Advice for Future Service Members

For the last few months, the Atlantic' Clintmith has been trying to understand what it is like service members to report to a boss like Secretary of Defense, Pete Hagseth Peg Zeth has called our diversity is our strength the single dumbest phrase in military history He has declared Black History Month dead and within days of taking charge at the DOD fired, the military's highest ranking black officer General CQ Brown. What happened to General Brown Clint says? It served as a kind of warning shot for every black officer he spoke with Ci Brown, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff In many ways, he had come to body and personify excellence within the institution. I mean, he was chosen as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff because he was so uniquely suited. the position based on his previous service, based on his rank, based on his merit General Brown rose through the ranks as an F sixteen pilot with three thousand hours in the cockpit More than a hundred of those in combat He was promoted to Air Force Chief of staff during President Trump's last term in office But in the wake of George Floyd's mur also became known for an uncommonly vulnerable video he released about his own feelings on race General Brown was fired by phone while he was visiting with the troops on the southern border And so I think For many Back service members, you know, the The lack of pageantry, the lack of respect, the lack of Um dignity that he was given or not given It was indicative of what felt like was coming down the bike a little more than a year later More black officers have been let go, or simply walked off the job. Navy Admiral Alvin Holsey used to be the head of Southern Command Major General Willam Green used to be the Chief of Chaplains Then there are the promotions Secretary Hagseth has personally blocked Many of the minorities are women. Pettier ind dignities too Like one day the folks at the Pentagon realized a portrait of General Daniel Chappy James. was nowhere to be found General James was the first black F star general He was not exactly woke Like in nineteen seventy five, he gave an interview where he decried reverse racism. You know, some of the best practic in bigots I see right now black And they had a lot of training because they got segregated against a lot and a lot of them but I see a lot of people that are screaming about the back of the bus that never sat there Well, I did He was ideologically aligned with so much of the Republican partarty Um And he has been celebrated by Republicans for generations. Bon DeSantis named a bridge after him in Florida. U And so in many ways, that makes the removal of his Portrait and even more jarring experience for folks because it's not a question of one's politics when you remove as a portrait of Chapppy James, it's saying o simply because You are black You are not worthy of veneration. You are not worthy of commemoration. You are not worthy of celebration The thing that captures this moment is cognitive disistance that many Back service members are experiencing on the one hand There is the sense that they want to remain within the organization to keep the ships steady. There's recognition that they will be there much longer than the administration will be that there's only two and a half years left this administration way. But can you bear it but can you bear it Today on the show Black service members in Pete Heegseth's military. are beginning to speak out So who is listening I'm Mary Harris You're listening to what next Stick around So you just wrote this big article at the Atlantic about being black and Pete Hest military. I gott to say, I've been waiting for someone to write this piece to sort of explain how service members are actually feeling on the inside. I'm really glad you did it. You mentioned you have family. who have served, who are serving? Was it your family that was kind of your inspiration here. Were you hearing things personally or you thought like I want to explore this more So I've been working on a book about World War twoI memory over the last five years. and so I've traveled to Differe places so I've been I Thinking about that then I went to Kim Shelby. where my uncle my great uncle was in base camp in Mississippi And and so I began thinking about especially when I was there What did his service mean? and what does it mean to fight for a country that moment was like actively lynching people. And so I became interested in this idea of what it means for people to fight for a country that is not. always fighting for them and in fact, not even a country that's not fighting for them, but a country that is actively antagonizing them. And I've been thinking about this in the context of World War two And I found myself kind of looking around and being like, this is the question that in many ways back on our plates today. You've talked a bit about how important the service has been to black people in terms of like it was one of the first integrated environments in the United States It was her leading in that But maybe it's also important to talk about like how I'm how important black people have been to the U. S. military. They're a significant part of the military. if a fifth of the arrmy is black I think thats that number is about right. Yeah. and and you know, the impact of decimating the officer infrastructure. of the military, of making it so that these folks who have been in the military for a long time who often serve as mentors, to many of the younger Service members It's going to have a profound