U.S. Constitution Tagged With ‘Harmful Language Alert’ By National Archives

The U.S. National Archives webpage for the nation’s Constitution now has a “harmful language alert” banner at the top of the page.

Yes, really.

This alert shows up for many pages of the U.S. National Archives, linking to a page about “NARA’s Statement on Potentially Harmful Content,” criteria 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.

As The National Pulse noted, the warning does NOT appear on some pages that could be considered more appropriate, such as the page about Jim Crow, which uses the N-word at least half a dozen times.

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