Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSubscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket CastsOne month after his return to office, President Trump purged the senior ranks of the U.S. military. He started at the very top. Charles “C. Q.” Brown Jr., a four-star general and fighter pilot who became the second Black person confirmed as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2023, was no longer a good fit for the job. Nor was Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy. Several top lawyers across the military were pushed out too.“This is a reflection of the president wanting the right people around him to execute the national-security approach we want to take,” Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary, said at the time. The purge quickly revealed an ideological feature of the Trump administration: diversity is a weakness.The military has historically been a powerful force for integration in America—even as its highest ranks have been slow to reflect the racial makeup of the country. In the July issue of The Atlantic, my colleague Clint Smith wrote about what it means that the gradual, visible racial progress in the military is being degraded as Black officers are being pushed out. He talked to dozens of Black service members, who say they are questioning their sacrifices. On Radio Atlantic, Clint joins me to discuss the legacy of Black military service and what the Trump administration’s changes could mean for the military—and America’s—future.The following is a transcript of the episode:Clint Smith: One of the impacts of Black people leaving the military at the rate that they seem to be leaving, or not even entering the military necessarily at the same rates, is that you are stripping from Black Americans one of the most effective means of achieving a different level of socioeconomic status that has reverberations across society.[Music]Adam Harris: The military is a kind of microcosm of America, and like America, it has been defined, in some ways, by the arc of slow, visible racial progress—particularly in its top ranks.Those who have served will tell you what it takes to become a general officer: grit, discipline, sacrifice, knowledge. But when President Trump returned to office in 2025, appointing Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, the administration saw something else as a part of that equation: diversity, equity, and inclusion.Pete Hegseth: DEI is dead. We replaced it with a color-blind, gender-neutral, merit-based approach.Harris: I’m Adam Harris. This is Radio Atlantic. And this week we need to think about the story the administration is telling about the military and the nation.My colleague Clint Smith reports in the July issue of The Atlantic on The Betrayal of Black Patriots. Now, the military doesn’t just hand out birds and stars because someone is a woman or Black; they do it because the person has earned them.How is this administration’s take on DEI affecting the people who are serving in the military? And as the country moves beyond its 250th anniversary, how will that reshape the story America tells about itself? My colleague Clint joins me to discuss.Clint, welcome to the show.Smith: It’s good to be here.Harris: You wrote a piece in the July issue of the magazine called “The Betrayal of Black Patriots.” And I guess, first, can you just talk a little bit about what you mean there? What has been happening to Black service members since the beginning of the Trump administration?Smith: Yeah, I think that a lot of these folks have been experiencing a sort of cognitive dissonance in the sense that on the one hand, they are being subjected to rhetoric and policy coming from the very top of this administration that suggests that they are unworthy of the positions they hold, that suggests that they are incapable of ascending to certain high-ranking offices within the military, and if they have ascended to those positions, it’s only because it suggested affirmative action, or DEI, or the remnants of a sort of quote-unquote “woke military” under Obama and Biden.And so they feel incredibly disrespected. They feel a sense of despair. They watch as their history is disregarded, as their service is belittled, and they’re pissed off. And many of them feel a desire to remove themselves from the military, to not allow themselves to be subjected to this sort of disrespect on a daily basis.But on the other hand, there is this acute sense of the history of Black service in the military. And, you know, a lot of the folks I spoke to are second, third generation in the military, and they are acutely aware of the fact that they have ancestors who fought, you know, who were freed slaves who fought for the Union, who were living in the Deep South, where people were being lynched while they were, you know, fighting for their country in World II and World War I, during the civil-rights movement, Korea, Vietnam. And so there’s always been this tension within the context of Black military service of fighting for a country that is not always necessarily fought for you or, in fact, that has fought actively against you. And so, in some sense, there’s a sense of, you know, our ancestors had it harder than this. As difficult as this moment is, as hard as it is, we are aware that this is part of what it means to be a Black member of the military, and we have a responsibility to build on the work of our ancestors and not to allow these folks who are only going to be here for a season. You know, they use all these metaphors, like: It’s a fever that’ll break one day; it’s a storm that’ll pass one day; it’s a season that will change one