impact on a sort of long term landscape of what what the military looks like. if you remove all of the people and push out all of the people who serve as the mentors, as the guidance, as the people helping younger service members navigate the institution, I think you're going to find higher attrition rates You're to find a higher sense of disillusionment. You've taken away and formally sunseted all of the organizations, all the affinity groups that provide bllack people with a sense of community, a sense of collectivity And And and so, you know, we're not only in the beginning of the long term consequences of what this might look like. and this is something that's, you know, people are struggling with in higher ed, but the military has its own particular manifestation of it as well Yeah, I mean, it's interesting in other contexts, I've talked to people who've pointed out the fact that Um Like for instance with journalism Donald Trump and his administration have taken aim at ABC, CBS sort of places Big dogs. It feels like with the military it's sort of the same taking on diversity in the military in a place that has grown to really value diversity and have if it baked into the infrastructure of the military feels like taking aim at an institution That is like at of its I mean, there'sertainly places to go, but like it was a place that was known as a way you could get ahead as a Black person And the most insidious interpretation of that is that Heaget knows that and is purposefully attempting to push black people out Of Perhaps the institution that has been the M prominent catalysts intergenerational wealth and social mobility over the course of multiple generations. and what happens is I think all you have to do and they've tried to do this across the board. Um If you target the the people at the top, if you don't approve the promotions of the one star, two star three star general What you're doing is not only preventing those people from ascending to or staying in the positions that they were in What you do is you send a message to everyone below them to say like, oh, well, if this colonel or if this brigadier general, or if this person if they had their promotion denied If they if the Pentagon doesn't think that they are capable of, u being in this position or in this room or holding this office, then certainly they're not going to think that I am. And so you create a sense of disillusionment, sensitive of impostor syndrome, a sense a lack of belonging. Devaluation. Yeah. and that The issue among many but just logistically is that you you reduce the effectiveness of the force If you're creating conditions in which people believe that they are not valued and not welcomeed and won't have an opportunity to achieve upward mobility then you create an armed forces that is less paired uh, that is less, um, essentially sort of able to do what they are tasked with doing How much of what's been happening at the Pentagon do you think is about? He hugs us U because It strikes me I look at the last year and a half U firstirst of all, Pet Hags Heath has been pretty openly racist and sexist for years now. You know, he wrote, diversity is not our strength And he blew off what he called affirmative action promotions in his twenty twenty four book Um And he has directly intervened to block or delay promotions for more than a dozen bllack and female officers. U so how much of it do you put on him personersonally put a lot on him personally. thing that people need to understand is by the time someone reaches the desk of the Secretary of Defense to get approved to move forward with a promotion It has been an exhaustive process by military experts, by military personnel who have gone through a person's background, who have gone through a person's service, who have gone through a person's credentials, who have gone through the person's education, who have done multiple character references, who have talked to numerous people to get a sense of who this person was and what their management is like, what they're capacity to lead is like And so by the time that it is very rare for someone to go through that process and then not be approved by the Secretary of D defeense, who to be clear, doesn't know that person. doesn't engage with that person on a regular basis. And so is making a decision based on preconceived notions of who he think uh is is an affirmative action hire. u who he thinks is is someone who is going to contribute to the woke quote unquote mentality of the military that he's purportedly trying to eradicate Uh and and so I think It's Again, we can't be inside of his head We don't have to because he's written so much of it down. and hes said so much of it on Fox News and said so much of it. podcast. manyany of the officers that I spoke to U are struck by the fact that Pete Hagsf never achieved the military credentials that they did. And yet he's their boss. And yet he's their boss, you know, and There's this question of whether Pete Hexeth is resentful. of those who of black people who may have been promoted at his expense, there's questions of whether Pete Higsetf believes that it was willing himself to have to be led or have been led. byy black leaders in the military, You know, there's there's people who have said that he doesn't want to be surrounded. by black people or women in photographs that he's taking Have you spoken to any of the officers who have gotten this kind of treatment, been blocked from advancing in forced into retirement been dismissed. So I spoke to a number of people off the record, including some of the people