Racial Grievance Theater Is About Humiliation, Not History

The White House on March 27 issued an executive order on “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which prohibits public expenditure on any Smithsonian Institution exhibits or programs that attack core American values or “divide Americans based on race.” The interior secretary will also investigate whether any public monuments, memorials, or properties have been removed or altered to advance racialist ideology.

Cue media and liberal historians’ outrage, with one Georgetown professor telling The Washington Post that it amounted to an “ideological purity test,” while others argued it would result in removing or downplaying narratives of underrepresented communities. Yet as racialist ideologues keep demonstrating, it is their own hypocritical ideology that seeks to demonize and silence American traditions in service of a radical new political agenda.

Indeed, the very day before the executive order, NPR CEO Katherine Maher was confronted in a House subcommittee hearing with the uncomfortable fact that in January 2020 she had claimed America suffered from “our original collective sin and unpaid debt,” and affirmed the need for racial reparations. (She also called the current president a “deranged racist sociopath.”) Maher declared her regret over these tweets and claimed her opinions had changed. But Americans should rightly be wary of all historical and political narratives that leverage racial grievance and victimhood, even when presented as benign attempts to simply “tell everyone’s story.”

To Remember the Past or Hate It?

One recent example of this attempt to present racialist revisionist narratives as harmless is a recent Washington Post piece by the provocateur pseudo-journalist Petula Dvorak — an established purveyor of blatantly false stories in the service of leftist narratives — regarding “stumbling stones,” bronze plaques placed on sidewalks in Arlington, Virginia, to remind passersby of the role of slavery in the region.

Researchers talked to nearby homeowners to acquire permission for the stumbling stones, the Post tells us. “All but one welcomed the project.” Given this is very blue Arlington, perhaps that level of local support is not surprising. Yet, we might also wonder, what social cost would come from questioning, let alone refusing, these stumbling stones? 

As the article readily admits, the impetus of such stumbling stones in Virginia is a 2021 op-ed by liberal WaPo columnist Michele Norris, who suggested that America imitate Germany in creating public markers that remind citizens of how “246 years of slavery” is part of our nation’s story. Norris’ op-ed compares the United States’ fraught history with chattel slavery to that of Nazi Germany, which systematically murdered millions for the sake of racial purity. Refuse the stumbling stone and you’re a Nazi!

Our Race Ideologues Think America Is Comparable to Nazi Germany

As much of an evil as racially-motivated chattel slavery was in American history, the comparison to the evils committed by Nazi Germany suggests the true nature of 21st-century racial ideology. Nazism was motivated by a racial supremacist ideology that sought to exterminate millions of people in death camps. Everywhere the Nazis went, they massacred anyone they viewed as an inferior people. Such horrific cruelties were baked into their entire political and social program.

The United States, in contrast, was founded upon principles of equality and liberty. Its founders, even those who were slaveholders, were deeply conflicted about the “peculiar institution” it permitted at its founding. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, among many others, recognized to varying degrees that the principles underlying the American constitutional order were in tension with the institution of slavery.

Some hoped that in time it would die a natural death, either for economic or moral reasons. Of course, as demonstrated by the Civil War, our nation’s bloodiest conflict, that was not to be. Thankfully, and at great cost, freedom and equality won the day. Such political leaders as Abraham Lincoln argued that the end of slavery represented a realization of our constitutional order.

Yet for 21st-century racial ideologues, such historical details are irrelevant. The Nazis were evil, and thus Nazi Germany was evil. Slaveholders were evil, and thus America was evil, even if slaveholders acted in opposition to our founding principles. Just as post-war Germans must be constantly reminded of the Holocaust and their ancestors’ role in it, so must white Americans be constantly reminded of slavery, even many generations removed from the actual sins.

Nor is it enough that America’s grade school curricula, media, and entertainment industry are already overwhelmed with racially charged narratives about our history. No, citizens must be endlessly reminded, lest they forget how systemic racism pervades our nation and requires dramatic action — such as racial reparations costing trillions of dollars — to rectify historic harms.

Don’t Be Fooled by the Racial Ideologues

This is why we should be suspicious of all racial-themed developments, no matter how innocuous they may seem. The goal is rarely, if ever, simply to ensure Americans see “another perspective” to our history and culture. As noble as that goal is, that is not what is going on here.

Rather, the goal is furthering a far more radical agenda, whereby white Americans who may or may not be descended from slaveholding ancestors are coerced into paying, either directly or indirectly, for the sins of others who have long since preceded us. And these opinions remain popular among the liberal elite, as evidenced by NPR CEO Katherine Maher’s laughable attempt to explain away her previous comments.

The project goes by many names — affirmative action, racial reckoning, reparations — but the underlying ideology is always the same. The intention is a new society defined by a hierarchy of grievances, based not only on race but also sexuality. Supposed victims are to be celebrated and compensated, alleged perpetrators to be censured and coerced to pay up, in a never-ending cycle of alleged victimhood that is in fact a nefarious profit-making scheme.

As much as we may be tempted to acquiesce to various calls to new forms of racially-based history, conscientious Americans should beware. For what is asked of them is often not simply to remember and honor the stories of their fellow Americans, however noble that enterprise. What is often asked of them is to repudiate their very heritage in favor of a new, hierarchical society of grievance that is contrary to the very principles upon which our republic was founded.

Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He has a bachelor’s in history and master’s in teaching from the University of Virginia and a master’s in theology from Christendom College. He is the author of The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands.