Outside the Beltway

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1. Scott says:
   Tuesday, 9 June 2026 at 09:00

   The Betrayal of Black Patriots

   One thing the elites (those having authority, power, influence) refuse to do is acknowledge loudly and publicly the racism and bigotry at the core of the Trump administration.

   James was eventually promoted to four-star general, becoming the first Black American in the history of the U.S. military to reach that rank. “If my making an advancement can serve as some kind of spark to some young Black or other minority, it will be worth all the years, all the blood and sweat it took in getting here,” he said at the time. The general became a hero to Black Democrats and white Republicans alike. At a 1987 ceremony dedicating an aerospace-science and health-education center at Tuskegee University to James, Ronald Reagan called him a “darned good pilot and a revered military officer and a truly great American.” In 2020, the state of Florida named a bridge after James; the bill was signed by Governor Ron DeSantis.
   …
   But last year, after Donald Trump signed executive orders gutting DEI programs across the federal government and the military, people in the Pentagon noticed that a painting of James had been taken down from its prominent location in the Air Force Art Gallery. Instead of putting a new painting in the spot where James’s portrait had been, the Pentagon kept the space empty, leaving employees with the impression that, in spite of his many achievements, the new administration viewed the general as a symbol of unearned advancement, unworthy of recognition.
   …
   James, who died in 1978, might not have been surprised. “One of the most insulting questions that gets asked to me sometimes is Did they give you your fourth star just because it’s the bicentennial year coming up and they wanted to say we got a Black general? ” he said in a 1975 interview. “They didn’t give me anything. And they don’t give away stars in my service. You got to earn them.”
   …
   He may as well have been responding directly to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who derided “affirmative action promotions” in the military in his 2024 book, The War on Warriors. “Our strength,” Hegseth wrote, “is not in our diversity.” At the Pentagon, Hegseth has directly intervened to block or delay the promotions of more than a dozen Black and female senior officers; he has dismissed or pushed out several high-ranking Black and female officers; he has presided over the restoration of tributes to Confederate soldiers, traitors to the United States who fought a war predicated on maintaining and expanding the institution of slavery. All of these actions are extensions of the same project: delegitimizing the accomplishments—and the very presence—of Black people in the military.

   When I read these stories, I think of the painting that was taken down. Someone physically took it down. Someone gave the direction to take it down. Someone directed that someone to direct some worker to take it down. Who was that? Where did that idea originate? The entire chain of events should be revealed.

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