Vice President JD Vance falsely denied that Black history is being erased from public spaces under the Trump-Vance administration during a televised interview on “The View.”
While being pressed by hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin, Vance was challenged on the administration’s policies to censor or remove Black history exhibits across the country, and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs for Black Americans as a result of President Donald Trump‘s executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs, as well as cuts to the federal workforce, where Blacks have overrepresented for decades.
“They’re taking down the actual history that happened in this country. Slavery happened, all kinds of stuff happened, and it seems that it has been very easy for this administration to remove that and also to denigrate Black folks who have worked their behinds off to get this American Dream,” said Goldberg.
Hostin, a former federal prosecutor, added, “Black history is getting erased from public spaces. Black voter districts are being dismantled. Black leaders are being sidelined from our ranks. Where do Americans of color fit in this vision? Because it doesn’t seem like we fit.”
Vance seemed to struggle to answer the pressing questions about Black history, voting rights, and race in America, initially pivoting to the topic of crime.
“The United States of America has seen a radical decrease in violent crimes, sexual assaults, and in murders. We have tried to take the crime issue seriously, in part because we believe everybody, whether you’re Black or white or rich or poor, deserves to live in a safe neighborhood,” said the 50th Vice President of the United States, who is considered a top contender for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 2028.
“Where does the crime step in? This is not about crime,” Goldberg interjected.
When pressed further, Vance denied that the White House made efforts to eliminate Black history, telling “The View” hosts, “Black history is not erased from public spaces.”
But the vice president’s remarks about Black history simply aren’t true — and there are federal lawsuits to prove it.
Last week, on June 12, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reinstall exhibits and signs on topics like slavery and climate change that it had removed from parks and monuments nationwide because they “do not align with its preferred narrative.” The lawsuit, brought by groups representing park conservationists, historians, and scientists, argues that the U.S. Department of the Interior has been engaged in a “sustained campaign to erase history and undermine science.”
In March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order that called on the Department of the Interior to ensure that public museums, monuments, memorials, statues, and other properties “do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living,” accusing a “revisionist movement” of underming the “remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
Most recently, in Pennsylvania, the Trump administration was ordered in February to restore a slavery exhibit that it had removed related to the enslaved Black people once legally owned by President George Washington.
“JD Vance can play confused on television all he wants, but we’ve seen this administration spend 18 months erasing Black history from our military, museums, and monuments,” said Brandon Weathersby, a spokesperson for American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic research think tank.
He told theGrio, “We’ve seen it all happen with our own eyes, and when Black communities across the country celebrate Juneteenth on Friday, no one is holding their breath for the Trump administration to even acknowledge it. At every turn, this administration has betrayed and left behind Black Americans, and Vance going on TV to deny it doesn’t change a damn thing.”
Patrice Willoughby, chief of policy and legislative affairs at the NAACP, told theGrio of Vance’s remarks, “His inability to really acknowledge, full frontally, the question of Black history being removed is emblematic of the Jim Crow 2.0 and the way that it looks today.”
She explained, “Racism today doesn’t look like it used to, but it’s very much focused on denying that problems exist, and then also eliminating the instrumentalities that would correct them.”
Willoughby continued, “The assault on Black people, Black presence, Black history has been done surreptitiously through things like removing the historical framework from public spaces, and then also efforts to remove the infrastructure that corrected the history of racism in this country.”
Dreisen Heath, a reparations researcher, policymaker, and founder of the Why We Can’t Wait Reparations Network, told theGrio, “Erasing Black history from public spaces is not only about what comes off the wall, but it is also about who gets pushed out the door. This administration stripped more than 30 signs from Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, the site of John Brown’s raid, because they referenced racial discrimination and white hostility toward formerly enslaved people; a federal judge had to order them restored.”
“That same administration eliminated 95,000 federal jobs held by Black women in a single year — a group that is 12 percent of the federal workforce because our ancestors labored to get there,” Heath added. “When Vance says Black history is not being erased from public spaces, we know he’s lying, and we have receipts and court orders to prove it.”