day. And so they’re aware of this sort of temporary nature of what they’re experiencing, even if it is incredibly difficult, and feeling as if they have a responsibility to stay, or that at least some of them have a responsibility to stay in order to preserve the work that has been done and to continue to build on it once this current administration is out.Harris: Yeah, because being Black in the military has always been a sort of—they’ve always sort of had to prove their patriotism, right? You mentioned that the administration had been sort of belittling their service. What has the administration given as reasons to explain its stance? To explain the sort of almost forced resignations, the blocked promotions? What has the administration been giving as its reasons for this current push?Smith: The ostensible reason, as promoted by Hegseth and his aides, Secretary Hegseth, is that they are moving toward a purely meritocratic system within the military, suggesting that previous iterations of the military have not been, that promotions have not been based on merit or capability, but instead have been based on tokenism, on symbolically putting people in positions that they don’t necessarily deserve, and what’s underneath that seems to be the suggestion that if a Black person is in a high-ranking position, if they are a general, if they are an admiral, if they are a lieutenant colonel, that they got there at the expense of a more deserving white man. And it’s not only Black people who are experiencing this. You know, Secretary Hegseth has a very, it seems, narrow conception of what a “warrior ethos” looks like. And it seems to be the case that Black people and women, LGBTQ individuals, people from a range of different historically marginalized and oppressed backgrounds, do not necessarily fit into that.And what’s interesting, and I think what people don’t fully understand is that, like, these folks who Secretary Hegseth has struck from the promotion list, as he’s done over and over again at this point, in a way that’s pretty unprecedented in sort of modern administrations—they go through a really robust military board that is essentially going over their career, going over their service, going over their deployments, their combat; they’re getting character references. And so for someone to go through this process and to be recommended for promotion to a one-star general, to an admiral, whatever the case may be, these aren’t decisions that are made on a whim. And these are not decisions that are made singularly based on whether someone is going to check a box or fit into a sort of identity marker that the military service needs. They are people who are being rewarded and promoted in a way that is commensurate with the service that they have given to this country.And yet, Secretary Hegseth, you know, and there’s this question of, like, I can’t really get into Secretary Hegseth’s head, but in some ways I don’t need to, because he’s written so much of it down, and he’s said so much of this in his speeches.Hegseth (in September 30, 2025 speech): “For too long we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons. Based on their race. Based on gender quotas. Based on historic so-called firsts. This administration has done a great deal from day one to remove the social justice, politically correct, and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department.”Hegseth (in May 23, 2026 speech): “Our diversity is our strength: The single dumbest phrase in military history.”Smith: He thinks that if you are a woman, if you are Black, if you are someone who has promoted the importance of diversity, equity, or inclusion, then you are similarly reflecting a sort of military that he does not want to be a part of, a military that he does not want to lead.Harris: Yeah. You know, I’m a military kid. And so I have all of these memories, right, of Black generals. There weren’t that many of them; I remember two of them that I got to meet personally. So “Fig” Newton was the base commander at a base we were stationed at and then General Boddie, who I went as—literally went as—for Halloween one year. And they were both, right, sort of mentors to my dad.But what is the significance of those people who have earned those positions? What is the significance of that diversity in the upper ranks of the military?Smith: Well, this is the thing. I mean, one: Purely on an—obviously—on a moral and ethical level, it is wrong to prevent someone from being promoted to a certain position because they have promoted themselves the importance of inclusion, empathy, generosity, and a thorough examination of history and how history shapes both the military and the sort of larger country that you are tasked with defending.But it’s also the fact that now the military is in fact a less robust, less healthy, less effective institution to do the work it is tasked with doing, because in order to engage in the sort of myriad tasks that the military engages in across the world with a wide demographic of people, with wide groups of people from all manner of different backgrounds, even within the military, you know, to your point, the thing that came up over and over again was that a lot of these top officers, and I’m sure you and your family and your dad know this, they serve as the mentors to the younger officers. And that’s not in a sort of, like, hokey way; I mean it is literally the mentorship of the officers who have been in the service for 10, 20, 30, 40 years who help the younger officers not only navigate what it means to be in the service, what it means to—how to navigate opportunities for promotion, for education, for, you