Latest news with #PimaIndian
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Pentagon dishonored my uncle's sacrifice by scrubbing U.S. history
'Air Force Deletes Pages on First Female Thunderbirds Pilot Amid DEI Purge,' ( April 16) My uncle, Private First Class Dean Hunt, was killed in action in World War II on Iwo Jima. He joined the Marines at 18 and died eight months later. The Pentagon has dishonored my uncle's sacrifice by scrubbing from their website two pages profiling another Marine who fought on Iwo Jima, Ira Hayes, one of the six Marines shown raising the American flag in an iconic photograph. The profiles of Hayes, a Pima Indian, were removed to comply with President Donald Trump's order abolishing diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said, 'anybody that says in the Department of Defense that diversity is our strength is frankly incorrect.' Following an outcry, one webpage was restored, but many references to Hayes' ethnicity were removed. My uncle fought for freedom and equality, values that the current administration is systematically undermining. I hope that the arc of the moral universe will once again bend toward justice. P. Alan Thiesen Roseville 'Sacramento mayor, council salary increases amid budget talk,' ( May 14) Sacramento has projected a $44 million deficit for the coming fiscal year and is contemplating cuts in services and raising fees, some of which have already occurred. Yet, in an effort to be 'reasonable and consistent' with comparable cities, the city's Compensation Commission unanimously voted to award raises to the mayor of 12% and 8% to the city council. What is a 'reasonable' pay raise to leaders of a city drowning in debt? Many on the current council made — or agreed with — decisions which caused the current deficit, which is projected to be worse next year. Now, as they contemplate layoffs and diminishing services to the community they serve, is it reasonable to award them such generous wage hikes? Was nothing learned from the city manager pay debacle? What 'rules' should be applied as the city goes bankrupt? Bill Motmans Sacramento 'Public health in California shaken by federal funding cuts,' ( April 9) As a clinician scientist dedicated to understanding the roots of dementia, I've long believed that science, integrity and compassion must guide our work. Recently, these values were put to the test. After years of progress under grants from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes, research focused on identifying vascular contributions to cognitive decline — our work was disrupted and nearly completely derailed by cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services. It was a painful reminder of how easily vital work can be threatened by bureaucracy. But we persisted, not just for ourselves, but for the millions of families impacted by dementia. Research must be protected, because behind every data point is a human story, and behind every story is hope. Charles DeCarli, M.D. Co-director, Alzheimer's Disease Research Center of UC Davis 'In rural California, gray wolves are a growing threat demanding attention | Opinion,' ( May 17) I grew up around wolves. I've seen dozens of wolves over the past decade when I have visited Yellowstone. As a child, growing up in the Greater Yellowstone in Montana, my safety was never in danger or threatened by a wolf. As a wildlife major, it's been exciting to see wolves come back to California. But recent headlines about emergency declarations have been alarming. We must listen, understand and work together to keep ourselves and our wolf population safe. John Marchwick Eureka 'Prison closure, Ozempic limit, cap-and-what? 5 takeaways from Gavin Newsom's budget,' ( May 16) It would be a mistake for Gov. Gavin Newsom to restrict Medi-Cal coverage of weight loss drugs, like Zepbound and Wegovy. Medi-Cal will continue GLP-1 coverage for diabetics, meaning California won't offer overweight Medi-Cal patients access to GLP-1 drugs to help them avoid becoming diabetic, but it will pay for these treatments once they put on so much weight that they develop the disease. This is illogical. GLP-1 drugs will save Medi-Cal money. Hank Naughton Clinton, Mass. 'Rooftop solar subsidies raise electricity costs in California,' ( May 16) California has long established rooftop solar as a cornerstone of its energy and climate goals. Rooftop solar is a key tool in providing affordable housing for all, allowing middle class families to maintain control over their energy bills. Assembly Bill 942, however, threatens to inject chaos into the housing market. Under the bill, new homeowners purchasing properties with existing solar installations would have their contracts retroactively changed to the less favorable Net Energy Metering 3.0. This would diminish the value of homes with solar panels to buyers and create unnecessary friction in the home sale. For homebuilders, this is particularly problematic: AB 942 will create new housing market risks, exacerbating housing costs. While AB 942 claims to address energy 'affordability,' it will have the opposite effect. California should be doing everything we can to help homebuyers enter into affordable and energy-resilient homes. AB 942 undermines that goal. Chris Ochoa Senior counsel, California Building Industry Association
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Iwo Jima diversity row overshadows US-Japan commemoration weekend
A commemoration this Saturday, marking the 80th anniversary of Iwo Jima has been overshadowed by the removal of the battle's most iconic image from the Pentagon's website. The photograph, of six war-weary marines hoisting the US flag on Mount Suribachi, was deleted this month on the orders of Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, in an effort to erase all traces of the previous administration's policy of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). The offending element was not the flag itself, but a description focusing on Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian and one of the six soldiers. Hayes became a symbol of the heroism of Native Americans during the war, which in the Battle of Iwo Jima was exemplified by Navajo code talkers. They are credited with securing strategic communications as 100,000 US troops stormed the positions of 22,000 Japanese imperial soldiers, who had built a complex system of tunnels and cave defences. Almost 7,000 Americans were killed, and only a thousand Japanese soldiers survived. During the battle, the Navajo code talkers sent over 800 messages, many of which were intercepted by Japanese intelligence. Before Pearl Harbour, Imperial Japan had in fact dispatched a team of agents to study Native American languages, well aware they had been used in the First World War to outwit Germany's high command. Navajo, however, due to its complexity and a code system based on some of its unique linguistic elements, proved impenetrable. Numerous articles dedicated to the service of the Navajo code talkers were also removed along with the famous image which has even been used on postal stamps. It is not known whether similar articles, still available on separate branches of the military will also be purged. John Ullyot, a Pentagon spokesman, has refused to backtrack, and praised his staff for their 'rapid compliance' with the directive. Amid a media backlash, however, and ahead of the commemorations this weekend, Donald Trump issued a Presidential Proclamation in support of the heroes of Iwo Jima. The commemorations, which Mr Hegseth will attend on the island this Saturday, will also provide the venue for tense security talks between the US and Japan, amid fears that Pax Americana, which has maintained order in the Asia Pacific for 80 years, is now unravelling. The sudden reversal in relations with Washington has surprised even Japan's most seasoned diplomats. Shigeru Ishiba, the prime minister, kept it simple during his high-stakes audience at the White House last month, when he pledged to invest $1 trillion to boost Trump's America First policy. The strategy appeared to pay off. A beaming president, well known for his love of big numbers, declared his full backing for existing US security guarantees, including for Japanese sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands. Those islands, also claimed by Beijing, are strategically located roughly 115 miles from Taiwan. In addition to reaffirming security guarantees, Mr Trump also declined to threaten his guest with the same punitive tariffs that he targeted at the EU and other allies. The omission was considered another diplomatic coup for Tokyo, and Mr Ishiba was feted as an unlikely hero. But since then relations have quickly soured, and the guarantees he received have begun to unravel. Following a similar playbook he used to attack Nato, the US president denounced the long-standing security treaty with Japan as 'unfair', and accused it of free-riding on US taxpayers. 'We have an interesting deal with Japan that we have to protect them, but they don't have to protect us,' Mr Trump said. 'That's the way the deal reads, we have to protect Japan, and by the way, they make a fortune with us economically.' In response to the attack on the treaty, China wasted no time dispatching four of its coastguard ships last week to contest the territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands. Japan has in fact been the top foreign investor to the US for five consecutive years, and has created tens of thousands of jobs in Mr Trump's electoral strongholds. Toyota and Nissan alone are expected to complete new manufacturing plants in the US this year, and Tokyo is set to increase imports of American LNG to offset its current trade surplus. But in addition to tariffs on car imports which Mr Trump announced this week, Japan is facing a raft of additional measures targeting steel, aluminium, chips, the pharmaceutical sector, and even its small domestic rice growers. Known for their inscrutable approach to diplomacy, officials in Tokyo are hoping that the US president is simply posturing for a better deal that will ultimately bolster Japan's security. 