Melania Trump Criticized for Wearing Colonial-Era Hat in Kenya
FAUX PAS
One historian said it was like showing up to an “Alabama cotton farm in a confederate uniform.”
Carlo Allegri/Carlo Allegri/Reuters
First Lady Melania Trump donned a white pith helmet during a safari in Kenya on Friday, which some claim is “evocative of colonialists,” CNN reports. The network reported that the helmet was often worn by “European militaries in their colonies throughout Africa and in India,” and soon became a “popular sun hat” for European tourists in the 1930s. Matt Carotenuto, a historian at St. Lawrence University, compared wearing the hat to showing up to an “Alabama cotton farm in a confederate uniform.” “Her attire is a signal of her understanding of what Africa is in 2018,” Kim Yi, a politics professor at the University of California, Riverside, told The New York Times. “It’s tired and it’s old and it’s inaccurate.” Trump, whose sartorial choices have gotten her in trouble in the past, is currently on her first extended international tour and will visit Egypt as her next and last stop.
