The National Archives introduced a harmful content warning for it’s online catalogue of documents saying that “some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions,” according to its website.
The National Archive elaborated: “Some items may: reflect racist, sexist, ableist, misogynistic/misogynoir, and xenophobic opinions and attitudes; be discriminatory towards or exclude diverse views on sexuality, gender, religion, and more; include graphic content of historical events such as violent death, medical procedures, crime, wars/terrorist acts, natural disasters and more; demonstrate bias and exclusion in institutional collecting and digitization policies.”
The organization’s task force determined that America’s founding documents “laud wealthy white men in the nation’s founding while marginalizing BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color), women and other communities,” Christianity Daily reported.
The task force’s report added that the National Archive’s “reverential, quasi-religious treatment of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights does not adequately reflect a full history of the founding of the United States.”
The National Archives held a meeting with 800 of its employees May 11 with its racism task force, Christianity Today reported. During that meeting, a member presenting “told a story about a black congressional staffer who objected to the ‘charters of freedom’ label assigned to the historical documents” displayed in the National Archives Rotunda in Washington D.C., saying that he felt “alienated” because they were not his “charters of freedom.”
Many members of Congress recently signed a letter addressed to the head of the National Archives stating that they are “deeply concerned” with the new harmful content warning on American historical documents, “including on seminal documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution.” None of Nevada’s representatives signed this letter.
The National Archives includes the warning on all documents across its collection of records of the U.S. federal government, according to PolitiFact. The founding documents were not singled out. The warning automatically appears on every page of the online catalog, according to the National Archives communication staff. None of the documents are altered or censored in any way.
“NARA’s records span the history of the United States, and it is our charge to preserve and make available these historical records,” according to the National Archives website.