who have been dismissed and And there's still, you know the context for this story I've been working on for the past few months Um the beginning of the process of interviewing people there were there was a something going through the courts in which Pete Hgseth had tried to take away from Senator Kelly, the senator from Arizona. his ability to receive his pension that he gets from having served in the military for Yeah, is this happened after he did a video where he told service members, you shouldn't obey illegal orders. And the intervention then was this attempt to take away his standing And that was really frightening for a lot of people. And I think that you know, part of what incentivizes people to stay for so long in the military beyond their sort of sense of patriotism and service to this country is the fact that if you stay for twenty years It triggers a pension that you receive for the rest of your life. And that is that is a consequential People talk about life in the military before your twenty years and after your twenty years. And if you stay in longer than twenty years, then you Um you know, receive an even higher proportion of your salary once you retire. but But what I found was that people who were fearful notot only that if they had not been in for twenty years that they wouldn't receive the pension, but because of what was happening to Senator Kelly and the threats that he was receiving this idea that even if you had gotten past your twenty years that they could revoke pension. And ultimately, a federal judge said there was unconstitutional and that it wouldn't that was it was not something that HXF could move forward with As I was interviewing people and having these conversations, that was the sort of background context. And so I think a lot of people were fearful of putting their names out there because they worried about being tacked by this administration, which this administration has proven it is more than willing to do It struck me that in the stories that serervice members told you It seemed to me there was so much invisible compromise that these service members were already making in their day to day life Like you talk about how one believe retired Service member you spoke to would go around and like tell other younger service members like You should keep be clean shaven. Don't play your music loud you know anything to raise anyone's hackles because you know, the bar is a little higher for you, but I'm here for you. Like he did in a positive way folks serving Pople. They already feel like I've been compromising for years. and now, you know, now you're I don't know, you're you're actively dismissing me And I don't think people fully appreciate to your point the extent to which peopleople have been making compromises and contorting themselves and U and sort of reinventing themselves in order to U, accommodate specific Um sort of dynamics of the military. and, you know, a lot of the folks who, you know, the mentors of the higher ranking black officers who would serve as as people with guidance for many of these younger officers, they didn't tell them to, you know, turn their music down or you know, not wear basketball shorts to CVS or not, you know, shave their faces or any of these different things that they tell them because they necessarily believed it was important. Oftentimes it was because they were cognizant of the fact that Sometimes these panels that were used as a way to decide promotions could use any reason as a way to to decide that you were not worthy or capable uh, of being promoted to the next brink. And so there's this feeling of like you cannot give them any reason to deny you, you have to be undeniable, which, you know, and this is why the firing of somebody like CQ Brown was so devastating. to so many because his resume was in many ways undeniable Right? Like it it was clean as a whistle. H history of service to the Air Force was unquestionable And yet. It wasn't good enough. And so again, it creates this feeling like if for years, for generations Black people have been contorting themselves and trying to fit into this specific notion of what they they believe is necessary in order to achieve mobility in the military. and the person who most directly embodies that is still fired thenen everybody's like Well, what am I doing this for? if they're not going to let me reach the positions that I deserve anyway who will bear a back After a quick break It seem like so many the people you spoke to were struggling with this. Like, do I stay or do I go? Everyone had a different answer A lot of them had contradictory answers. It felt like to me. peopleople saying if we Leave There won't be anyone left Nevertheless I'm leaving And you pressed on that with people. What was that conversation like? I think this is something people have been struggling with in a profound way. I mean, it in many ways has been a sort of existential crisis people are having they recognize every single black person leaves the military If every black officer leaves, every black enlisted soldier leaves that there will be nobody left and that that will we already in a moment that in which they conceive of the leadership of the military attempting to reconstitute Jim Crow within the military. And if the number of people in the military drops in such a precipitous way, it is going to be incredibly difficult even under the best of circumstances to build that back And so there's a recognition of that fact. But at the same time, there is this This this feeling of like, how much can you subject yourself to without it