February marks the 100th anniversary of Black History Month. Across the country, museums, schools and culture centers will host events to celebrate the contributions, sacrifices and legacy of Black Americans.
However, in the nation’s capital, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts currently has no listed public programming to mark the milestone anniversary.
Since returning to the White House, Donald Trump has launched a full-out attack against diversity initiatives. In order to comply with the president’s guidelines, federal agencies have been forced to remove certain references to Black history, with the administration saying that they paint America as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
MS NOW contributor Trymaine Lee joined “The Weekend: Primetime” and said Trump’s push to rewrite American history is part of a long trend, pointing to how groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy tried to do the same after slavery was abolished.
He said the groups took control of “the school boards and the books and the statues to remind white people of the greatness of white people” and “the idea of painting plantation life and slavery as this good old jolly time and that there were good slave masters.”
He added: “As long as you can make sure you see those stories in the minds of the American public writ large, and you carve out and erase Black history and our role in it, then it makes it easy to normalize the abuses.”
According to Lee, it’s not that this moment is necessarily different from what America has seen before, but rather that these racist ideals “keep getting life, and keep getting breath, and they keep getting normalized in the mainstream.”
Lee also said on MS NOW that “our forever mission is to educate ourselves on the true role of Black people in this country,” adding that with its attacks on diversity initiatives, “the Trump administration has centered, at worst, a white supremacist ideal; at best, an anti-Black ideal.”
Lee advised Americans that “this month and every month, we should be reminding ourselves” of the contributions of the Black community.
“It is certainly hard on the best of days, let alone days like this,” he added. “But lest we forget, after Reconstruction was torn down, we had the bloody summers on and on of Black people being lynched across this country, being pushed as far back into slavery as possible, that Black people built institutions and built schools and built businesses during the darkest and worst of times.”
You can watch Lee’s full discussion on “The Weekend: Primetime” in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”