When the Smithsonian opened its National African American Museum of History and Culture, George W. Bush said this at its dedication: “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.”
I have been to this museum twice in the last four years. I took my time to absorb a story and perspective that was foreign to me, listening to voices, present and past, I do not normally get to hear. That opportunity is why I went more than once.
What I saw and heard was not anger or an effort to make me feel bad as a white person. What I saw and felt were pain and lament that people can treat each other, and more importantly see each other, so badly. I needed what the museum provided.
God gave me eyes and ears for a reason, and how I use them or refuse to use them can make me into a better or worse person. I have a choice about how I interact with others made in God’s image. Our nation has that choice.
This summer, President Donald Trump commanded the Smithsonian Institution to present a rosier view of American history. What makes that so dangerous is that it separates us from one another. It prolongs our conflict, a conflict our history shows runs deep in our country’s soul. It reflects a step back from seeking understanding. It is a retreat from seeing what others painfully experienced. It says you and your story do not matter because you come from a different place than my story and you challenge me to see the world differently. It makes our neighbors invisible and discounts them, crushing their souls in the process. I hope that the review does not lead to an erasure of what took place.
This is about how we respond to stories different from our own. We can recoil in guilt at having our tribe blamed for something problematic in the past. We can refuse to engage and try to hide that history by claiming to be victims. We can charge the story with trying to undercut many good things that also are a part of our shared history – nullify the bad by clinging hard to the good. All of these are responses from only one side of the needed conversation.
Or we can step up and share the table with others whose story is not ours. We can learn to listen, actually making the effort to understand someone coming from a different place and experience, drawing us closer to each other.
The hard work of genuine reconciliation is not a sprint but a marathon in which we have to be ready to run for some time. Growth can come only from stepping onto the track, not staying on the sideline and insisting that the challenge does not exist, or that it threatens or disrespects me.
What is being asked of the Smithsonian, if there is an erasure, is a subterfuge that damages all of us. It seeks to make the uncomfortable parts of history disappear. But disappearance is not a solution because the pain of that history and its roots run deep for all of us, even if we react to it in different ways and with different explanations.
What is needed is not erasure. What is needed is engagement and conversation, an active willingness to see and listen. We should be willing and eager to face our flaws, and correct them, as President Bush said.
Darrell L. Bock is executive director of cultural engagement at the Hendricks Center and senior research professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary.
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