Donald Trump’s Weird Lies About George Washington Make No Sense
Time keeps moving and Donald Trump keeps lying, the two go hand in hand. Recently, Trump continued his and the Republican Party’s trend of attempting to rewrite history with the goal of erasing all traces of racism from the country’s past.
At an event last month, speaking to the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Trump addressed the issue of changing the names of institutions like schools and military bases or other locations. As someone who lives in the South, I’ve seen the importance of changing these names (and the backlash to those changes) firsthand. What’s important to keep in mind when discussing buildings and institutions named after Confederate figures and other historical racists, is why they got those names in the first place. It is vital that generations learn the intimidating tactics of racists throughout history. They wanted to salute people to show that what they did could still be celebrated. This was an attempt to sort of rub it in our faces in a way.
But someone doesn’t have to be a Confederate “hero” to be a figure worth reexamining and discussing honestly. A person can still be considered “great” and historically important, even if we acknowledge the darker parts of their lives.
Speaking at the event, Donald Trump claimed that people want the name of George Washington High School changed and they don’t even know why. Well, maybe he doesn’t know why. But others surely do.
“How about George Washington high school? ‘We want the name removed from that high school,’” Trump said. “They don’t know why. You know, they thought he had slaves. Actually I think he probably didn’t.’”
What is the point of this? Why try to rewrite history this way? Trump could just have said, “Washington was the first President and that is why he deserves his name on things.” That could be a much different conversation. To say he probably didn’t own slaves seeks to weirdly make these historic men better than they were. Washington had over 300 slaves on his Mount Vernon property at the time of his death. According to CNN, around 123 of them were owned by Washington specifically and exclusively. Even the actual website for Mount Vernon says that the number of slaves went up during Washington’s time there.
Trump’s ignorance is part of a larger strategy to erase slavery from our history. If they succeed, they can downplay its lasting impact on our society. This is so dangerous and directly linked to the uproar over “critical race theory.” Conservatives have continued to find new ways to make it seem like everyone has an equal opportunity in this country, and that it has mostly always been that way, and that anyone claiming otherwise is just being hysterical. And that just simply isn’t true.
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