centuries, and has been referred to as the United States’ “original sin.”
The country’s South fought to maintain slavery in the 1861-1865 Civil War, but lost.
Since then African Americans have fought for their civil rights, including in the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, which forced a new national reckoning on the darker parts of US history.
“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE’,” Trump wrote in the Truth Social post, using his shorthand for leftist social justice movements.