'The fact is there is no trade win they can offer Trump, no matter how big, that will change the reality that the US is simply no longer committed to defending Japan or Taiwan,' Robert Dujarric, co-director of Temple University's Institute of Asian Studies in Tokyo, told The Telegraph. 'For Japan to take Trump at his word on security, is about as naive as believing he's a model husband and lifelong monogamist.' Leaks from the Pentagon have also revealed plans to scale back the much vaunted 'Pivot to Asia'. The geostrategic shift was cited by Me Trump as a reason for downgrading US military commitments to Nato, but the strategy could be deceptive. 'Starmer and Macron need to understand that the old world order is being dismantled everywhere,' said Mr Dujarric. 'Not just in their own backyard.' Tokyo has also been rattled by reports that Elon Musk is similarly pressuring for military downgrade. A self-proclaimed 'friend' of China, it is Mr Musk's department of government efficiency that is demanding $50 billion in cuts annually from the US defence budget. The Pentagon's change of tack could even affect the UK, as reforms planned under former president Biden would have enabled Japanese collaboration with Aukus. The trilateral agreement between UK, US, and Australia to build a fleet of nuclear attack submarines is being challenged by J D Vance, the US vice-president. Some form of Japanese participation could help secure the project's viability. Chinese ships finally left the waters around the Senkaku Islands this week after a record-breaking stand-off with the Japanese coastguard lasting almost four days. There is now a growing realisation in Tokyo that it needs to hedge not only against the risks of US isolationism, but Mr Trump's unpredictability. As if to highlight this point, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazil president, an anti-US firebrand and member of the Brics group, was welcomed on a state visit to Tokyo for security talks ahead of Mr Hegseth's arrival. 'Another option for Japan which is still taboo to talk about,' said Mr Dujarric. 'Is that if there's a risk Trump will cut a bad deal with [China president] Xi Jinping, and sell out your strategic sovereignty, you might as well get in there first, sell out Taiwan, and cut your own deal.' On the island of Iwo Jima this Saturday, diplomatic efforts to restore good relations will go into overdrive. The US defence secretary will meet veterans for a photo opportunity, and will even visit Mount Suribachi, where the victory flag was raised and famous photo taken. The battle itself has remained fresh in popular US memory thanks to two films directed by Clint Eastwood. The second film was shot entirely in Japanese, and from the perspective of the 'enemy'. Japanese diplomats will be hoping that Mr Hegseth, an outspoken champion of Mr Trump's America First policy, will also prove capable of viewing Asia-Pacific security from their perspective. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
28-03-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Pentagon cancels Iwo Jima heroes in Trump's war on diversity
A commemoration marking the 80th anniversary of Iwo Jima has been overshadowed by the removal of the battle's most iconic image from the Pentagon's website. The photograph, of six war-weary marines hoisting the US flag on Mount Suribachi, was deleted this month on the orders of Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, in an effort to erase all traces of the previous administration's policy of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). The offending element was not the flag itself, but a description focusing on Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian and one of the six soldiers. Hayes became a symbol of the heroism of Native Americans during the war, which in the Battle of Iwo Jima was exemplified by Navajo code talkers. They are credited with securing strategic communications as 100,000 US troops stormed the positions of 22,000 Japanese imperial soldiers, who had built a complex system of tunnels and cave defences. Almost 7,000 Americans were killed, and only 1,000 Japanese soldiers survived. During the battle, the Navajo code talkers sent more than 800 messages, many of which were intercepted by Japanese intelligence. Before Pearl Harbour, Imperial Japan had in fact dispatched a team of agents to