This is an adapted excerpt from the March 20 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
For the past five years or so, perhaps no issue has mobilized the conservative movement in this country like the so-called war on woke, which would more accurately be described as a war on civil rights and desegregation. It’s a blatant attempt to erase the past 70-plus years of civil rights achievements in this country — the bedrock cultural history of the second half of the 20th century, stuff every single one of us either lived through or learned about in school.
Robinson is one of the most celebrated and recognized civil rights icons in this country.
In recent days, Donald Trump’s Defense Department has scrubbed several stories from its website as part of a transparent attempt to erase non-white, non-male voices from this country’s history. They deleted articles on the Navajo Code Talkers, who helped the Allies win World War II; Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian Marine and one of the six men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima in the iconic photograph; and Jackie Robinson.
Yes, they are trying to cancel that Jackie Robinson — number 42, the Hall of Fame player who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947, the guy who was court marshaled for his refusal to move to the back of an Army bus during his service in World War II. Robinson is one of the most celebrated and recognized civil rights icons in this country.
As it so happens, Robinson was a strong supporter of a number of Republicans during his lifetime, including Richard Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller. However, Robinson was also particularly outspoken against the presidential campaign of Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964. He accused backers of the Arizona senator of “seeking to sell to Americans a doctrine which is as old as mankind — the doctrine of racial division, the doctrine of racial prejudice, the doctrine of white supremacy.” Truly a prescient warning, perhaps one the Trump administration would rather you didn’t hear.
When pressed on its censorship of our country’s history, a spokesman for Trump’s Defense Department sounded rather unhinged, telling ESPN, “DEI is dead at the Defense Department. Discriminatory Equity Ideology is a form of Woke cultural Marxism that has no place in our military.”
But as you might expect, the backlash to the deletion of these pages from the agency’s website was swift and forceful. Eventually, the Trump administration caved to the pressure and restored some of the pages it pulled, including the article on Robinson. For what it’s worth, the Pentagon has reportedly sidelined the spokesman who gave that comment to ESPN and the agency is now claiming the whole thing was a mistake — but you can judge for yourself if you believe that.
Allison Detzel contributed.
