A sane person might be shocked to learn that when pulling up scanned versions of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and Bill of Rights on the website of the National Archives, he or she will find a “harmful language alert” attached to those documents. The link takes one to the National Archives Records Administration’s statement of “potentially harmful content” defined as reflecting “racist, sexist, ableist, misogynistic/misogynoir, and xenophobic opinions and attitudes” or being “discriminatory towards or exclude diverse views on sexuality, gender, religion, and more,” among other criteria.
According to RT, archivists are instructed to inform users of the existence of such “harmful content,” and update descriptions with “more respectful terms” and make an institutional commitment to “diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.”
Last July 4, during its annual reading of the Declaration of Independence, National Public Radio (NPR) for the first time issued a disclaimer saying that “the words in the document land differently” after “last summer’s protests and our national reckoning on race,” referring to protests following George Floyd’s murder. At the time, NPR issued several tweets charging that the Declaration contained “a number of flaws and hypocrisies,” such as “racist slurs against indigenous Americans,” whom the Declaration referred to as “merciless Indian savages,” in its list of complaints made to the Crown. (https://www.rt.com/usa/534197-declaration-independence-constitution-harmful/)
In a sharp RT commentary the same day, American journalist Robert Bridge pointed to the contradiction in the fact that liberal Democrats, whose views are reflected by NPR, and whose history on civil rights is checkered at best, have chosen a period of U.S. history 245 years ago to rush to the defense of American Indians. To put things in context, he said, recall that American colonists were in constant warfare with Indian populations, and in the Declaration accused King George III of inciting the Indians to violence to provoke “domestic insurrection against us.” Apparently, the fact that 56 dead white men are the signers of the Declaration is a terrible problem for these outraged liberals as well. But, according to an article in the National Pulse site quoted by Gregg Jarrett’s website Sept. 7, while the National Archives issue a “harmful language alert” for the U.S. Constitution, it issues no such warnings on an article about Jim Crow which uses vile, racist language referring to African-Americans and Jews. (https://thegreggjarrett.com/national-archives-website-flags-u-s-constitution-with-harmful-language-alert/)
