Trump's anti-DEI attacks are an attempt to rewrite history. The thing is, it's been tried before, and it’s never worked. They've tried to keep us from ourselves for centuries.
When millions of kidnapped Africans were in chains headed for the "new world," erasure was already underway. Slavery was designed to destroy our identities — from changing our names to tearing us from our families. Oppressors never accounted for the ways we'd find to hold onto ourselves.
When the enslaved escaped plantations, enslavers used newspaper ads to reward others for participating in recapture. Harriet Tubman, whose heroism the National Park Services' website recently erased, strategically planned Saturday escapes. Newspapers didn't run on Sundays then, so she and those on her missions were long gone by the time the ads ran.
Enslavement kept us from reading and writing, but many brave men and women risked their lives to educate the community with night schools. Now, Trump is attacking the National Museum of African American History, calling it "divisive." Ironic.
Whether passing down family business or folklore, storytelling has been at the core of Black culture since before colonization. Values, traditions, and recipes are ours to share, and no one can ever take that away. We don't need anti-Black people and policies teaching revisionist history. We've never been able to trust their curricula. Let’s commit to preserving our history as we always have: through community, education, and storytelling.