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President Trump has signed an executive order that directs Vice President JD Vance to eliminate “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology” from Smithsonian museums, educational and research centers, and the National Zoo.

My immediate reaction? Surely, you jest, sir. There may not be any area of American discourse that is more divisive or conflict ridden than the arena of race.

As I have witnessed many times in the past, race as a topic of conversation is a lot like sex: Everybody thinks they are expert at it, yet we Americans can be painfully reluctant to talk about it in mixed company or in front of our children.

Which might explain why Trump’s executive order immediately handed the hypersensitive task of inspecting museum exhibits for ideology to his vice president.

And who determines what ideology is “proper?” I suspect that George Orwell would be dismayed by this development.

In Trump’'s executive order last month, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” he denounced what he described as a “revisionist movement” across the country, one that “seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”

Trump’s order criticized the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture for a graphic posted online in May 2020 that, I agree, should not have been posted. It referred to “hard work,” “individualism” and “the nuclear family” as part of “white culture.”

The graphic which has drawn condemnation before, was swiftly removed after Lonnie Bunch, who since 2005 has been founding director of the African American museum, agreed it was inappropriate. So did I. You didn’t have to be a conservative to be deeply offended by that ill-inspired excuse for satire.

But, heck, we’re talking about history, right? No country’s history is perfect, or even consistent in its leaders’ espoused beliefs. Some of us still argue about what Thomas Jefferson, a Virginia slave owner, meant by “All men are created equal.”

That’s the beauty of the First Amendment, in my view. We need to talk these conflicting beliefs out, not tear ourselves apart in a new civil war every few years.

In his executive order, Trump called for reshaping the Smithsonian, into a “symbol of inspiration and American greatness.”

I thought it already was. Yet, as Trump’s jumbled drive for “government efficiency” has shown us, just because some government entity isn't broke doesn’t mean Trump won’t try to fix it anyway.

By singling out the Smithsonian's African American history museum, Trump fueled speculation that it could become a casualty of the administration's wider war on DEI, critical race theory and other academic points of view that critics find easier to denounce than understand.

Frankly, I think Trump should feel relieved that the museum’s many exhibits do not highlight his own settlement of a 1973 racial discrimination case against his father and himself, brought by the Justice Department for the Trumps' alleged refusal to rent apartments in predominantly white buildings to black tenants.

Testimony showed that the applications filed by black apartment seekers were marked with a “C’’ for “colored,” a trick that was hardly unique in those days, as federal antidiscrimination laws were getting off the ground.

A settlement that ended the lawsuit did not require the Trumps to explicitly acknowledge that discrimination had occurred — but the government’s description of the settlement said Trump and his father had “failed and neglected” to comply with the Fair Housing Act.

Now it is Bunch who finds himself on the hot seat of what might well be one more episode of Trumpian retribution.

Bunch was an excellent choice, in my not-so-humble opinion. I’ve covered the New Jersey native off and on since he became president and director of the Chicago History Museum. In 2019, he became the first historian and first African American to lead the Smithsonian in its 173-year history.

Besides his scholarship, I was impressed by how effectively he worked with both parties, despite the historical issues as slavery, the Civil War and Jim Crow remain fraught and contested. I recall what an avid Civil War re-enactor once told me when I mentioned how the conflict he called “The War Between the States” ended in 1865.

“Hell, that wasn’t the end," he said. "That was just an intermission.”

So, no, there’s nothing intrinsically radical about the “Blacksonian,” as some of my Black Washington friends respectfully call the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

I, for one, celebrate the museum as another big step in our never-ending march to pursue the ideals that, as Trump’s order states, “continue to inspire millions around the globe.”

That’s a proper enough ideology to me.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at clarence47page@gmail.com.)

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