study Native American languages, well aware they had been used in the First World War to outwit Germany's high command. Navajo, however, due to its complexity and a code system based on some of its unique linguistic elements, proved impenetrable. Numerous articles dedicated to the service of the Navajo code talkers were also removed from the Pentagon website, along with the famous image which has even been used on postal stamps. John Ullyot, a Pentagon spokesman, has refused to backtrack, and praised his staff for their 'rapid compliance' with the directive. Amid a media backlash, however, and ahead of the commemorations this weekend, Donald Trump issued a presidential proclamation in support of the heroes of Iwo Jima. The commemorations, which Mr Hegseth will attend on the island this Saturday, will also provide the venue for tense security talks between the US and Japan, amid fears that Pax Americana, which has maintained order in the Asia Pacific for 80 years, is now unravelling. The sudden reversal in relations with Washington has surprised even Japan's most seasoned diplomats. Shigeru Ishiba, the prime minister, kept it simple during his high-stakes audience at the White House last month, when he pledged to invest $1 trillion to boost Trump's America First policy. The strategy appeared to pay off. A beaming president, well known for his love of big numbers, declared his full backing for existing US security guarantees, including for Japanese sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands. Those islands, also claimed by Beijing, are strategically located roughly 115 miles from Taiwan. In addition to reaffirming security guarantees, Mr Trump also declined to threaten his guest with the same punitive tariffs that he targeted at the EU and other allies. The omission was considered another diplomatic coup for Tokyo, and Mr Ishiba was feted as an unlikely hero. But since then, relations have quickly soured, and the guarantees he received have begun to unravel. Following a similar playbook he used to attack Nato, the US president denounced the long-standing security treaty with Japan as 'unfair', and accused it of free-riding on US taxpayers. 'We have an interesting deal with Japan that we have to protect them, but they don't have to protect us,' Mr Trump said. 'That's the way the deal reads, we have to protect Japan, and by the way, they make a fortune with us economically.' In response to the attack on the treaty, China wasted no time dispatching four of its coastguard ships last week to contest the territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands. Japan has in fact been the top foreign investor to the US for five consecutive years, and has created tens of thousands of jobs in Mr Trump's electoral strongholds. Toyota and Nissan alone are expected to complete new manufacturing plants in the US this year, and Tokyo is set to increase imports of American LNG to offset its current trade surplus. But in addition to tariffs on car imports which Mr Trump announced this week, Japan is facing a raft of additional measures targeting steel, aluminium, computer chips, the pharmaceutical sector, and even its small domestic rice growers. 'To take Trump at his word is naive' Known for their inscrutable approach to diplomacy, officials in Tokyo are hoping that the US president is simply posturing for a better deal that will ultimately bolster Japan's security. 'The fact is there is no trade win they can offer Trump, no matter how big, that will change the reality that the US is simply no longer committed to defending Japan or Taiwan,' Robert Dujarric, co-director of Temple University's Institute of Asian Studies in Tokyo, told The Telegraph. 'For Japan to take Trump at his word on security is about as naive as believing he's a model husband and lifelong monogamist.' Leaks from the Pentagon have also revealed plans to scale back the much vaunted 'pivot to Asia'. The geostrategic shift was cited by Mr Trump as a reason for downgrading US military commitments to Nato, but the strategy could be deceptive. '[Sir Keir] Starmer and [Emmanuel] Macron need to understand that the old world order is being dismantled everywhere,' said Mr Dujarric. 'Not just in their own backyard.' Tokyo has also been rattled by reports that Elon Musk is pressuring for military downgrade. A self-proclaimed 'friend' of China, it is Mr Musk's department of government efficiency that is demanding $50 billion in cuts annually from the US defence budget. Efforts to restore good relations will go into overdrive The Pentagon's change of tack could even affect the UK, as reforms planned under former president Biden would have enabled Japanese collaboration with Aukus. The trilateral agreement between UK, US, and Australia to build a fleet of nuclear attack submarines is being challenged by J D Vance, the US vice-president. Some form of Japanese participation could help secure the project's viability. Chinese ships finally left the waters around the Senkaku Islands this week after a record-breaking stand-off with the Japanese coastguard lasting almost four days. There is now a growing realisation in Tokyo that it needs to hedge not only against the risks of US isolationism but Mr Trump's unpredictability. As if to highlight this point, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, an anti-US firebrand and member of the Brics group, was welcomed on a state visit to Tokyo for security talks ahead of Mr Hegseth's arrival. 