“I don’t want a situation,” said Representative Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, “where whites go to the original museum, African-Americans go to the African-American museum, Indians go to the Indian museum, Hispanics go to the Latino American museum. That’s not America.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates rejoins: "Much more preferable is a world where we all just go to the white museum."
I should add that I'm not entirely sure why Rep. Moran thinks only Hispanics would or should go to the Latino American museum. I'm interested in other cultures! I like learning about people whose backgrounds differ from my own! Learning about Latino history would probably be really enriching. Maybe Rep. Moran is only interested in learning about
3 comments:
Would you or TNC seriously contend that the existing Smithsonian National Museum of American History is solely about "white history"?
One can support building more specialized museums without making the false claim that the existing museum includes no representation of what will be the focus of the specialized museum. I can argue for the importance of having a Museum of Modern Art in NYC without pretending that the Metropolitan Museum's main building is solely the preserve of non-modern art.
Wow. Moran has been an embarrassment since I was a little kid growing up in his district. Why are people still voting for him twenty years later, again?
KCF,
I used to live in Northern Virginia, and the justification I heard every year for why Moran got re-elected in the general is that the Republicans ran someone too far to the right. This leaves unanswered why Moran never faced a sufficiently strong Democratic primary challenger.
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