During the last four years, the World History Professor of Hadley Diforti high school has taught the history of the Marina Doris Miller’s hero to his students.
Miller, a chef on a ship, shot Japanese airplanes in Pearl Harbor in 1941, before taking other sailors to a safe place. The effort made it the first black sailor to receive the Cruz de la Marina, and its image was used in recruitment posters.
But earlier this year, when Diforti went to a marine website he had used for years to teach students about Miller’s history, he had demolished, leaving his students “significantly annoying.”
“I was extremely angry,” said Tennessee’s teacher. “I have taught him for four years in a row, children really like to learn about him.” She has trusted the .gov websites because she could trust them, she said, but “now, that is not the case.”
The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comments for this story. Pentagon’s press secretary, John Ullyot, told NBC News earlier this week that “Dei is dead in the Department of Defense. The discriminatory ideology of equity is a form of cultural Marxism that does not take place in our military. Divides strength, erodes the cohesion of unity and interferes with the mission of the war of services.”
While one of Miller’s Marina’s websites had been restored, not others. It is one of the many people of marginalized origins documented in thousands of web pages and images whose military history has been scrubbed of the websites of the Pentagon, after the executive order of President Donald Trump that asks the government agencies that eliminate anything that touchs what can be perceived as diversity, equity and inclusion.
“We are pleased with rapid compliance throughout the department with the directive that eliminates Dei’s content from all platforms,” Ulle continued. “In the rare cases that the content is eliminated, either deliberately or by mistake, which is beyond the clearly described scope of the directive, we instruct the components and correct the content accordingly.”
Some pages about figures such as Jackie Robinson, the aviators of Tuskegee, the speakers of the Navajo Code and the General of the Era of the Desert, Colin Powell, have been restored after public indignation. But many remain low and have not been restored.
“It is disconcerting and discouraging to witness initiatives that, under the appearance of Dei, obscure the narratives that shape our collective history,” said Nika White, an old expert from the book and author of the book “Diversity without complications.” “Eliminate references to these figures not only undermines the fundamental principles of Dei, but it is an obvious contradiction with the search for truth.”
The amount of truth that can be lost is substantial, given the innumerable contributions of blacks, color people and members of the LGBTQ community who were military heroes and historical figures.
“In essence, it is about recognizing and valuing the various experiences and contributions of all people, particularly those historically marginalized,” White said. “Deleting these contributions is to participate in a form of historical revisionism that reduces the legacies of innumerable members of the service that have bravely fought for our country.”
Several pages about Robinson were demolished, a second lieutenant in the army that broke the color barrier in professional baseball, including a page about black league players that talked about serving in the army. But until Wednesday afternoon, at least one page about Robinson, in a series on athletes that served in the army, had been reinstated.
Similarly, most of the web pages on Miller remain low. A marina history and heritage command on Miller has been restored, but a large red banner at the top of the site warns that the content had been “reviewed or removed to align with the president’s executive orders and the priorities of the Department of Defense.” Other web pages on it on the Navy website remain low.
“It is not fair and it is really shocking for our government to do this,” Diforti said. “I want our students to look at those heroes that serve this country, that they resemble them and realize that they could be like them someday, and not only the heroes that resemble me.”
Henry-Louis Taylor, Director of Urban Studies of the University of Buffalo, said that the omission of heroes of the black war like Miller “reflects a broader effort to erase black history and return to a time when the history of the United States was a fantasy focused on white glory. If Trump’s goal had been a color blind representation of military history, he could have simply omitted racial identifiers.”
He said that the objective has been to prioritize the history of white participation and heroism. “This erase is not just an attack against black and other people of color, it is an attack on the truth in itself, turning history as a social science in history as a fairy tale.”
Donald Williamson, who served 25 years in the army, said the changes predict “a sad day in the United States.”
“This goes against everything they taught us about diversity and inclusion in our ranks,” he said.
The Army website had eliminated and then restored this week for the 442nd Regimental Combat team. More than a third of the soldiers were born from Japanese immigrants, and despite dealing with racism in the United States, 442 became the most decorated unity in US military history due to their size. The group, which had to recover several times, totaled about 14,000 soldiers, of which 9,486 received purple hearts, 21 honor medals and eight appointments of the presidential unit.
Last week, last week, on the website of the National Cemetery of Arlington, there were pages about Héctor Santa Anna, a World War II Bombarder driver, as well as pages about dozens of notable black veteran, Latinas and women. Among the information that was missing was for Powell, the former general who became the first black president of the chiefs of the Joint Chiefs, which is the highest range in the Army after the president. Its page was restored on March 16.
Medgar Evers, the civil rights icon that served in the Army during World War II, was also removed from the Arlington cemetery website. In 2017, Trump called Evers a “great American hero” at the opening of the Mississippi civil rights museum.
Taylor, the historian, referred to the book “Black Reconstruction in America” by Scholar Web Dubois. In it, Dubois argued that white academics had deliberately falsified American history to create a narrative that offered a “false but comforting sense of achievement,” Taylor said.
Dubois said in the book that such manipulation had led people to describe history as “agreed lies” and warned that this wrong information would have destructive consequences. Taylor said Dubois foresaw what is happening now.
“Nothing of this can come,” Taylor said.
