Gordon L. Weil
President Trump has set out to kill DEI –
diversity, equity and inclusion.
His message is that the traditional system has been shunted
aside by preferences given to members of groups that have suffered
discrimination. Groups helped by DEI
include women, Blacks, American Indians, and Asians. In his view, they have gained an advantage over
white males.
The key element of his policy is the assumption that merit
has been sacrificed to political correctness.
Competence is sacrificed. He
rejects the idea that DEI helps ensure that members of affected groups, though
equally qualified, are not excluded because of their sex or race.
Trump wants to end DEI policies across American society,
not only the federal government. He can use
the influence of federal spending to make that possible. He also seeks to erase the history of
discrimination, implying that leadership roles played by Blacks, women and
others were due to their favored treatment, not their own merit.
Nowhere is his policy more apparent than in the Defense
Department. It may have been
embodied in an excessively clever statement by a Pentagon information officer
who issued a statement
that DEI “Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with the
services’ core warfighting mission.”
Carrying out Trump’s policy, the department went too far and
erased recognition of Jackie Robinson’s service, the role of the Tuskegee
airmen and a Black general who had won the Medal of Honor. It was an attempt to whitewash history. Strong opposition caused this erasure to be
reversed, and the official was reassigned to less public duties.
He was wrong. While
you can change policy, you can’t change history. A still almost unknown story reveals just how
wrong he was.
Years ago, I wrote a book
about building the Alcan highway in 1942.
It was a hastily constructed road to get troops and supplies to Alaska
in the event of a Japanese attack. In
response to Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the Doolittle
raid on Tokyo and the Alcan.
It was built by seven Army Engineer regiments, four composed
of white troops and three of Black troops.
The Army was not integrated below the regiment level. The officers of the Black units, including my
distant cousin, were white. The road was
quickly built.
Many of the Black soldiers were then assigned to
Louisiana. In the mess hall, they were given
spoons but denied forks or knives. They
faced open racism. As Black soldiers at
many Army posts were similarly mistreated, they rebelled and were quickly
shipped to Europe to drive supply trucks.
Following the successful but costly Battle of the Bulge in
Belgium at the end of 1944, General Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander,
found the Army was short of front-line combat troops. He wanted to add
Blacks from engineer units, but was warned that he would have to ask
permission from Washington.
Instead, Eisenhower called for Black troops, in excess of
engineer needs, to volunteer for assignment to combat units. Many volunteered and most were accepted into
new platoons integrated into white companies and went into battle. In theory, the separate Black platoons would
not amount to integration.
But a platoon is a small unit, and they ended up fighting
alongside white platoons. Some Germans could
recognize the presence of American forces by their Black troops. When the war
ended in Europe so did the Black platoons.
Given the importance of wartime morale, the Army Department
quietly conducted surveys of soldiers. White
soldiers who had fought together with the Blacks were asked for their reactions. Only five percent said Blacks were not as
good as whites, while 17 percent of officers and 9 percent of enlisted said
they fought better.
Overwhelming majorities of officers and enlisted rated them
favorably. Ratings were highest in units
that had faced the heaviest fighting. Problems
arose mainly when troops from outside units came in contact. Survey respondents mostly favored the platoon
approach, some saying that individual assignment could cause problems because
of certain soldiers’ racism.
The results of those 1945 surveys would destroy the
foundations of today’s attacks on DEI.
But Army bosses kept the surveys secret, presumably because the findings
would make the case for integration. Digging
in the National Archives decades later, I found them. My interviews with Black Alcan engineers confirmed
the data.
These surveys are proof of the false basis for the Pentagon
claim and for Trump’s opposition to DEI.
Trump removed
the Black general chairing the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as Navy and Coast
Guard chiefs, both women, without explanation.
Their appointments probably looked like DEI to him.
DEI should not place underqualified people in jobs. Opposition to DEI should not be used to deny
jobs to qualified people. Trump’s claim
of using merit alone obviously lacks merit.
