Vidya Sethuraman
India Post News Service
On March 30, American Social Media (ACoM) held an online briefing, inviting museum directors, civil rights advocates, and veteran media professionals to discuss how the official narrative is becoming increasingly homogenized as the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, and the role of social media and minority media in safeguarding historical truth.
Ann Burroughs, President and Executive Director of the Japanese American National Museum (JANM), stated that mainstream media has long failed to adequately present the historical experiences of ethnic communities, and that the work of ethnic museums and social media is essentially that of “guardians of memory.” She pointed out that anniversaries are never neutral moments because they shape collective social memory and influence how future generations understand “who belongs to this country and under what conditions they are recognized.” Burroughs emphasized that museums have faced unprecedented political pressure in recent years, including demands to adjust interpretations, avoid discussing “inconvenient history,” and even threats of funding cuts. She pointed out that attacks on cultural institutions are essentially an erosion of the First Amendment and public discourse space.
Margaret Huang, a senior fellow at The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Human Rights, shared her experience, pointing out that the U.S. education system has long neglected key histories such as the Reconstruction period, Japanese incarceration, and the Civil Rights Movement, causing many people to realize, as adults, that they have “never been taught American history. She cited research from the Southern Poverty Law Center, pointing out that there are still more than 2,000 Confederate monuments across the United States. These statues and names mostly appeared 60 to 80 years after the end of the Civil War, with the aim of countering the Civil Rights Movement and reinforcing the supremacist narrative, rather than simply commemorating history.
