‘White pride rally’: Jasmine Crockett hits back at Republicans’ targeting of Smithsonian museum

The Texas Democrat defended the Smithsonian’s presentation of slavery and racism in America, arguing that efforts to challenge those exhibits amount to an attempt to erase history.

During a congressional hearing led by Republicans accusing the Smithsonian of “rewriting American history” and attempting to “reshape the past” through the National Museum of American History, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) dismissed it as a “white pride rally.”

“Welcome to the Republicans’ white pride rally disguised as a congressional hearing,” said Crockett during the hearing held on Tuesday by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency. “It might be uncomfortable for some people on this committee to hear about the true history of America, and I hate that for them. But facts are facts.”

The American History Museum has come back into the spotlight after the White House published a July 4 report accusing the Smithsonian of “extreme political activism,” taking issue with how the museum displays historical facts about slavery and racism in America.

Crockett, a former civil rights attorney, pushed back against Republicans’ umbrage with the Smithsonian, reminding them of the not-so-distant past when Black Americans, Indigenous populations, women, and people with disabilities faced discrimination, violence, and death under the guise of white supremacy and perceived American patriotism.

“It’s a fact that there is a violent, exclusionary, discriminatory, sexist, and racist part of American history, where our indigenous populations were forcibly displaced from their land, where thousands of Black people were unjustly lynched, where Black people were denied the right to vote, and they still trying to do it today,” said Crockett.

She continued, “Women needed their husbands’ permission to open a bank account, where people with disabilities were routinely excluded from schools, workplaces, and public life, where four little Black girls were murdered by the KKK at the 16th Street Baptist Church, and a lot of this wasn’t that long ago.”

Driving home the point of the past not being so long ago, Crockett noted that three of the four Black young girls murdered in the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, would be 77, and the other 74, if they were alive today.

The congresswoman also noted that Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to desegregate an all-white school, is only 71, asserting, “More than 100 members of Congress serving right now are older than her.”

She added, “So, attacks on the Smithsonian or any other institution that’s willing to tell the true history of America is not only an attempt to rewrite history; it’s an attempt to erase history.”

Adding to her point about why discussions around matters of race in America remain critical today, Crockett reminded the committee that reports from the Justice Department dating back to 2019 found that white domestic terrorism was on the rise and was the greatest threat to national security. Those reports, she noted, had been “deleted” by the Trump administration.

“I don’t understand this fetish that these white guys with fragile egos have with trying to feel oppressed,” said Crockett. “It reminds me of the same people MLK was referring to when he said, ‘They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth towards a middle class utopia embodying racial harmony, but unfortunately, this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity.”