A provocatively titled opinion piece about a former United States president known to have racist views has triggered a backlash from social media users after The Atlantic published a story titled “Uncancel Woodrow Wilson” as Black History Month gets underway.
David Frum, an author and writer for The Atlantic, starts off his Feb. 2 article by stating that Wilson, “despised as a racist by today’s left and a tyrant by today’s right…championed a set of values that our politics sorely lack.”
Frum further writes in support of the 28th president, who died in February 1924, pointing out that Wilson’s fellow presidents, such as Harry Truman and Richard Nixon, held him in high regard.
‘“Truman wrote, ‘In many ways, Wilson was the greatest of the greats,’” according to The Atlantic’s article.
While not denying Wilson’s bigotries, Frum gave the former president credit for championing progressive reform in the U.S. and liberal internationalism in other countries, according to the piece.
“Wilson was the first American president to perceive and explain how American power could anchor the peace of a future democratic world,” Frum also wrote, referring to Wilson as “the founder and definer of American world leadership.”
However, several users of X, formerly Twitter, denounced the piece and held different views of the former president, whose administration history remembers for having failed to address Jim Crow disenfranchisement, dismissing Black activists like W.E.B. Du Bois and segregating the federal government, according to The Woodrow Wilson House.
In response to Frum’s post sharing the controversial opinion piece, one X user referred to Wilson as “the second-worst president in U.S. history” as well as “racist, technocratic, and open hater of the Constitution.”
Frum notes in his opinion piece that Wilson’s name has been removed from memorials and schools across the U.S., including his own…
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