Political Correctness on Rampage - DC Tourist Museums

[jbg]

I took my wife and kids to Washington DC for the Spring break week. Normally, I take great pride in anything patriotic. Anyone who reads other threads I have started, such as Flags Over Westchester (link) and This is America (link) knows

.

I still found the Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln Memorial inspiring. Our family boat ride in the Tidal Basin, with the backdrop of flowering cherry trees, couldn't be beaten for both family unity and scenery. And the one bright spot of the major museum exhibitions was the original Star Spangled Banner at the Smithsonian. There the admiration ends.

The tourist museums such as the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum and Museum of the American Indian, and the Holocaust Museum were monuments to political correctness.

The Holocaust Museum

As a guide to the history of the rise of Nazism the museum does a great job. At this point my admiration lessens materially, however.

The museum correctly demonizes Hitler and Goebbels, people who no one in their right mind admires, and are long dead. The museum does not make a serious effort to document the practically universal anti-Judaism prevalent in Europe before and since the Holocaust. Even more egregiously it does not demonstrate with any degree of emphasis or eloquence the high death rates of Polish Jewry, where Jews had been over 10% of the population, and the indifference or active assistance of Poles in pogroms during the 1800's and the Final Solution.

Modern concerns similarly are not mentioned. The discussion of the Mufti of Jerusalem points out his Nazi support but does not reference the fact that Yasir Arafat was his close relative. The museum absolutely fails to address Israel's growing delegitimization. In short, the museum is great at bashing people whose memory is ignominious. It carefully skirts politically delicate issues such as the past and continuing hatred of Jews, of which the Holocaust was admittedly the worst example.

Overall, the quality of the exhibits was disappointing. Much of it read like an 8th grade Social Studies text would.

Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian

A true PC mishmash.

Tribes from widely disparate regions of the country were displayed side by side, along with tokens of their elders' supposed folk wisdom. This all sounded very profound.

The message delivered was "Red Man good, White Man bad". Nowhere did the museum even mention the practically constant warfare among the tribes. Nowhere did the museum mention the fact that, aside from the Mayan, Incan, and Aztec civilizations, and in North America the Cahokia civilization, the natives made little technological process.

Nowhere did the museum mention the shocking creation of greenhouse gases by the natives' habit of setting fires to create hunter-friendly openings in forests. Certainly, the museum mention that in the Plains bison were driven over cliffs, resulting in massive waste and ecological devastation. The natives were portrayed as being at peace with the environment when nothing could be further from the truth.

Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

Main complaint there is presentation of man-made climate change as being fact.

Smithsonian Museum of American History

Main complaint there is the handling of the slavery issue, admittedly a blot on U.S. history. The fact is that in Africa, life was no bargain either. Some of the blame for slavery has to be laid at the foot of African rulers who would sell people to the slave traders.

Africa was, then as now, a brutal continent. The slavers did not make it so.

And given that the U.S. has an African-American President maybe racism didn't hold all of them down.

Edited April 5, 2010 by jbg

[Smallc]

So what you're saying is that you didn't like it. That doesn't make it PC or wrong.

[jbg]

So what you're saying is that you didn't like it. That doesn't make it PC or wrong.

Normally I like your posts even where we disagree. You should read a bit more carefully. I had a glorious trip personally. Those museums were pure PC.

[Smallc]

I read the whole thing. You're looking at things from a very narrow perspective. There are other sides to history that we often don't consider. Your version of history isn't necessarily the right one.

[Bonam]

Meh, I prefer museums that display human talent and ingenuity (i.e. museums of science, flight, technology, etc), and museums that display the beauty and power of the human spirit (i.e. museums of art). If you go to a monument to political correctness, I think you should realize that political correctness is what you'll see.

However, in general, the information I have seen in museums is very rudimentary, it seems to me like it is aimed primarily at relatively young children. If one truly wants to gain deeper insight into a topic, even just reading a wikipedia article would probably be much more helpful than visiting a museum. The only real benefit of museums is the chance to look at physical artifacts in person.

