By Tom Cotton
Thursday, April 01, 2021
When President Harry Truman ordered the
desegregation of the military in 1948, he invoked the United States’ commitment
to “equality of treatment and opportunity for all” as his reason for doing so.
Unfortunately, more than 70 years after Truman’s
executive order, racist and un-American ideas of unequal treatment are creeping
back into the Armed Forces under the guise of so-called critical race theory.
Critical race theory repudiates the principle of equality
under the law that is articulated in the Declaration of Independence and that
has motivated civil-rights reformers for generations. It claims that this
American ideal is a sham used by the white majority to oppress racial
minorities, and consequently that America is racist to its core. The theory
concludes that the only way to end perceived discrimination against racial
minorities is to systematically discriminate on their behalf — to fight fire
with fire, so to speak. As Ibram X. Kendi, a leading agitator for critical
race theory, wrote, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present
discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future
discrimination.”
Kendi’s belief in unequal treatment and discrimination
has been embraced in fashionable left-wing circles. Increasingly, this ideology
is institutionalized in corporate America, higher education, and other elite
sectors in the form of “implicit bias training” and “diversity, equity, and
inclusion” offices. Sadly, now these racist ideas are even being taught to our
troops.
Last month, the Navy released a recommended reading list to facilitate the
“growth and development” of sailors. One of the books on this list is How
to Be an Antiracist, Kendi’s bestseller advocating critical race theory.
Separately, the Navy’s Second Fleet created a book club for sailors to
read White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, a book that claims
white people are inherently racist, whether consciously or subconsciously, and
that race is the insidious subtext for virtually all human interactions.
By promoting critical race theory, the military is
peddling ideological poison that will degrade the cohesion and combat
effectiveness of its troops. As I learned during my tours in Iraq and
Afghanistan, fighting alongside courageous soldiers of every race and
background, the military’s strength is not its “diversity” but its ability to
weather adversity through unity. We need to teach our young troops, as I was
taught by sergeants and officers of many different races, to befriend, fight
alongside, and, if necessary, die for their comrades on the battlefield — not
to obsess about skin color. Likewise, we need to teach them to revere the
Constitution that they swore to protect and defend — not to believe it’s part
of a multigenerational racist conspiracy.
Our troops face great hardships alongside their battle
buddies and learn quickly to set aside their differences and focus on the
common mission. These shared experiences forge unusually powerful bonds between
men and women of all different backgrounds, bonds that are rare in the civilian
world. We shouldn’t sacrifice those bonds for left-wing academic fads.
Americans who believe in the historic ideal of equal
treatment for people of all races must therefore fight back against the Left’s
effort to indoctrinate our troops and turn the military into yet another
glorified college campus. That’s why last week I introduced a bill to combat
critical race theory in the military and schools controlled by the military,
such as service academies.
My bill would prevent the military from promoting the
racist and anti-American theories at the heart of critical race theory in
official settings, such as reading lists and diversity trainings. It would bar
the military from hiring “diversity, equity, and inclusion” consultants to
teach critical race theory. Finally, my bill would prohibit the military from
segregating individuals on the basis of race under any circumstance.
Critics of this bill may whine that it is an assault on
freedom of expression. But the military is not a college or some woke
corporation; it’s the most fundamental institution of any society, with a most
vital mission: to defend in combat the Constitution and our way of life from
enemies who would destroy and subjugate us. Reductive, far-left theories of
race are a mortal threat to this mission. Our military must root them out and
reaffirm the ideals of “equality of treatment and opportunity for all” that
make it a just and effective fighting force.
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