Dismissing the President's House as little more than an "identity museum," Rothstein asserts that it was "designed to affirm a particular group's claims" and calls the exhibit an "ineffectual mishmash" that has reached "new lows."
The esteemed critic obviously missed the point of the exhibit.
Rothstein argues that the commemoration, by focusing on slavery, loses sight of other important history. You know, real American history.
Like more about George Washington, for one. The father of our country, America's foremost patriot. Military man. President. Name and image affixed to every stamp, currency, school and monument you can possibly imagine.
Except that a narrow little inconvenient truth surfaced as plans were made to build a president's house memorial. Something conveniently omitted from my history books: Washington unapologetically owned more than 300 Africans, nine of whom he shuttled back and forth between his Virginia plantation and his presidential home in Philadelphia.
"The President's House site reminds us how unfinished the story is," said St. Joseph's University professor Randall Miller, one of the project's historians. "The liberty documents the Founding Fathers drafted weren't simply about parchment, it was about what they did with them. In some instances, they weren't keeping the promises they made to themselves and to prosperity."
The quest for American freedom exposed our Founding Fathers as hypocritical and, yes, downright inhumane when it came to the institution of slavery. See, true history doesn't come wrapped neatly in a red, white, and blue bow. History can be messy.
Which is why it took eight years of debate, discussion, dissension, and protest to determine the best way to balance the story.
But, no. Rothstein would have us believe that the President's House distorts history.
