Yes, Trump is F*cking with the Museums
Because of course!
Earlier this month when I was on Marc Maron’s podcast WTF, Marc and I had a rollicking good time. We talked about everything under the American sun… but mostly the fall of America. At one point, Marc shifted the conversation and asked me about being a dad, something we had never really talked about in the years I have known him. I was excited to let him know about my three girls, but then somehow — as always seems to happen in conversations these days — we made it back to the fall of America.
Marc Maron: And are you taking your kids out in the world?
W. Kamau Bell: For sure. Yeah, I took them to DC last summer. I took them to-
MM: You showed them all the things?
WKB (proudly): I showed them all the things.
MM (struck by a thought): Is [Trump] gonna fuck with the museums, too?
WKB (surprised by Marc’s need to ask the question): Yeah, he's gonna fuck with the museums. Yeah. (laughter)
When Marc asked me if Trump was going to “fuck with the museums,” I laughed because it seemed so obvious to me that OF COURSE President Melania Please Look At Me was going to fuck with the museums. I had no idea when or how he was going to do it, but it just made sense that he would. Let me be clear. I’m not bragging about how smart I am or that I’m some sort of psychic. I’m sure it is just painfully obvious to many of us that President Petty is going to muck with everything that he can get his french-fry-smelling fingers into. Our only hope was that Trump wouldn’t get to the museums because he would be too distracted doing Trumpian things like renaming bodies of water and signing an executive order to make stop lights remain green all the time to improve traffic. There was no way that once President Assistant Car Salesman realized that there were American institutions dedicated to educating us and complicating our often threadbare historical narratives that he would let those museums go un-fucked-with. No men in the history of planet Earth have been as thin-skinned, hypersensitive, and as afraid of their own black shadows as Trump and his white manservants. And no museum is more worth putting on Trump’s hit list than the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) AKA the Blacksonian.
It was October 13, 2016.
I was in Washington, DC for a stand-up show at the synagogue Sixth & I. The NMAAHC had just opened three weeks earlier on September 24. It was immediately one of the hottest tickets in town. I was in DC for only a couple of days, and I was hoping to find a way to get into the museum, even though I didn’t have a ticket. While every museum in the Smithsonian system is free, you have to reserve your tickets, and the NMAAHC was always sold out. I reached out to my friend, DC resident, and political sports journalist at The Nation, Dave Zirin, to see if he knew a way to get me in the museum.
I was fresh off the first season of United Shades of America, so I was experiencing my first blush of fame. I thought that maybe between Dave’s connections and my nascent notoriety as "the KKK guy” that Dave might be able to get me in. I was right. The museum even had someone to help show me around, because they knew I had limited time. The museum is huuuuuuuuge, and I had a stand-up show later that night. Back then, the most popular section of the museum was in the basement. The entire floor was dedicated to telling the story of the British colonialists’ enslavement of Africans. You had to wait in line just to get into the exhibit. Since I didn’t have a ton of time, I skipped that exhibit. I just went to the media section at the top of the museum.
When I arrived at the top floor, the first thing I noticed was an enormous screen that encircled the foyer. It was high above our heads, and it featured clips of Black folks in the media throughout the years. I distinctly remember being awestruck that some of the clips were from events from earlier that year. There was even footage of LeBron James from that summer’s NBA playoffs. I’m not a LeBron fan, and I thought it was cool.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is here to show us all that the story of Black people in America is not a relic of the past. The story of Black people in this country is an ongoing concern. The Black story is a living, breathing entity, and therefore the Blacksonian reflects the current moment as a way to connect the present to the past. There is a direct line from Jack Johnson—the first Black heavyweight champion who was chased out of the country because he refused to play by the white man’s rules—to LeBron James who freely moves his talents from one NBA team to another. The whole museum is a tribute to the fact that from the moment we set foot on this shore, Black people have never stopped fighting for what we deserve, have earned, and enjoy.
As I walked around the floor, I also saw a celebration of Black writers that included my cousin, the three time Hugo award-winning writer N.K. Jemisin. Another exhibit celebrated Black stand-up comedians. I studied the names and album covers for a long time, wondering what it would take to get my name among those greats. Probably more than I can accomplish in this lifetime.