know, becoming an office. It is the thing that allows people to see that there is a space for them in the military, that there is a future for them in the military, that gives them a sense of community in an institution that can sometimes be incredibly isolating.I spoke to so many officers who talked about being the only one in the room, and over and over again they were the only one in the room. And it was the affinity groups. It was the sort of informal spaces, right? People getting together after church on a base in South Korea that allowed them to come together and, you know, share that shared culture, that shared music, that shared food. That is what sustained people’s ability to do their good work. It is what sustained morale and kept it as high as it had been. And so when you destroy affinity groups, when you destroy opportunities for people to come together and be in community and see one another and be there for one another and serve as mentors and mentees for one another, you are in fact destroying the morale of the people who are serving in your military.Harris: Yeah, so, it’s both sort of being able to actually see those people, but also, right, you’re going to the officer’s club after church with your family on the weekend to do brunch. It’s clearly a very clear memory in my mind.Smith: Yeah, and that stuff matters to people.Harris: It does. Yeah it’s ability, that ability to be in community with another person and share some of those similar stories, even down to the things that you wear around base, right?You know, thinking about the military too. The military is a microcosm of society in a lot of ways. I think about the command structure of the military a lot. I wrote this piece a couple of years ago that looked at the things that were still integrating America. And as we know, one of the biggest tells of integration is whether there is a federal force, a strong central government that is pushing on that integration, which is why the military, with its strong command structure, is one of the most diverse entities in American society, right? And so, I guess, that gets to this broader societal question about, like, if it happens to the military, what are the knock-on effects for our society? So what else can be lost alongside the military culling diversity from its ranks?Smith: This may or may not be a sort of peripheral reason or impact, rather, of what’s going on, but what is true is that the military, as you’ve alluded to, has been one of the primary mechanisms throughout American history by which Black Americans can achieve social and economic mobility. And what happened—I spoke to so many people, you know, I spoke to two dozen people for this story, and over and over again, one of the things that I heard was that those folks often became the sort of financial centerpiece of their entire family, and not just like their siblings or their children or their spouse, but entire ecosystems of their family relied on the stability that they provided. These are often folks who came from working-class backgrounds. These are often folks who were the first in their families to go to college, the first in their families to ascend to certain positions and to achieve a level of economic stability that was unseen in their family previously. And so when you create the conditions to make it so that someone has to retire early, when you create the conditions that push somebody out, you’re not only impacting that person and their immediate family, you’re actually impacting the tentacles of that decision to leave shape so many people beyond just that individual.And so one of the impacts of Black people leaving the military at the rate that they seem to be leaving, or not even entering the military necessarily at the same rates, is that you are stripping from Black Americans one of the most effective means of achieving a different level of socioeconomic status that has reverberations across society.[Music]Harris: When we come back: how the Trump administration is trying to rewrite the American story and what that means beyond the 250th anniversary.[Break]Harris: We’re thinking about anniversaries right now, right? You know, July Fourth, 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But anniversaries are really just so much about the stories that we tell ourselves. And they’re also not the end of that story, right? You celebrate the anniversary and then the next year comes.So what story, as we move into 251, right, what story is the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, trying to tell about America’s military and what it represents?Smith: I think the story that Secretary Hegseth is attempting to tell is one that is sort of reverting back to or hearkening back to a demographic makeup of the military that increasingly reflects the sort of country that Secretary Hegseth would like to live in, more than the country that he does live in. And I think that that is part of a larger phenomenon that is related to so much of what’s going on in this administration.Obviously, so much of the immigration policy being enacted by this administration is quite explicitly, you know, as many of our colleagues have written, attempting to make it so that America is not becoming an increasingly majority-minority nation. That is the trajectory that we were on, and that is the trajectory that Stephen Miller and many others in these positions of power would like to stop. And so you see that in our asylum policy, you see that in our policy around undocumented immigration, you see that in our policy around legal immigration. They are doing all that they can to ensure—and this is not conjecture; I mean, they’ve