This Is Not Normal: Erasing Slavery is Erasing Us

"To minimize slavery is not just historical erasure—it is fresh violence. Truth is care. Denial is harm." — Mary Coughlin

Outrage at the Highest Level

The President of the United States has said the Smithsonian is “out of control” because it teaches “how bad slavery was.” He wants more “brightness,” less “darkness.”

Let’s be honest: this is not about brightness. This is about blindness.
Blindness to history.
Blindness to truth.
Blindness to the trauma that still reverberates through families, communities, and every system in this nation.

This is not only arrogant—it is evil.

Trauma-Informed Lens: Generational Scars

On a recent call preparing for the upcoming NICU Equity Summit—where I am humbled to serve as keynote—I listened as two Black women shared their experiences.

One mother, who had a baby in the NICU, spoke about the challenge of choosing to breastfeed. She received no support from her family. Why? Because in her lineage, women had been wet nurses to white babies, leaving their own children underfed and unheld. That history—slavery’s history—left scars so deep that breastfeeding itself carried the weight of trauma.

That is what racism does. It doesn’t just scar the past; it imprints the present.

When a President minimizes slavery, he is not only erasing history—he is erasing the ongoing pain, the living scars, the choices families are forced to navigate today.

In trauma-informed care, we know: minimizing trauma is itself another trauma.

Caring Science: The Courage to Face the Darkness

Caring Science teaches us that caring is an act of courage. It is standing in the fullness of suffering and saying: I will not look away.

The President tells us to look away. He tells us the suffering of slavery was exaggerated, that the museums that tell these stories are “out of control.” But the real sickness is not in truth-telling—it is in denial.

Caring without truth is not caring at all. It is complicity.

BUFFER: A Framework for Defiant Truth

• Belonging: To belong, Black families must see their stories honored—not erased.

• Understanding: Without slavery, we cannot understand America’s health disparities, inequities, or present wounds.

• Forgiveness: There can be no forgiveness where there is no truth.

• Frameworks: TIDC teaches us that to heal, we must face pain head-on. This nation should be held to the same standard.

• Equanimity: Facing truth is strength. Denying it is cowardice.

• Respect: Minimizing slavery is the most flagrant disrespect imaginable.

Naming It Plainly

This is racism.
This is erasure.
This is gaslighting.
And yes, this is insanity.

Only a mind unmoored from reality could claim that slavery was “not so bad.” Only a heart hardened by racism could frame truth-telling as “out of control.”

We Refuse

We refuse to be gaslit into silence.
We refuse to collude in forgetting.
We refuse to let whitewashed lies stand in the place of living truth.

We will remember. We will teach. We will resist.

Because slavery was not “not so bad.”
It was horrific.
It was dehumanizing.
It was foundational to this nation’s wealth and wounds alike.

And no President—blind, arrogant, or evil—can erase that truth.

We remember. We resist. We will not be erased.

Mary