Trump Wants Harriet Tubman on $2 Bill
The Treasury Department’s decision to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with abolitionist Harriet Tubman was met with mixed results. Donald Trump has weighed in, saying the move was “pure political correctness.”
“Well, Andrew Jackson had a great history and I think it’s very rough when you take somebody off the bill. Andrew Jackson had a history of tremendous success for the country,” Trump said during a town hall on NBC’s “Today Show.”
While he called Tubman “fantastic,” he suggested she appear on a different bill.
“I would love to leave Andrew Jackson and see if we can maybe come up with another denomination. Maybe we do the $2 bill or we do another bill. I don’t like seeing it. Yes, I think it’s pure political correctness,” he said.
Trump joined with his former GOP presidential rival Ben Carson, who called for Tubman on the $2 bill. The neurosurgeon told Fox Business, “I love what she did, but we can find another way to honor her.”
The $2 bill currently features the image of Thomas Jefferson.
Andrew Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, was revered for being the first “common man” elected as president. But the darker side of his legacy includes slave-owning and expelling thousands of Native Americans from their homes, forcing them on the walk now referred to as “The Trail of Tears.”
And while Jackson owned slaves, Tubman’s life mission was to free them. An abolitionist and Union spy, Tubman was responsible for leading hundreds of slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad, an elaborate network of safe houses.
Tubman will become the first person of color and the first woman to grace a U.S. paper currency.
(h/t ABC News)
Reality
By taking a simple suggestion to avoid language or behavior that any particular group of people might feel is unkind or offensive and twist it to be a label for things that you don’t agree with, Donald Trump is simply evoking a tired old Republican trope known as “conservative correctness“.
Who is this offending? Andrew Jackson’s descendants? But with the statement that Tubman should appear on the $2 he is equally offending Thomas Jefferson’s descendants.
And finally, isn’t it interesting that conservatives would be “okay” with a black woman on a bill, as long as it is the most rare bill that the United States prints?
Media
