One Pamphlet, One Hearing, One Director: Smithsonian Faces Congress Over 'Politeness' Graphic

One graphic — a single page from a Smithsonian online portal listing politeness, objectivity and hard work as traits of white dominant culture — was enough to drag a museum director to a congressional witness table on Tuesday and keep her there for hours. That is the measure of where the fight over how Americans are taught their own history now sits: a handful of bullet points on a website, treated as evidence in a hearing titled Rewriting American History.⁴⁸¹¹

The witness was Dr. Anthea Hartig, director of the National Museum of American History since 2019, summoned by the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency. She did not write the page. She does not run the museum that did. She told the panel, plainly, that “The museum does not take sides.”⁶

Republicans came armed with reproductions of the graphic — and, according to the New York Post, with photographs of what they called overtly sexual transgender exhibits, displayed on easels behind the witness.¹¹

Rep. Brandon Gill, a Texas Republican, asked Hartig whether Mickey Mouse is racist and pushed her on the toolkit itself.³ The graphic, originally published in July 2020 by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture on its Talking About Race online portal, was titled Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness and White Culture. It was pulled down the same year after public backlash. Republicans argued that a federally funded institution listing those traits amounted to an ideological agenda inside taxpayer-supported programming.³¹¹

Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, asked Hartig two short questions: “Dr. Hartig, are you America first? Do you love America?”⁹

Outside the hearing room, the Republican case had a longer spine: a White House report accusing museum leadership of ideological capture by what it called radical activist ideology. The Associated Press headline captured the clash — Hartig rejecting that characterization, the White House standing behind it.²⁶

Hartig's stated position was narrow and consistent. She told the committee she was not familiar with the specific passage, noted that the toolkit was not developed by her museum, and insisted that the institution she runs does not take sides in America's political debates.⁶

That line carried the day — Roll Call framed the entire session as a referendum on whether the hearing itself was “ideological capture” or a “political witch hunt,” a phrase Democrats used to describe the proceeding.⁵

Democrats on the panel argued that the subcommittee was targeting a career museum professional over a document her office did not create — and one that had already been withdrawn years earlier. Maryland Democrat Kweisi Mfume and Texas Democrat Jasmine Crockett both made that case, according to reporting on the hearing.⁵

Democrats also pointed to the broader context: the hearing was triggered by a White House report this month accusing the Smithsonian of institutional capture by radical activist ideology — language critics read as a political opening shot rather than a neutral finding.²⁵

The hearing produced no formal vote, no subpoena and no oversight referral.⁴ That is the only clean outcome of the day.

Two things were being argued at once on Tuesday, and they are easy to confuse.

The first is a narrow factual one. The graphic exists, it was created by a different Smithsonian museum, and it was pulled years ago. The witness before the subcommittee said as much. Several reporting outlets confirmed those points.³⁷¹¹

The second is a structural one. The hearing was not really about a single removed web page. It was about whether the institution as a whole has drifted from what one lawmaker called a balanced telling of America's story — too focused, Republicans said, on “oppressors and the oppressed.”⁸¹⁰ Whether that is a fair reading, a political caricature, or both, is now the live question. Democrats called the framing a witch hunt; Republicans called it long overdue oversight.⁵

Fox News, covering the same hearing, reported that expert witness Mike Gonzalez testified that staff at the National Museum of African American History played what he called a pivotal role in a DEI training guide, even after the institution had previously apologized for a similar whiteness chart.⁷ That testimony was offered in support of the broader institutional critique — not in support of the narrower factual claim that Hartig herself had authored the disputed page.