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Partitioning Smithsonian Museums By Race Is Anti-American And Morally Evil
The Federalist ^ | December 16, 2020 | Joy PUllman

Posted on 12/16/2020 10:13:39 AM PST by Kaslin

Everyone should be able to agree that we don't need more racism in America. On that basis alone, this proposal should be dead on arrival in Congress.


Sen. Mike Lee took on fellow Republicans and the corporate Democrat press last week by blocking a bill that aims to establish a Smithsonian museum focused on Americans who identify as Latino.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., are cosponsors of the legislation, along with 234 House Democrats and 61 House Republicans. So Democrats are just stuffing the measure as an earmark into the current budget omnibus monstrosity.

Republicans and Democrats passed a similar bill through the House in February for a Smithsonian museum of women’s history. Both of these initiatives are confusing, because the Smithsonians are already stuffed full of identity politics. A jog through their halls will uncover to anyone that they bend over backwards to feature anyone besides white males, even if their work is not equal in stature, quality, or importance.

Recall the last Smithsonian news cycle was driven by it claiming in education materials that “hard work,” politness, “the nuclear family,” and “self reliance” are inherently “white” concepts. Like every American institution, these have been destroyed from within by a refusal to say no to social justice warriors. Social justice warriors don’t need any new museums; they already control nearly all the ones that currently exist.

More museums for today’s politically favored marketing profiles is not just a redundant idea. They are anti-American and morally wrong, because they further the popular racism of today’s leftist identity politics. And it is long past time for Republicans to get woke on this issue and realize that identity politics is a deadly weapon against their own voters and our country as a whole.

Let’s understand something right at the outset: Native American history is American history. Women’s history is American history. Latino-American history is American history. These are all part of our national story and should be understood in that context.

Like creating “no whites allowed” student unions, classes, therapy sessions, and dorms on college campuses, Balkanizing American institutions such as the Smithsonian into artificial and politically weaponized ethnic identities is racist and deeply dangerous. This is not merely an attempt to celebrate certain groups, as it is pitched to the gullible, but an overt attempt to divide our country.

We live in an era in which people are picked for a president’s cabinet and vice president, not to mention scholarships, media positions, CEOs of companies, government contracts, special legal protection, and college entrance, due specifically to the color of their skin. This institutional racism is morally wrong and deeply harmful to both the country and the people trivialized by this tokenization of their appearance and ancestry. Just because it is more often happening to a mostly different-looking group of people today than in some other times is no justification for racism of any kind, ever.

This is an overt rejection of our founding creed that “All members of the human race are created equal” (today’s translation, as “men” meant “humankind” at the time of the Declaration, but identity politics has ruined this understanding). Identity politics is a repudiation of American ideals. It revives the same “separate but equal” canard that our nation rightly rejected when it changed in response to the original civil rights movement, and when it incorporated at our founding.

I should not have to remind Americans that treating people differently based on their race led to a Civil War. But given that half of Americans have no idea when the Civil War happened, it seems likely many members of Congress are clueless about what’s at stake with this issue. Well, they need to get up to speed, fast. They are playing with fire here.

Anyone with a lick of common sense can see other problems with this proposal. It seems everybody is aware we’re “a nation of immigrants.” So let’s put two and two together: If we start making one for every possible demographic tranche, then the potential Smithsonian museums are endless.

For one, as the recent election results highlighted, Latinos are not a monolith. Not at all. Cubans and Puerto Ricans and Mexicans have extremely different histories and cultures. It’s not too far a stretch to say that the term “Latino” is functionally useless except to politicians whipping people into gerrymandered groups to manipulate votes. To group them all under the breezy heading of “Latino” is ignorant to the point of being offensive.

Thanks to our beautiful diversity of ancestry and intermarriage in the United States, the potential racial divisions among future Smithsonian museums are endless. Will we have a museum of Scottish Americans? Of Creole Americans? Of Japanese Americans? What about of Han Chinese Americans, thus leaving out Mongol Chinese Americans (and many more)? Or Jamaican Americans versus Kenyan Americans versus slave descendants?

If you pick just one, you slight all the others. Maybe that’s the goal for people who make a living from building Smithsonian buildings, but I for one don’t believe they deserve a lifetime public sinecure at the expense of national harmony. Regardless, if you think clearly for one second and know anything at all about different parts of the world (and, despite 70 years of “multiculturalism” controlling public-school curricula, most Americans do not), you’d see racially separatist Smithsonians are simpleminded pandering in the guise of genteel culture.

This gets into even more trouble with the proposed sex-segregated Smithsonian about women. This is an idea from the 1970s, because right now half the country doesn’t believe that woman means anything. (Just watch for 4Chan to retroactively declare that George Washington was genderfluid and start a White House petition to have him featured in this museum. It might sound funny, but this proposal is indistinguishable from today’s “feminist” “scholarship.”)

Even those who think treating people differently based on their appearance is not racism should be concerned about “separate but equal” Smithsonian museums for different racial groups and both sexes. Research finds that emphasizing our differences instead of what unites us increases racism in a society. “[N]othing is more certain to provoke increased expression of [racial intolerance] than the likes of ‘multicultural education,’ bilingual policies, and nonassimilation,” writes Princeton University professor Karen Stenner in her book-length work on authoritarian politics.

Other, more recent work on so-called “anti-bias” and “critical race theory” identity politics find this mode of communication and arranging our national life also heightens the contradictions between outward appearances, thus increasing racism. This stuff is bad, bad, bad, and needs to be stopped, not gain a new outpost.