pushing you over the edge How much can you allow yourself to be complicit You know, I spoke to a lot of these folks in the midst of what was happening in Minnesota when it was unclear if the president was going to deploy troops to the to U. S cities to fight against protesters and activists in the streets. And so, you know, these are folks who are like I come from civil rights tradition How are they thinking through what they would have done in that circumstance? Some people said if I am deployed to US city to quash protest I will I will leave. I will not do it Other people said, if I am deployed to a USA I will tried to do it in a way that is respectful rather than trying to bash skulls. And so you know, I think there's these sort of mental gymnastics that people are Um are trying to navigate. And I think that sometimes the answer depended on the day because of the news of the day was changing so much. you know, whether it was Minnesota, whether it was Iran People recognize that the U. S. military has not always been an institution, you know, through its intervention, through its imperialism that is consistent with the personal values that they may hold But I think that this administration is an outlier in some ways in terms of how brazen they are in their actions in their threats and their rhetoric and their policy. People are really continue to wrestle with whether or not they can be a part of that Yeah the small acts of resistance that you quantified struck out to me. Like you talked about one person. this is before Trump came into office, but someone who's a political appointee they knew they were going be out of a job when Trump came in And the transition team comes to them ahead of time and says, Hey, could you just quantify up all the DEI programs so we can know what those are? And they were like, actually can't You can do that when you come in And it struck me we have so little visibility into those small acts of resistance that might be happening now We just don't know Who's saying no, who's saying yes. All we see is when a boat is bombed or when someone's promotion is stopped And I do think that there are a lot of people who just believe they have to wait it out They like, this is going to be hard This is going to be Unsttling. This is going to be difficult to swallow But their sense of their theory of change, their theory of their sense of their responsibility is that they take an oath not to a president not to a secretary of defefense They take an oath to the Constitution And when they are out there serving the country, when they are fighting abroad, when they're being deployed so much of what they told me is that they're fighting for the Constitution. and which is to say they are fighting for promise of Amera. You know, Dr. King famously talked about the Constitution as a sort of promissary note And that reflected the aspirations of this nation, not necessarily who this nation was at a gi moment And that was the echo of that is something that I heard over and over again is this sense that like I'm not fighting for what this country is I'm fighting for what this country can be And if I leave, who's going to be left to do that? What would you advise a young person? Who came to you used to teach high school. someomeone was like, Yeahah, I think I' join in the military. now. man, black woman Given all the reporting you've done I just wonder what you'd say to them. I've been thinking a lot about My days is high school teacher and the US. Army would set up a table inside the cafeteria of our high school uh where they would recruit uh, these these Not even young men and women, theseese kids u at the time into the service and the promise O the military is that it would pay for college that it would u, you know, give you financial stability that it would You'd have a nice home, you'd have people to drive a good car. you'd be able to see the world I don't want to tell any young person Um They should not serve this country, especially in the context of the American military tradition, which is this idea of of serving The country can be almost more so than serving what it is. U I think there's something incredibly hopeful in that and something incredibly inspiring in that. But I do think that people to think Critically and carefully about what it means for them to enter in this moment and to be clear about what their own personal redlines are. as they move into uh, this this institution and these organizations, um So You know, I had a sign on my wall when I was a high school teacher that said Critically, rightite consciously, speak clearly, tell your truth Um And I think I would point to that those four phrases. And I would say that as you decide whether or not you're going to embark on this journey This is what you have to do and if if you feel like any of these values will be compromised are called into question then I think you have to question whether or not this is the the place for you to go. Clint, I'm so grateful for your time Thanks for that, and for your reporting. It's really spectacular Thank you so much Quintn Smith is a writer over the Atlantic Al also the author of How the Word is Past and Above Ground And that's our show What nextxt day is produced by Rob Gunther, Evan Campbe, Madeleine Ducharm, and Patrick Fort Pai Osburn is the senior supervising producer of Wet Next and WetNext TV Milael is the executive producer of podcast here at Slate. Ben Richmond is the seniorirector Podcast Operations And I'm Mary Haris. Go track me down bllue S sky. Im Mary Haris Thanks for roasting. Catch you back here next time.