A new government report finds that the rotunda in the National Archives building in Washington D.C., which is home to the Declaration of Independence, “structurally racist” and suggests that the government include “trigger warnings” to protect the public from the historical content.
The Declaration of Independence is one of the most historically important documents in the world. It has a place of prominence in the National Archives, where it is housed in a beautiful rotunda that features murals that show the nation’s founding fathers. But in this age of go woke or go broke, the entire rotunda, and most of the items in it, have been deemed offensive, racist and triggering.
It was part of a report conducted by a “task force on racism,” which “was charged with examining the agency through three lenses: Diversity and Inclusion, the Employee Experience, and Race-Based Harassment.” The group concluded that “structural racism ‘unequivocally impacts’ how National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) employees interact with each other, customers and the historical records themselves.”
In the report, the task force explains that examples of “structural racism” at NARA include, “a preponderance of BIPOC in lower-paying, lower-status jobs and the preponderance of white people in higher-paying, higher-status jobs; legacy descriptions that use racial slurs and harmful language to describe BIPOC communities; and a Rotunda in our flagship building that lauds wealthy white men in the nation’s founding while marginalizing BIPOC, women, and other communities.”
However, the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were white men. That’s just a historical fact. To change the mural would be historically inaccurate and would actually be racist and sexist against the men who crafted this grand experiment called the United States of America.
The task force, like many in the woke brigade, doesn’t see the irony.
When it comes to the founding fathers, they run afoul of the task force as well.
The task force argues that the website OurDocuments.gov, which “features transcripts and historical context of ‘100 milestone documents of American history,’ uses adulatory and excessive language to document the historical contributions of white, wealthy men.”
Thomas Jefferson is singled out for the positive language used to describe him as a “visionary” who acted and secured the “will of the nation to expand westward,” without explaining how “the policy of westward expansion forced Native Americans off their ancestral land, encouraged ongoing colonial violence, and laid the groundwork for further atrocities like the Trail of Tears.”
They contrast Thomas Jefferson, who has 24 search results on the OurDocuments.gov website, with Harriet Tubman, who only has one. This discrepancy could easily be explained as Jefferson was simply a more prolific author than Tubman and contributed more to the country’s written history, including the Declaration of Independence. Tubman truly led an extraordinary life, but as she could not read or write her ability to provide documents that could be utilized is limited.
Now, a comparison between Thomas Jefferson and Frederick Douglass would make a bit more sense (though a search of the website for Douglass resulted in an error message).
There have also been suggestions that certain areas of the National Archives should contain “trigger warnings” when it comes to certain displays.
“A verbal or written notice that precedes potentially sensitive content,” the report reads. “Such notices flag the contents of the material that follows, so readers, listeners, or viewers can prepare themselves to adequately engage or, if necessary, disengage for their own well-being. A trigger warning is a specific variety of content warning that attempts to forewarn audiences of content that may cause intense physiological and psychological symptoms for people with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other anxiety disorders.”
It’s unclear how the phrase, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” is triggering. Perhaps it is the reference to “their Creator” that is problematic.
A staff member also suggested that seeing “multiple uniformed, armed security guards” could result in “potentially triggering circumstances.”
This task force report is just another example of how the legacy of the founding fathers and the historical framework of this country is being attacked and erased by those in the woke crowd who are interested in reshaping and remolding the country to fit their own agenda.
Photo from CNP/REUTERS
