The Greatest Showman' is the latest Hollywood whitewashing of America's racist past | Opinion

"Here’s how the real P.T. Barnum got his start: He heard about a slave named Joice Heth. Her owners said she was 161 years old and claimed that she was the nurse of George Washington. Heth was instructed to tell the many onlookers who came to see her about her relationship with the country’s first president. “In fact,” she said to crowds in Philadelphia, “I raised him.” In 1835, Barnum visited Philadelphia and bought Heth —“I became the proprietor of the negress”— and began to display her at Niblo’s, a theater at Prince Street and Broadway in Manhattan. Barnum bought Heth for $1,000, but after he and William Niblo printed handbills and took out ads all over town —“The greatest curiosity in the world”— they cleared more than $1,500 a week, according to Barnum’s autobiography."

'The Greatest Showman' is the latest Hollywood whitewashing of America's racist past | Opinion

When we whitewash history, we risk two things: First, we diminish the crimes committed by whites. Second, we minimize the suffering of people of color.

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