Yesterday the U.S. president took issue with the Smithsonian Institute for focusing on “how bad Slavery was”. An American history museum having the bad taste to discuss American slavery, he explained, is too Woke.
I wonder which aspects of being a slave in America he considers too Woke to discuss.
Would it be the dehumanization and violence? Being stripped of your basic human rights, treated as property, subjected to regular beatings, whippings, sexual violence, and other forms of cruelty intended to enforce submission and maximize labor output?
Maybe families living in constant fear of being torn apart by sale, with husbands and wives, parents and children being permanently separated, never to see each other again?
Or maybe the thing that’s too Woke to discuss is people being forced to perform backbreaking labor from sunrise to sunset in harsh conditions with inadequate food and clothing, while being stuffed into cramped housing that lacks basic necessities and causes disease and hardship.
Maybe the Woke part is discussing denying slaves access to adequate medical care, or the two centuries of intergenerational trauma precipitated by slaves having lived under the constant threat of violence and separation.
Of course we can all see the president’s point. He is a very delicate and sensitive flower, and those annoyingly Woke historians should know better than to disturb his fragile sensibilities.