Whitewashing the past: The Trump administration’s challenge to Black history

The study of history is a continuous process of reevaluation, a collective effort to understand the past in all its complexity and nuance. For decades, American historians have worked to expand the national narrative beyond a simple story of progress and triumph, integrating the profound and often painful experiences of marginalized groups, especially African Americans. However, during the presidency of Donald Trump, this established academic consensus faced a direct and deliberate challenge. Through a series of administrative actions, public statements, and the promotion of a specific ideological view of the nation’s founding, the administration was widely criticized for what many historians and civil rights advocates have called an act of “historical whitewashing”— a systematic effort to