Everyone should be able to agree that we don’t need more racism in America. On that basis alone, this proposal should be dead on arrival in Congress, rather than endorsed by several hundred elected officials. Their advocacy may be the strongest evidence yet for today’s hard-left claim that America is institutionally racist.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: bidenvoters; identitypolitics; institutionalracism; mikelee; museums; newleftrace; racism; segregation; smithsonian; smithsonianinst

1 posted on 12/16/2020 10:13:39 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Will they have separate drinking fountains?


2 posted on 12/16/2020 10:16:38 AM PST by Uncle Miltie (400,000,000 Guns. 8,000,000,000 Rounds of Ammo per YEAR. I like our odds.)
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To: Kaslin

By segregating people constantly, liberals want whites to consider themselves separate and to actively represent our interests. That’s the game plan.


3 posted on 12/16/2020 10:16:47 AM PST by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults. )
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To: Kaslin

Its just the obamian strategy of dismantling America in every conceivable way.
Moral bankruptcy, financial bankruptcy, destruction of the social fabric, it’s heritage and culture...
Hark.... do I hear “death to America”?

Obama and his regime need to see the forest from a ropes perspective.


4 posted on 12/16/2020 10:20:48 AM PST by himno hero (had'nff)
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To: Kaslin

The Left is full of neo-segregationists


5 posted on 12/16/2020 10:21:57 AM PST by a fool in paradise (Who built the cages, Joe?)
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To: SunkenCiv

Ping


6 posted on 12/16/2020 10:23:52 AM PST by a fool in paradise (Who built the cages, Joe?)
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To: Kaslin
I demand a “Redneck” wing... and an Irish, Lithuanian, Patagonian, Mongolian and a Leprechaun!
7 posted on 12/16/2020 10:29:40 AM PST by BwanaNdege ( Experience is the best teacher, but if you can accept it 2nd hand, the tuition is less!)
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To: Kaslin

Yes we do, what would you do for a living??


8 posted on 12/16/2020 10:31:53 AM PST by TrumpisRight (It is --> President Trump <--)
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To: Jonty30

Where is the provision for a young person who is part Australian Aborigine and part Asian who grows up to marry a Pacific Islander and is left handed? And converted to Islam. Considering transitioning to another gender. Hmm?


9 posted on 12/16/2020 10:32:09 AM PST by frank ballenger (End vote fraud harvesting,non-citizen voting & leftist media news censorship or we are finished.)
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To: Uncle Miltie
Will they have separate drinking fountains?

I think that idea of separating by race has become passe.

The new separation of people is in the arena of whether you wear a mask or not.

10 posted on 12/16/2020 10:32:38 AM PST by Slyfox (Not my circus, not my monkeys )
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To: BwanaNdege

whatchagnnaduwiththeleprachaun?


11 posted on 12/16/2020 10:34:54 AM PST by Kaslin (Joe Biden will never be my President, and neither will Kamala Harris)
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To: Kaslin

Come on Texas, you can do much better than that RHINO Cornyn. He is a big part of what is wrong with Republicans in the Senate. Long past his sell by date. Realize he was just reelected, but start looking for a replacement for next time. He will do a lot of damage in the next six years with his pathetic go along, get along attitude.


12 posted on 12/16/2020 11:02:35 AM PST by falcon99 (qu)
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To: Kaslin

This country is already divided by race for the most part. You just are not allowed to say it. Look at where almost all of the crooked stuff happened in this election, and they don’t care.


13 posted on 12/16/2020 11:07:04 AM PST by Pining_4_TX (I'm old enough to remember when you actually had to be able to do something to be hired to do it.)
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To: a fool in paradise

Old Bigotry: used to keep blacks ou

New Bigotry: used to keep everyone, including Blacks, in ...each in their own approved of race camp (“plantation”) where diversity of thought is never again to exist.


14 posted on 12/16/2020 11:24:28 AM PST by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
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To: Rurudyne

There remains one group that gets no quota requirements for inclusion, no designated grants or scholarships or exhibitions, no peer networking associations, and no historical recognition.

It is about exclusion, not inclusion.


15 posted on 12/16/2020 11:48:15 AM PST by a fool in paradise (Who built the cages, Joe?)
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To: Kaslin

This is what the left does. They separate people into different groups, and turn them against each other. They encourage separatism. They want racial hatred.


16 posted on 12/16/2020 11:52:07 AM PST by I want the USA back (I fear my government much much much much much much much much much much more than a virus from china.)
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To: Kaslin

The recently installed president, CEO, or whatever it’s called of the Smithsonian organization is a black man - this is the kind of divisiveness we can expect as we continues to select leaders on the basis of their race to prove how tolerant and morally superior we all are......


17 posted on 12/16/2020 11:56:55 AM PST by Intolerant in NJ
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To: Rurudyne

The rainbow alphabet people specifically exclude monogamous Heterosexual

These ‘diversity’ checkboxes aren’t mutually exclusive. But if you are white-white you don’t count.


18 posted on 12/16/2020 1:40:24 PM PST by a fool in paradise (Who built the cages, Joe?)
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To: Kaslin

I say give the blacks, the queers, the lesbos, the beaners, the chinks , the ETc’s, the ETC’s, the ETC’s anything they want.

The only stipulation is if the turn it into shit (which they will) they are required to immediately leave the country forever or KILL THEMSELVES!


19 posted on 12/16/2020 7:33:58 PM PST by 5th MEB (Progressives in the open; --- FIRE FOR EFFECT!!)
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