John Diaz: Trump can’t grasp the shame of equivocation.
WASHINGTON — The images and sounds were sickeningly derivative of times when racism reigned unchecked and unapologetic. The torches, the chants, the Confederate flags, the raw violence, the unalloyed hate on the faces of white supremacists.
I turned off the television, where reports from Charlottesville, Va., dominated cable news, and headed to the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the foot of the Washington Monument.
It was not a spontaneous visit. The Smithsonian Institution’s 19th museum is one of the hottest tickets in town. Reservations are required months in advance.
Before I reached the entrance, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency in Charlottesville. There was no escaping the context of this Saturday excursion into American history.
President Trump had toured the museum in February.
“Honestly, it’s fantastic,” he exclaimed.
He obviously missed one of the recurring themes of how a nation founded on such lofty principles could have allowed human slavery at its inception, countenanced segregation for nearly a century after the Civil War, and rationalized inequities to this day in voting rights and the justice system:
He failed to grasp the shame and the cost of equivocation.
As I was overhearing African American parents patiently explaining exhibits on the Ku Klux Klan or the 1957 showdown at Little Rock’s Central High to their curious children, the current president of the United States was unwilling or unable to call out the latent evil that brought us this past.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides,” Trump said in a fourminute statement. In words that would bring comfort to the forces of hate, he added for emphasis, “On many sides.”
Even after an act of terror left dead a woman protesting for American values, the president who so readily and routinely slanders a religion of nearly 2 billion people for the acts of a few who torture its teachings could not bring himself to condemn the white supremacists who were rallying to “take America back.”
He passed on the opportunity to dissociate himself — in the strongest possible terms — from rally-goers who wore his trademark “Make America Great Again” cap or claimed his victory as their own.
It was the most disgraceful moment yet in Trump’s toxic presidency.
Meanwhile, in the museum, visitors paused at the reminders of other times when American leaders decided that “many sides” must be accommodated when reaching a crossroads of right and wrong. There was the deal of 1787 that counted a slave as three-fifths of a person for calculating presidential electors, congressional representation and taxes. There was the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that drew a line between free and slave states. There was the landmark 1896 Supreme Court case that legitimized segregation into the next century on the inherently flawed principle that “separate but equal” can ever be equal.
President Trump needs to go back to this exhibit, but not on a private tour. He needs to see the pride and the pain of families absorbing the details, the triumphs and the tragedies, that too often get short shrift in American history books. He needs to walk among the visitors and note how many came here with multiple generations to share the experience. He needs to realize how important, how personal — and how unfinished — this history is to the nation he was elected to lead.
He needs to think about whether that Saturday in August 2017 will merit mention in the evolution of this American narrative on display.
President Trump needs to know:
“Many sides” is the wrong side of history.