I will never stop saying that our preeminent African American museum, with generations of precious artifacts and collective knowledge, should have always been privately funded and controlled, fully independent of the same government that enslaved and brutalized our ancestors.
😢
I understand your viewpoint. But the US government passed Civil Rights law and Affirm Action legislation, not private citizens. The government has to recognize, and relentlessly reaffirm rights for POC are the same as whites. That includes funding a museum to illustrate that history and struggle.
Black. Not “POC.”
I know this was specifically about the African American Museum (wonderful, btw) but the law protecting equal rights also refers to Native Americans, Hispanics, Pacific Islanders, and Asians. My mindset is you cannot protect one and not the others as American citizens.
Yeah, your mindset is off-putting, in this context.
No offense meant ... we have Chinese, Black, and Hispanic who have married into our extended family. We feel enriched to have all of them and couldn't consider embracing any over the others.
Stop using your family members as props.
They're not props; they're family.
You make a lot of sense, Crystal.
Absolutely and now that the entire country has changed, will continue to change for the worse we see how important your point is to be taken.
Please, someone make a video record of this Museum before it all gets erased.
... White Evangelical Christians have been relentless in having a Plantation owners rule again ...
I wouldn’t be relying on private money, did you see what happened to Target’s pride merch collection? The fact that rainbow capitalism so briefly flourished, and then was instantly gone again, should be an indicator of how much private capital can be relied on.
Look at the private law firms forced to give $ to Trump. Look at Harvard. Look at Paramount firing Colbert. Russia is full of dead millionaires and billionaires who fell out windows because they thought wealth freed them from state power. Under fascism, no one's "private" wealth/space is protected.
Right on!
You are absolutely right!
She’s not wrong
Trump might be able to erase a museum’s telling of history, but history won’t be altered in any way. He’s still a twice impeached, felony convict and sexual assault offender/rapist. He can’t erase the truth. He’s not that powerful. He just think he is. Ahem, enter Achilles.
100%!
As evil as white people have been and continue to be, it’s a shame we still trust them.
We visited the museum with a friend who lives in Virginia. We started at the bottom, but that part alone exhausted us. We had lunch in the cafe, and decided we would return to see the upper half. The removal of anything from this treasure of history is alarming and certainly disgraceful.
Unelected Private money paid for slavery. An elected state fought a war which ended it. Profit fuelled slavery, but not the museums which faithfully curate its history. Without state help they would disappear. Billionaire patronage is just as biased as any government, only totally unaccountable.
Reminds me of an awkward experience with looking up centrist memes that aged VERY badly despite being all over Google's images. It's amazing how quickly the people who said "corrupt government is the problem" in response to "billionaires are the problem" pivoted to "the government can do no wrong"
So beautifully and justly stated. I believe it’s clear now—every one of us who can must preserve and tend our personal libraries, write our family histories, and hold our important historic artifacts. Because these monsters fully intend to obliterate the true legacy.
No. Private museums operate to make a profit not to record and show the truth
A weird take we have here.
Nicely put. Thank you.
Time to remove it from Trump’s clutches. He will have the African American slaves loving their masters, learning skills, and refusing to leave them at the end of the Civil War.
Hopefully private museums will act to take targeted displays on a protective loan until it is safe to return them. #dystopia