The Times reports on the effort to put a Latino-American museum on the Mall. Jim Moran is not in favor:
"I don't want a situation," said Representative Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, "where whites go to the original museum, African-Americans go to the African-American museum, Indians go to the Indian museum, Hispanics go to the Latino American museum. That's not America."
Much more preferable is a world where we all just go to the white museum. That's basically what "America" was before the current movement.
I'd hear more from those in the public history field, and people with a better knowledge of Latino-American history on the appropriateness of a museum. But I think we have to begin by understanding that the problem originates not in our urge to expand the story, but in our urge to shrink it.
My off the cuff thought is that there should be a Latino-American museum and the Museum of American History should do a better job.
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