My favorite moment that afternoon happened while I was taking in the Black cinema exhibit. A screen played clips from Blaxploitation films. One of the clips featured actress Pam Grier in a scene from her classic film Coffy. I will never, ever forget how, out of nowhere, a baritone voice said, “Well, lookie here. Lookie here.” I turned in the direction of the voice, and I saw an older, Black man, with a white Afro sitting on a bench, with a look on his face somewhere between awe and ecstasy. Clearly the image of a young Ms. Grier had transported him back to his youth in the early ‘70s. And from the smile on his face, you could see that he was happy to be there. Those of us in the room laughed—more with him than at him. The smile never left his face.
I can’t imagine that anyone has ever made a similar sound at the Louvre upon seeing the Mona Lisa. She’s beautiful, but she ain’t no Pam Grier.
When I finally left the museum, I had one immediate thought. I have to bring my kids here. I was so impressed by the way everything was presented and handled. I also knew that I had to wait for the girls to get a little older. At the time my oldest was 5 and my youngest was about to turn two. I knew I had to wait until they were old enough to appreciate it.
That time finally arrived last summer. I had a business trip to DC to begin filming my piece “The Rookie” for The Washington Post (The written version is in the new book Who is Government?.) I did a few days of work and then I was joined by my family—my wife Melissa, my 13-year-old, my 10-year-old, and my 6-year-old who hadn’t even been a sparkle in my eye when I first visited the NMAAHC. I was so excited to take them.
You know how you build things up in your mind and then they happen and they can't live up to the fantasy that you created? We all go through that. It can be a huge bummer. But it can also be a life lesson not to let your expectations overwhelm reality.
Welp, that day running around the museum with my family was damn near perfect. It was in fact better than I could have imagined. Each kid got what they needed out of the museum. Each kid understood that what they were witnessing was a wide variety of experiences of Black America. They understood—thanks to their incredible parents and their equally incredible teachers—that even the painful parts of the Black experience are necessary to tell the tale. They were excited to learn about things they didn’t know about. They were also excited to learn more about things that they thought they knew about. They were excited to see people in the museum that they actually know, like N.K. Jemisin and their dad’s favorite band, Living Colour. They understood that the Black beauty in the museum is intertwined with the suffering. My kids understood that Black people sweat innovation and invention like Patrick Ewing in an NBA playoff game.
And then there was the basement.
When we went there was no line that you had to wait in to get into the basement exhibit on enslavement. Over the years, whenever I have heard people talk about that part of the NMAAHC, their eyes get wide. There tone drops. They use words like “intense” and “overwhelming.” When we first arrived at the museum, my 10-year-old somewhat excitedly said she wanted to see that part right away. Melissa and I were torn. What if it was as intense as adults had said it was? Could our girls handle it? Was it even appropriate for children? We even discussed a plan where I would go down first to check it out. Eventually—mostly because the day was running away from us—we just decided that it was okay for the two oldest girls to take it in. The two girls understood that if at any point it got too rough for them that we could leave, no questions asked. I was their escort.
We had nothing to be worried about. The exhibit strikes the perfect balance of bracing information with colorful, eye-catching, and immersive installations that kept all of us informed and engaged. At one point my 10-year-old saw an exhibit on Harriet Tubman and she ran towards it like it was a ride at Disneyland. She was excited to learn more about this person that she had only read about in books. I was so proud. It sort of made me wonder if the people who were so affected were just raised differently than I was and differently than my kids are being raised. I remember watching the groundbreaking miniseries Roots when I was a kid. I’ve been reading to my kids about Black folks’ painful history since I found the age-appropriate books to do it. Maybe it isn’t the museum that is “intense.” Maybe it is just an indicator of how necessary the museum is.
There were two exhibits that we didn’t spend much time in: a tribute to Emmitt Till that featured his actual casket and a life-size model of the underbelly of a slave ship, where kidnapped Africans were held during the treacherous transatlantic slave trade. The wooden boards under our feet creaked as we walked on them. My girls were understandably not ready for that. But that’s okay. At the time I thought to myself, We will just have to come back someday.
And then last week, President Pouty Mouth finally discovered the Smithsonian museums. President Trump unleashed an executive order that should unequivocally let us know, once and for all, that Make America Great Again should really be Make America North Korea… But Whiter. While the order is signed by Trump, it is clearly the work of Satan protege Stephen Miller. You can feel the glee with which SStephen wrote it. I’m guessing he wrote it while in a bathtub filled with warm immigrant tears. The tears are warm because they are the freshly cried tears of undocumented children whose parents have just been disappeared to El Salvador. SStephen was probably dictating the order to one of their mothers while having her write it in her own blood. SStephen was probably looking at this ghoulish image of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem posing in front of men, many of whom have been disappeared from their communities with no evidence of any crimes committed.
