Donald Trump’s administration has a black history problem. We are less than two full months into his term and his bumbling, inept cabinet members keep saying unbelievably stupid things to demonstrate that they know nothing but “alternative facts” when it comes to America’s racial history.
Last week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos issued a statement after meeting with administrators from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), saying this:
HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice. They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality. Their success has shown that more options help students flourish.
Umm … not quite, Betsy. Here’s the slightly critically important bit of history she missed in her statement. In 1865, the federal government created the Freedmen’s Bureau to assist free persons and poor whites during Reconstruction. The Bureau provided them with food, education and other resources.
There were more than 1,000 schools created in the South by 1870, but the bureau fell apart with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, whose members attacked schools and teachers educating blacks. The Klan did not accept the idea that African Americans should be educated; they wanted to continue the pre-Civil War prohibition on black education. Jim Crow laws were then passed that legalized segregation in public places, and blacks couldn’t attend schools with whites. HBCUs were created by whites and blacks, mostly by churches and philanthropists in the Deep South because state governments had no interest in educating blacks.
Now that would have been a stellar thing to mention in her statement—especially because it reminds us that those days were not so long ago, and that we have an obligation to make sure these institutions are well-funded and thriving so as to give students opportunities for success that their ancestors were denied. This shouldn’t be hard. But stupid is as stupid does.
And then there’s Ben Carson. Good old Ben—a really super-smart brain surgeon who always looks slightly sleepy, and who seems blissfully ignorant about nearly everything.
Yesterday, at his first day on the job as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development (a job he has absolutely no business having), he said this:
In case you missed it, this is the part of his remarks which made most of us want to tear our eardrums out.
“That’s what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great grandsons, great granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”
Wait … enslaved people and immigrants had the same experience?! How do you even fix your mouth to say something so ignorant? Talk about revisionist history. Even Samuel L. Jackson weighed in.
As did an account called Donald J. Orwell — a wonderful account dedicated to trolling the popular vote loser who now resides in the White House.
Of course, Ben took to Facebook late last night to correct his mistake, saying the following:
The slave narrative and immigrant narrative are two entirely different experiences. Slaves were ripped from their families and their homes and forced against their will after being sold into slavery by slave traders.
The Immigrants made the choice to come to America. They saw this country as a land of opportunity. In contrast, slaves were forced here against their will and lost all their opportunities. We continue to live with that legacy.
The two experiences should never be intertwined, nor forgotten, as we demand the necessary progress towards an America that's inclusive and provides access to equal opportunity for all.
This seems to be the modus operandi of the Trump team. Say something really stupid and uneducated about blacks and history and then issue a revised, corrected statement after the public gets wind of their idiocy. But it’s far too late for that. We already know they are a bunch of imbecilic, dangerous fools who have no business governing. This has got to be the most ridiculous cabinet ever assembled in American history.