'Another option for Japan which is still taboo to talk about,' said Mr Dujarric, 'is that if there's a risk Trump will cut a bad deal with [China president] Xi Jinping, and sell out your strategic sovereignty, you might as well get in there first, sell out Taiwan, and cut your own deal.' On the island of Iwo Jima this Saturday, diplomatic efforts to restore good relations will go into overdrive. The US defence secretary will meet veterans for a photo opportunity, and visit Mount Suribachi, where the victory flag was raised and famous photo taken. The battle itself has remained fresh in popular US memory thanks to two films directed by Clint Eastwood. The second film was shot entirely in Japanese, and from the perspective of the 'enemy'. Japanese diplomats will be hoping that Mr Hegseth, an outspoken champion of Mr Trump's America First policy, will also prove capable of viewing Asia-Pacific security from their perspective.
Chicago Tribune
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Clint Eastwood made a movie about soldier Ira Hayes, and the propaganda machine
Once in life, a second time in death, Pfc. Ira Hayes — World War II veteran, Iwo Jima flag-raiser, Pima Indian — ran head-on into the homefront propaganda machine. He wasn't the first, but director Clint Eastwood made a movie about it in 2006: 'Flags of Our Fathers' is based on a book about the six U.S. Marines who raised an American flag atop Mount Suribachi in 1945. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal caught the moment, and the photo became a poster (and later a stamp, and a massive bronze sculpture). The poster was the crucial marketing image of the war's most successful bond drive, worth $26 billion. Like 'The Outsider,' director Delbert Mann's 1961 Hayes biopic starring Tony Curtis in redface makeup and a temporary nose, 'Flags of Our Fathers' took the nervy commercial risk of telling at least some of Hayes' real, painful story. At its pungent, melancholy best, the film transcends its own casting. In real life and the movie, Hayes and the other two surviving Marines who raised that flag returned home, on orders from the top, to tour the country as American heroes urging their fellow citizens to buy bonds. It worked. The campaign, some say, sealed the Allied victory in the South Pacific. It also helped ruin Hayes, who had no taste for show business or being part of what he felt was a trumped-up victory lap. He hated being treated as an American idol, it didn't square with his sense of being a pretender to heroism. His cold, lonely death at 32 was brought on by alcohol and probable post-traumatic stress disorder. The Arizona-born Hayes, played by Adam Beach in Eastwood's film, may not be the center of the narrative. But he's the one you remember, years later, from a flawed and overcrowded panorama of fascinating ambiguities. Eastwood's film — which he took on after Steven Spielberg and various writers couldn't figure out how to compress the 2000 book of the same title by James Bradley and Ron Powers into a satisfying two-hour story — has been on my mind ever since Hayes got lost in another propaganda effort recently. In case you missed it, when President Donald Trump's administration embarked on its government-wide purge of website materials containing anything deemed DEI-related content, the Defense Department removed website pages featuring historical context and specific achievements made by people of color and women and LGBTQ Americans, wartime or otherwise. Out went hundreds of pages dealing with Jackie Robinson, the Tuskegee Airmen, the Navajo code talkers and, among many others, Hayes. What happened to Hayes' reputation in that purge? Anything? Nothing? To me, it felt like something. Erasing a digital page of detail about a person's life, and the context of that life, means something. Amid widespread protests, many of those pages were restored last week. Eastwood made 'Flags of Our Fathers' as part of a hugely ambitious two-film project. The second part of that project, 'Letters from Iwo Jima,' told from the Japanese point of view, came out shortly after 'Flags.' 