Glenn Beck freaks out over a Smithsonian exhibit on race because it dares to call Jefferson a slaveowner
Glenn Beck is predictably freaking out over a new exhibit at the Smithsonian that looks at race and racism in the United States through “biological, cultural, and historical points of view.” On his radio show today, Beck specifically attacked a five-minute video featured in an exhibit named “RACE: Are we so different?” for pointing out that Thomas Jefferson was a “slave-holder” when he penned the Declaration of Independence. Beck said he was angered not because “they said that Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, ‘cause it’s technically true,” but because owning slaves was “not the sum total of his work.”
It’s “technically true” that Jefferson owned slaves? Who gave Beck this line? Michele Bachmann?
However, the RACE Project “seeks to expand current thinking about race and human variation and encourage an integrative and comprehensive view of this complex topic.” The project hopes to initiate conversations in order to “challenge how we think about” race and to combat “discrimination and oppression” in American society. As the narrator of the video explains, the exhibit was created “to share the complicated story of race, to unravel fiction from fact, and to encourage meaningful discussions about race in schools, in the workplace, within families and communities.”