Clarence Page: Don’t let the war on woke lull us all to sleep

History is written to be argued about, I have often said. Recent efforts by the Trump administration’s culture war have offered numerous examples.

In recent days, we have seen Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a break from the administration’s war against Iran, announce the re-installation of a Confederate memorial that had been removed from Arlington National Cemetery in 2023.

History buffs may recall that the sculpture had been removed as part of a congressionally mandated effort to rid military bases and sites of Confederate names and images.

If you are one of those innocents who believe, as I once did, that the Civil War ended in 1865, guess again.

Hegseth’s move is only the latest of many by President Trump’s administration to restore Confederate names and symbols that had been removed as part of what some sarcastically call “the Great Awokening” of racial reconciliation efforts following George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

The sculpture by Moses Ezekiel, often called without irony “The Reconciliation Monument,” will be returned to Arlington National Cemetery near his burial site.

“It never should have been taken down by woke lemmings.” Hegseth posted on X. “Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history — we honor it.”

Yet Hegeth's record of "honoring" history is problematic, at best. Last year he issued a controversial order to scrub all materials related to race and gender from Arlington National Cemetery's website.

“History is written by the winners,” as an old saying goes. And while Hegseth may believe he is the winner in question, I believe most Americans would prefer our national monuments, museums and markers of historical memory to tell the whole story.

After the original memorial was removed from Arlington, it was replaced with a marker explaining that it had portrayed a "nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery." These took the form of a Black female "Mammy" figure and a Black man in uniform, "a faithful negro body-servant following his young master" to battle. (That's how Col. Hilary Herbert, the ex-Confederate soldier and chairman of the committee that installed the monument, described it around the time it was dedicated in 1914.)

Some folks, particularly slavery descendants such as I, still shake our heads at the glorification of the “Lost Cause” that was so ferociously and seditiously fought to resist any limitation on the right of some humans in this country to own and exploit other humans.

Looking at it, I can’t help but wonder what those faithful slaves were thinking on their way to combat.

Hegseth, among many others, has some peculiar notions of what “reconciliation” means, especially when so much in modern eyes remains to be reconciled. That’s why it is important to tell, as much as possible, both sides of such complicated conflicts and, one hopes, avoid future conflicts.

In the spirit of that pursuit of the whole truth, I find it painfully ironic that Hegseth’s restoration effort comes on the heels of Lonnie Bunch's announced retirement from his position as the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

The Trump administration has accused the Smithsonian leadership of presenting a ”radical view” of American history and threatened to withhold federal funds and support.

I have always known Bunch to be a cheerful and scholarly intellectual and organizer who probably will be remembered most as the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016 and quickly became one of the capital city’s most popular must-see attractions.

I have known him since he served as head of the Chicago Historical Society from 2001 to 2005.

The Smithsonian has traditionally operated independently of the party in power, but Team Trump seems to love to defy the traditions of his office, especially when they can be branded “woke.”

The biggest bum rap they have promoted is the idea that the Smithsonian teaches children to hate America and offers a pessimistic view, devoid of hope.

The Interior Department recently threatened to cut funding for the Smithsonian facilities, NBC reported, due to its “radical ideology” that weakens “shared American identity.”

Did those folks actually visit the museum?

That’s quite the opposite of my family’s impression after numerous visits.

Even the exhibits regarding slavery ultimately deliver the message that, as bad — miserably bad — as race relations and other conditions might have been over the centuries, reasons for hope endure.

If anything, Trump and Co. should appreciate the visions of hope, resilience and achievement that we should all build on today as we try to make what the preamble to our Constitution called “a more perfect union.”

The ideology is no more “radical” than that of James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglass, whose ideologies only strengthened our “shared American identity.”

In other words, we’re all Americans. As Martin Luther King Jr. and other great leaders have said, let us not let our few differences get in the way of the many things we share in common.

And I don’t have to be “woke,” however you define it, to appreciate that.

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