'Letters' is the superior work, far sleeker in its story design. It benefits from what 'Flags' never could: a single protagonist, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi as played by Ken Watanabe, as opposed to an ensemble. Together, Eastwood's Iwo Jima dramas get at something elusive and important about who we are, and how and why we fight. And how honor and sacrifice can be used for myth creation. Now 94, Eastwood is the most paradoxical filmmaking legend alive. He made his superstardom with the character known as the Man With No Name and Sergio Leone Westerns of hyperbolic size and operatic, slightly insane grandeur. And lots of killing. Then came 'Dirty Harry' and more killing. I remember seeing the trailer for 'Flags of Our Fathers' nearly 20 years ago, thinking that the movie seemed unusually audience-unfriendly for Eastwood. To its credit, given how often trailers lie about the movies they're selling, even the trailer made it look tough-minded in its exploration of the young Marines caught up in a wartime bond drive full of fireworks and the gung-ho spirit, indebted to Rosenthal's indelible photograph. The photo Hayes later said he wished had never been taken. But an image like that photo, with its simple, unerring blast of patriotism, reassures us — even if we can hear the faint hum of whatever propaganda machine may be gearing up behind it. Of all movie stars, Eastwood may have gone the furthest with modern fairy tales, buying wholeheartedly and bloodily into the very thing Harve Presnell's character, a Marine Corps colonel, refers to, skeptically, in 'Flags of Our Fathers.' He says this: 'We like things nice and simple. Good and evil, heroes and villains. There are always plenty of those. Most of the time they are not who we think they are.' Something in Eastwood's finest work shares not a statement but a feeling of how myths can be made and broken within one story. It happens out West, in the masterwork 'Unforgiven' (1992); in the eccentric, dicey surrogate father/son lament of 'A Perfect World' (1993); in the stealth emotional force of 'The Bridges of Madison County' (1995); in the Iwo Jima films; and in Eastwood's most recent and humblest success, 'Juror #2,' a 2024 courtroom drama refusing to provide an easy rooting interest. If that list leaves off Eastwood's biggest hits, 'Million Dollar Baby' and 'American Sniper,' well, it's a free country, and I can dislike those films for reasons that make me appreciate other Eastwood movies all the more. Hollywood has a way with erasure, ignoring or rewriting parts and people who tell different sides of our history. Ira Hayes played himself, for a few seconds, in the 1949 'Sands of Iwo Jima,' the balderdashed John Wayne version of events. Hayes' fleeting seconds of rent-a-celebrity in that context felt like an erasure of his true self. Eastwood, I think, shares Hayes' resistance to manufactured patriotism and the propaganda machine. I doubt he'd have made 'Flags of Our Fathers' if he didn't have feelings about it — and didn't see Hayes as someone whose story deserved more than cursory treatment in the larger American story.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Amid racist tumult in Kansas and D.C., a chance to rebuild with open eyes
Members of the Ku Klux Klan marched on Washington, D.C., in the 1920s as the revived group flexed its political muscle. (Library of Congress) Extremists in our Statehouse and in Washington, D.C., have busied themselves with rolling back decades of civil rights gains. In Topeka, they quashed legally cast ballots by eliminating the three-day grace period and admitting that if they'd had their druthers, they'd eliminate all early voting. In the nation's capital, extremists have attacked Navajo 'code talkers,' the Pima Indian soldier who took part of the iconic photo of American forces planting a flag on Iwo Jima, and baseball barrier-breaker Jackie Robinson. The president's administration has lifted a ban on segregated facilities for federal contractors and has deleted more than 90 links to Congressional Medal of Honor winners of color. It feels so very bleak. But as ugly as this seems, it also means the charade of societal equality for people of color is mercifully over. It is now clear that a majority of Americans either harbor racial biases or don't consider them serious enough to actively oppose. The question is settled. We can stop pretending. These most recent actions demonstrate that the racism they claim does not exist, really does. These developments upend more than 50 years of denials about our racial caste system. Back in 1968, President Johnson's Kerner Commission wrote this in a groundbreaking report: 'White society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.' A carefully orchestrated counter-campaign of deny, delay and deflect followed. We caught glimpses of it in Lee Atwater's infamous 1981 interview about Nixon's 'Southern Strategy,' the plan by which Presidents Nixon and Regan converted Dixie Democrats. 