High school history teacher Hadley DiForti has been teaching her students about Navy hero Doris Miller for the past four years. Miller, a Black sailor, gunned down attacking Japanese planes at Pearl Harbor in 1941 and was awarded the Navy Cross. DiForti relied on Navy websites for information about Miller’s story, but they were taken down earlier this year, leaving her and her students upset.
The Department of Defense did not respond to requests for comment, but a Pentagon spokesperson stated that discriminatory equity ideology has no place in the military and has led to the removal of diverse content from government websites. Pages about Miller, Jackie Robinson, Tuskegee Airmen, and others were taken down following an executive order by former President Donald Trump.
Experts in diversity, equity, and inclusion expressed concern that erasing the contributions of marginalized individuals from military history undermines the pursuit of truth. The removal of pages about Black war heroes and other minority veterans has been criticized as an attempt to prioritize white participation and heroism in history.
The omission of important military figures like Miller, Robinson, and others has led to calls for the restoration of the removed content. Historians and experts warn that erasing these contributions is an attack on diversity, inclusion, and truth itself, and could have damaging consequences for how history is understood and interpreted.
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