That’s just my educated guess, based on what I know about SStephen.
The executive order has the ridiculous title of “Restoring Truth and Sanity To American History.” Check out this epically uneducated opening section:
Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light. Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed. Rather than fostering unity and a deeper understanding of our shared past, the widespread effort to rewrite history deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame, disregarding the progress America has made and the ideals that continue to inspire millions around the globe. (emphasis mine)
The hate-filled missive meanders around until it makes it very clear that the intention of this executive order is to whitewash and mansplain the Smithsonian museums. It specifically names the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Blacksonian. It even targets the not-yet-open Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum. There is some doggrel about making sure the museum only honors women, which is the administration's way to make sure that it gets in some of its favorite fascism ingredient: transphobia. They also pledge to reinstall some of the statues of and monuments to the slaveholders and genociders that were removed in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police.
Let me make it Malcom X plain here. The museums of the Smithsonian are not broken. If anything, the efforts of the last few years have made them better and better. They incorporate many perspectives and many examples of America. In fact, the NMAAHC is doing its job so well that it is regularly ranked as one of the most popular of the Smithsonian museums. My family and I went to several Smithsonian museums while we were there. We enjoyed all of them. If you can’t take seeing images of successful, thriving, and contributing Black, Brown, Asian, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ folks in your museum then you just stay home and wait until Kid Rock comes to your town. Because of his racism, President Elon’s Valet would rather break the museum that is working well than let it thrive. Trump and his crew prefer white failure to Black success. I speak for all Americans who didn’t vote for Trump when I say that the hidden figures of American history are out of hiding and they ain’t going back.
I’m not normally a “Call your congress person!” guy. But here we are. We have to let our elected officials know that this executive order is absolute bullshit. And while you are on that call, ask about all the people who are being targeted by federal agents for no good or even legal reason. Mahmoud Khalil isn’t the only person who has been taken.
And if you can, please get to the museums of the Smithsonian—any of them—to show that you support museums that tell the truth about America. If you can’t get to the Smithsonian, then get to the museums in your town. Many of them have free days, if you can’t afford to pay the admission. And if they don’t have free days, then get to your local library and tell a librarian, thank you! Or do the same with a school teacher. Now is the time to celebrate and support the people and the institutions that want us to be smart, curious, and neighborly Americans. And if that doesn’t sound like your kind of America, then here is the link to Kid Rock’s tour.
Who’s with me?
You’re With Me
I’m Back on Celebrity Jeopardy!
THIS Wednesday, April 2 at 9p/8c I’m back competing on Celebrity Jeopardy! I’m in the semi-finals with actor Jackie Tohn and my friend, comedian Margaret Cho! I don’t look half-bad in that picture.
April Office Hours: Let’s Talk About Jeopardy! with Robin Miner-Swartz
Thanks to everyone who came to our March Office Hours with special guest Anna Sale! We did that one using Substack’s live video feature, and it went well. So let’s do it again this month.
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Of course, they are. That's one of the ways to take control of our country's past. It's standard for authoritarian governments. They'll be after the history textbooks, too. They're going to make all history books look like the ones in Alabama x 10.
Kamau, I have to agree enthusiastically to (at least) two of your comments:
1. Living Colour is my favorite band!
2. NMAAHC is an unparalleled life experience that does a wonderful job of showing how history is still alive today. My wife and I spent a whole day there and were so taken by it that we went back for a second day, even though we had only two days in DC. (This was when you could go to their website at exactly 7 a.m. and get one of the 200-300 same-day tickets that they kept in reserve. They were sold out by about 7:10.) We started at the bottom and worked our way up to the top floor, as the museum is designed. When we were approaching the end of the flow, someone near us pointed to a photo and said, "Oh look, there's Suzanne!" (I don't remember her actual name.) A minute or two later, a woman comes up the stairs and her friends all say, "Look, Suzanne, they have your picture here!" She said, "I didn't know they had that photo," and proceeded to tell all her friends plus anyone else who was lucky enough to be nearby, as we were, the full story of how she and a few other people managed to escape from the rubble of the collapsed World Trade Center on 9/11, as shown in the photo. I went back to the hotel riding on a cloud and crying at the same time. Truly a remarkable experience.