'You start out in 1954 by saying, 'N*****, n*****, n*****. By 1968 you can't say 'n*****' — that hurts you, backfires. So, you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, Blacks get hurt worse than whites. … 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'N*****N, n*****.' ' A common strategy from these extremists is attacking their opponent's greatest strength, and in this case, it's the hundreds of years of history demonstrating that the nation's founders used race as one of its organizing principles. It is a tacit admission of what that side fears most — truth. This remains manifestly true, but the current administration continues the ruse. 'We have ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and, indeed, the private sector and our military,' the president said during his recent speech to the joint session of Congress. 'And our country will be woke no longer.' So, the victims of hundreds of years of tyranny are the tyrants? Black median household wealth stood at $24,100 in 2019. White median household wealth stood at $188,200. Black unemployment has remained roughly twice that of the white unemployment and expectedly, Black people remain disproportionately impoverished. Diversity policies represent mere remedies for historic inequality. Ending them assumes the society has achieved social equality. This is ending the remedy without addressing the central issue of inequality. It leaves the unfair system untouched so that those who've always had an advantage maintain their edge and punishes those already behind. How can 60 years of half-hearted equality efforts address 335 years of enslavement and segregation? They can't. That span lasted from 1619 to 1954. Racists killed Emmett Till the following year. The Montgomery Bus Boycott also began in 1955. This is like debating climate change. We know it exists, but powerful voices need it not to, so this odd dance around the truth continues. Wrote Ta-Nehisi Coates in his latest book, 'The Message,' 'Some people's credits earned them more, and their mistakes cost them less. And those people who took more and paid less lived in a world of iniquitous wealth, while his own people lived in a world of terrifying want.' A cruel pettiness remains a part of this dance. In the past, towns passed laws saying Black people couldn't play chess or checkers with white people or that Black drivers couldn't pass white drivers in traffic or use the same pay phones. Today, it is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatening to drum Black people out of the military because of razor bumps or pseudofoliculitis. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. came to this sad realization near the end of his life after years of fighting for equality. King said he'd taken many white people at their word that they wanted to end discrimination. 'White America is not even psychologically organized to close the gap,' King said in his last book, 'Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?' 'Essentially, it seeks to only to make it less painful, less obvious, but in most respects, to maintain it.' When I led the Kansas African American Museum, we received the donation of a Ku Klux Klan robe and mask (more than once), found by family members of a deceased patriarch. The family would not fill out the provenance documents. They didn't want any lasting connection to their horrifying finds. We eventually put the robes on a mannequin for an exhibition on racial terror. A guest, there for other business, left shaken by the display. I decided to never put it out again. The guest said that as a boy in Mississippi, his father left him in the car to run a quick errand as Klansmen gathered nearby. His father gave him a haunting command. 'Don't look them in the eye.' By staring too long, they may think you know them and then, they start reaching for torches and rifles. This represented the real power of the so-called 'invisible empire.' With faces hidden, people never knew if the judge, or the policeman, or their doctor held membership in the Klan. This is how racism has operated, under sheets of denial. But now that the pretense that racism doesn't exist has dropped, we absolutely must look these people and practices in the eye. The nation has an opportunity to vomit up all the bilious myths and stereotypes that continue to threaten our stability as a nation. We no longer have to pretend. This is no longer a theory. It's out in the open now. We don't have to hide. And there's an incredible blessing in all of this — if we face it. Mark McCormick is the former executive director of The Kansas African American Museum, a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission and former deputy executive director at the ACLU of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