[bloodyminded]

I'm not perfectly clear on all your complaints, jbg. For example, why would the Museum of American History delve into issues of African slavery when discussing American slavery? It could easily veer into apologetics. The United States was not responsible for the pre-existence of African slavery; but it was 100%, unequivocally responsible for the American version. That it doesn't delve into issues of global slavery maybe makes it a simplification, but it is not the most serious blot

Since we're talking PC--and this would relate to the American Indian Museum as well--was there a single, tiny note present which explained how John Adams himself was directly complicit in the intentional murder of many thousands of Native people?

This fact is not very well known, even though it's a crime of pretty monumental proportions. That he later denounced the very actions to which he had been complicit (after the damage was done, and he had no ability to rectify anything) is nice to hear; but it also helpfully informs us that historical relativism isn't an excuse, as he, Jackson, et al knew exactly what they were doing wrong.

And the reason all this is generally elided from the standard mythic narratives of the Founding Fathers is because of another type of political correctness, which takes the form of patriotism. A far more insidious form of PC than that which so exercises us usually, in my opinion.

[BubberMiley]

I also think that when people don't present things exactly how I think they should be presented, it's is obviously political correctness run amok.

[Mr.Canada]

Interesting take jbg. Thanks for that.

[jbg]

I'm not perfectly clear on all your complaints, jbg. For example, why would the Museum of American History delve into issues of African slavery when discussing American slavery? It could easily veer into apologetics. The United States was not responsible for the pre-existence of African slavery; but it was 100%, unequivocally responsible for the American version. That it doesn't delve into issues of global slavery maybe makes it a simplification, but it is not the most serious blot.

The "blot" I was referring to was slavery, not its discussion at the Smithsonian. My point is that the issue is not a simple, unmitigated good vs. evil.

Since we're talking PC--and this would relate to the American Indian Museum as well--was there a single, tiny note present which explained how John Adams himself was directly complicit in the intentional murder of many thousands of Native people?

This fact is not very well known, even though it's a crime of pretty monumental proportions. That he later denounced the very actions to which he had been complicit (after the damage was done, and he had no ability to rectify anything) is nice to hear; but it also helpfully informs us that historical relativism isn't an excuse, as he, Jackson, et al knew exactly what they were doing wrong.

Educate me.

Interesting take jbg. Thanks for that.

You're welcome.

[bloodyminded]

The "blot" I was referring to was slavery, not its discussion at the Smithsonian. My point is that the issue is not a simple, unmitigated good vs. evil.

The issue isn't simple. But by saying it's not "good vs. evil"...do you mean the notion that Africa was "good" and the US "evil"? I don't think it's generally thought of in those terms anyway.

But slavery certainly rises to a level we can refer to as "evil."

Educate me.

As Secretary of State, Adams was the administration's chief justifier of General Jackson's conquest of Florida. "Expansion, we have assumed," Adams said, "is the path to security," a justification for imperial conquest. And it's true enough that war with Great Britain was a serious threat...but the removal and murder of Native people was obviously underway before this threat arrived, and continued after, so we might cast a jaundiced eye upon the excuses. Adams was an enthusiastic supporter of driving out and killing the Seminoles, who after all had the affrontery to react violently to attacks from first the Europeans, and then the Americans. Such behaviour cannot be tolerated. Fighting back against God's chosen is quite an offense. (There was also the matter of runaway slaves to contend with.) So Adams, who had, from what I understand, actually evinced some sympathy towards the Natives, felt that Expansion was the more important ideal (when weighed against the lives of human beings)...and so he supported expulsions and slaughters. Later in life, he lamented this, speaking of "that hapless race of native Americans, which we are exterminating with such merciless and perfidious cruelty."

(I don't have a link, because it's a hardcopy, but the book is called John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire by William E. Weeks.)