said this—to ensure that they maintain a level of homogeneity within America, or attempt to move back toward a level of homogeneity within America in terms of its racial makeup, in terms of its ethnic makeup, in terms of its religious makeup. And it seems to be the case that Secretary Hegseth, that his vision of the military is in line with other members of this administration’s vision of America, which is to make it increasingly white.Harris: How do you square that with a sort of broader, more inclusive story of America, right? That the power structure of America right now is trying to tell a different story than this sort of broader, more inclusive America is representing.Smith: You know, I think about these conversations that I had with these officers and these soldiers, and one of the things that kept coming up over and over again was that they said that they were fighting not necessarily for what this country is right now, but they were fighting for what this country can be.They kept invoking the Constitution. They said, I’m fighting for the Constitution. I swear an oath to the Constitution. I don’t swear an oath to Secretary Hegseth. I don’t swear an oath to President Trump. I don’t swear an oath even to, you know, my neighbor in America. What I swear an oath to is the Constitution. And what we know from the Black tradition is that our forebearers thought of the Constitution as a sort of promissory note, as an aspirational document that reflected not necessarily what America was at the time when it was signed, but reflected what America could be, that reflected what America had the potential to be. And these members of the military are keenly aware of that history and are situating themselves within that history and believe themselves to be fighting for what they want this country to be, what this country itself has suggested it aspires to be. And that they are part of an intergenerational project of Black members of the military who are trying to push this country to be the best version of itself, to be what it sought out to be in the Declaration of Independence, in the Constitution. And that is in many ways a sort of guiding light for them.Harris: Yeah. One of the refrains that I saw kind of come up again and again in the story was about America as a nation of slow but visible progress, right? The military being a microcosm of that.Will we still be able to say that the story is one of slow but visible progress? The visible racial progress being the key phrase there. Will we still be able to say that 25 years from now?Smith: You know, one guy I talked to, he talked about it as—he was like, You almost gotta think about it like your retirement portfolio in the stock market. He’s like, If you look at it every day, then you’ll go crazy, and you’ll feel like maybe we’re going backwards. Maybe you’re gonna wanna pull, you know, pull out all your money from it. He’s like, But what you do is you take the long-term view, and you don’t think about it necessarily on a daily basis or a weekly basis or even a sort of year-by-year basis. What you do is you think about it in the context of your entire tenure, in your entire life, you know, the entire life of this country. And I think there was a recognition that it may be the case that we are slipping backwards in this moment in terms of the progress that has been made in the military and that we may be slipping backwards in terms of the progress we’ve made in broader society.But there is a belief in the long view. There is a recognition again of the fact that these folks won’t be here forever and that a new administration will come in, whether Democrat or Republican, that presents an opportunity to move back toward progress in a way that this one seems not to.You know, one of the folks that I talked to in the piece, who I call Reginald, who’s an officer in the Army. I think he said, like, We built this. We, my ancestors, built this country. Like, my ancestors in the military helped build the military into what it was. And as we said at the beginning of the conversation, like, they did it when they were part of segregated units. They did it when they weren’t allowed to carry a gun, because they didn’t want Black men carrying guns. They did it when they were, you know, driving the trucks through France that brought the supplies to people on the front, even when it put them in danger from, you know, the German Air Force dropping bombs on them as they’re making their way down these French roads.And over and over again, there’s this sense of: We have done so much to defend this country. We have done so much to serve this country. My direct ancestors, they would say, their literal blood is in the soil of this country and abroad defending this country. And I’m not gonna let some people come in and push me out because they don’t like what I look like, or they don’t like what I sound like, or they think that I’m in this position simply because I’m here to fill a quota. I know the truth. We know the truth, and part of our job is to ensure that enough of us are still here once this storm has passed, as they would say, to ensure that there are people to pick up the pieces when the sky turns blue again.Harris: Yeah. Yes, it’s almost as if the ancestors did it when belief was all they had, who are we to do any different?Clint, thank you for giving us so much to think about, and thank you for joining me.Smith: Appreciate it. Always.Harris: That’s all for today’s show. This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Mike Pesoli and Hadley Robinson. It was engineered and has music by Rob Smierciak. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.