High school world history teacher Hadley DiForti has been teaching her students for the past four years about Navy hero Doris Miller, the first Black sailor to receive the Navy Cross for his bravery during the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. However, when she tried to access a Navy website she had been using to teach about Miller, she found that it had been taken down. This left her students feeling upset and prompted her to express her anger at the removal of valuable educational resources.
The removal of content related to figures like Miller, Jackie Robinson, the Tuskegee Airmen, Navajo Code Talkers, and others from Pentagon websites is a result of President Donald Trump’s executive order to eliminate anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This has been met with outrage and criticism from experts in the field of diversity, equity, and inclusion, who argue that erasing the contributions of historically marginalized individuals goes against the principles of recognizing and valuing diversity.
The removal of pages about these heroes from military websites has been seen as an attempt to prioritize the history of white participation and heroism, erasing the reality of diversity in the military and turning history into a whitewashed narrative. This has been described as an attack on truth itself and a dangerous revisionist approach to history. Scholars and experts warn of the negative consequences of distorting history and eliminating the contributions of Black, Latino, female, and LGBTQ service members from the historical record.
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