Race Obsession Goes from Repulsive to Idiotic

You can't make this up, and wouldn't want to.

Just five minutes ago, I saw this article in the NYT: “Leading Museums Remove Native Displays Amid New Federal Rules.” The subhead is, “The American Museum of Natural History is closing two major halls as museums around the nation respond to updated policies from the Biden administration.” It starts like this:

The American Museum of Natural History will close two major halls exhibiting Native American objects, its leaders said on Friday, in a dramatic response to new federal regulations that require museums to obtain consent from tribes before displaying or performing research on cultural items.

Are museum exhibits on the Civil War required to obtain consent from descendants of those who fought? Are museum exhibits about the discovery of America required to obtain consent from Columbus’s great, great, great, etc. grandchildren? Are exhibits about astronomy required to obtain consent from Andromeda?

Good grief.

“The halls we are closing are artifacts of an era when museums such as ours did not respect the values, perspectives and indeed shared humanity of Indigenous peoples,” Sean Decatur, the museum’s president, wrote in a letter to the museum’s staff on Friday morning.

I have very little clue about what that actually says; at best, I can gather only that it’s a slapdash of Woke gibberish. But I did note one thing it doesn’t say: It doesn’t say that the exhibits weren’t a realistic and educational depiction of how Native Americans lived. Isn’t that what museums are for? I guess not — not anymore, anyway.

“Actions that may feel sudden to some may seem long overdue to others.”

Translation: The same fruitcake faction that spent years demanding that the Washington Redskins change their name — a faction that never once commanded a majority among Native Americans but was near and dear to the obsessive race hucksters who run the Washington Post and (now) the Democratic Party — has been busy finding something else to complain about. When the Culture of Victimization takes over, this is what you’re going to get. (P.S. The Team Formerly Known as the Redskins bombed again this year under its new name, but at least will be getting a high draft choice).

The museum is closing galleries dedicated to the Eastern Woodlands and the Great Plains this weekend, and covering a number of other display cases featuring Native American cultural items as it goes through its enormous collection to make sure it is in compliance with the new federal rules, which took effect this month.

Museums around the country have been covering up displays as curators scramble to determine whether they can be shown under the new regulations. The Field Museum in Chicago covered some display cases, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University said it would remove all funerary belongings from exhibition and the Cleveland Museum of Art has covered up some cases.

When I was a kid, my parents took us to visit the Native American exhibit at the Smithsonian. I was fascinated by it. It never portrayed Native Americans or Native American ways of living in a negative light. The main impression I can remember taking away was that these dudes had to be tough and smart and brave to live out on the plains hunting buffalo — really strong and dangerous animals I wouldn’t have wanted to mess with. Will the next batch of ten year-old suburban kids have the chance to learn that or anything else about the trials of Native American life?

This move isn’t merely a bow to political correctness. It’s a blow to what kids can and should learn about a major part of how the country was settled.

But the action by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which draws 4.5 million visitors a year, making it one of the most visited museums in the world, sends a powerful message to the field. The museum’s anthropology department is one of the oldest and most prestigious in the United States, known for doing pioneering work under a long line of curators including Franz Boas and Margaret Mead. The closures will leave nearly 10,000 square feet of exhibition space off-limits to visitors; the museum said it could not provide an exact timeline for when the reconsidered exhibits would reopen.

“Some objects may never come back on display as a result of the consultation process,” Decatur said in an interview. “But we are looking to create smaller-scale programs throughout the museum that can explain what kind of process is underway.”

Like I said, it’s going to be a huge loss. Does anyone go to the museum to look at “what kind of process is underway?” It’s just word-salad nonsense from some low wattage but trendy bureaucrat.

And why?

The changes are the result of a concerted effort by the Biden administration to speed up the repatriation of Native American remains, funerary objects and other sacred items. The process started in 1990 with the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, which established protocols for museums and other institutions to return human remains, funerary objects and other holdings to tribes. But as those efforts have dragged on for decades, the law was criticized by tribal representatives as being too slow and too susceptible to institutional resistance….

“What might seem out of alignment for some people is because of a notion that museums affix in amber descriptions of the world,” Decatur said. “But museums are at their best when they reflect changing ideas….”

“This is human rights work, and we need to think about it as that and not as science,” said Candace Sall, the director of the museum of anthropology at the University of Missouri.

And there you have it. Science out, “human rights work” in. (This from the crowd that’s constantly bellowing at conservatives to “follow the science”).

The sad, perhaps tragic, irony is that it’s going to betray science while doing nothing for any sane understanding of human rights. And worse, it’s going to subvert one of the most enjoyable, fun, and educational opportunities that whites, blacks, international visitors, and most of the country will ever have to learn about and grow respect for Native American life.

The problem here is less New Age Wokeness — although certainly that too — than it is good old-fashioned stupidity.