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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Joint Chiefs is now all-white, all-male, overseeing a force that is 20 percent female and 43 percent people of color
The Atlantic @TheAtlanticAs the Pentagon purges some minorities and women from high-ranking positions, the message being sent to lower-ranking officers is that they will be assessed on the basis of their gender, race, or politics, rather than their abilities, @AdamSerwer writes:
Color-blind and merit-based now seems to be anything but.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/pete-hegseth-military-diversity/686734/
Mike Young @micyoung75
Serwer's framing holds up against the documented record.
Hegseth fired Gen. CQ Brown, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Army Chief Gen. Randy George - in the middle of a war, no charges, no stated reason. Pulled two Black men and two women from a brigadier general promotion list. Blocked or delayed more than a dozen Black and female senior officers across four service branches.
None were charged with anything. None were accused of incompetence. The Atlantic's read: they committed "only the offense of being part of a military institution that Hegseth wants to restock with MAGA loyalists."
Pentagon staff are calling him "Dumb McNamara" internally. The Joint Chiefs is now all-white, all-male, overseeing a force that is 20 percent female and 43 percent people of color.
He said at his confirmation hearing promotions would be merit-based. He could not name a single case where DEI had lowered military standards. He still can't.
Link to tweet
dalton99a
(94,410 posts)Redleg
(6,947 posts)I wonder what Hegseth's black troops thought of him when he was their platoon leader?
leftstreet
(40,943 posts)Please, please let this be the last dying gasp of a misogynist, racist, homophobic Entitlement Derangement Syndrome
Solly Mack
(96,994 posts)Same with the patriarchymisogyny. Favoring straight and Christian - all identity politics.
But because some folks see straight, white, Christian and male as some sort of norm, as "the" standard, they don't see it as identify politics - and that inability to see it only serves to highlight their bigotry.
BlueWaveNeverEnd
(14,384 posts)David__77
(24,816 posts)Ray Bruns
(6,428 posts)Film at eleven.
Joinfortmill
(21,266 posts)bigtree
(94,360 posts)...but what's troubling is the need that's been forced upon us to refight old, supposedly settled battles about the value to the nation of its diversity, and the need to make certain our government and military resembles the population, especially in the leadership.
Once it's reestablished that there are more than enough qualified minority and women in the nation to fill those positions, then we can get back to the outreach which is now exacerbated by the way this cult is making those positions unattractive and outright hostile to all but white males.
It's infuriating that Trump, with an anti-democratic stroke of his pen, overturned the product of past elctions which mandated myriad debates and compromises in Congress, with legislation approved by past presidencies, the opposition now advantaged by this second crack at keeping us down.
None of the 'reckoning' is automatic or guaranteed, and we've been robbed of the democratic progress we already fought for (and bled for) and won. Stolen from us by a modern day klansman and his white supremacy cult.
B.See
(8,552 posts)pfitz59
(12,756 posts)'Gott mit uns!'