National Archives Now Display ‘Trigger Warnings’ Before Reading Constitution, Declaration of Independence

By KAZ Vorpal (Flickr: Declaration of Independence, with Firearm) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The National Archives now displays a “trigger warning” before website visitors are allowed to read American’s founding documents. The warning alerts website visitors reading the Constitution and The Declaration of Independence that the documents may contain “harmful language” before they’re led to the online documents.

The Daily Wire reports:

Digital copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, most notably, now feature a “Harmful Language Alert,” which appears at the top of the page, and directs users to a National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) statement on “potentially harmful content.”

The NARA didn’t specifically name what from the documents is considered “harmful language” however NARA says that documents containing “racist, discriminatory, exclude diverse views on sexuality, gender, religion, or include graphic content” could be hit with the label.

Trigger warnings are listed as just one of a number of solutions to the problem of providing historical documents to an increasingly “diverse community,” the NARA notes, and are part of an “institutional commitment” to “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

“The Catalog and web pages contain some content that may be harmful or difficult to view,” NARA said in a statement released at the end of July. “NARA’s records span the history of the United States, and it is our charge to preserve and make available these historical records. As a result, some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions. In addition, some of the materials may relate to violent or graphic events and are preserved for their historical significance.”

When a commentator on social media suggested that it was outrageous that America’s founding documents would require a trigger warning, the National Archives was quick to respond by noting that the alert is “not connected to any specific record, but appears at the top of the page while you are using the online Catalog.”



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