September 6, 2021
-The National Pulse
The webpage of the U.S. National Archives that hosts the nation’s own Constitution has a “harmful language alert” for readers at the top of the page.
The alert now appears on many pages on the archives.org website, and links to a page entitled “NARA’s Statement on Potentially Harmful Content,” which they define as:
- 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.
Bizarrely, the warning does not appear on a page about Jim Crow, which has no fewer than 6 uses of the word “n*gg*r.” Nor does it appear on a page with the word “k*ke.”
It does, however, appear on the page of the U.S. Constitution:
