The Racism in Trump’s Colorblind Conservatism
President Trump’s elimination of diversity programs in the US military is the latest offensive in the president’s war on so-called wokeism. On January 27, 2025, the president signed an executive order that claimed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the military “undermine leadership, merit, and unit cohesion, thereby eroding lethality and force readiness.” Removing DEI programs, Trump declared, will eliminate “race-based and sex-based discrimination within the Armed Forces of the United States.” At the Department of Defense (DoD), Trump’s newly-installed Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, moved quickly to advance the president’s agenda. In a two-page memorandum on January 29, Hegseth ordered the creation of a task force to abolish DEI. “A foundational tenet of the DoD” the memo asserted, “must always be that the most qualified individuals are placed in positions of responsibility in accordance with merit-based, color-blind policies.”
The Trump administration’s targeting of diversity programs in the Department of Defense is significant. From the American Revolution to Afghanistan and Iraq, Americans of color have fought in America’s wars. For African Americans, in particular, military service has played a defining role in the long struggle for racial equality, both bolstering demands for full citizenship and offering a pathway to upward social mobility. From the thousands of recently emancipated slaves who joined the Union Army in the Civil War to the Double V Campaign’s reframing of the Second World War into a fight against both fascism abroad and Jim Crow segregation at home, generations of African Americans recognized military service as a tool to leverage the demand for first-class citizenship. President Harry S. Truman’s decision to desegregate the Armed Forces in 1948—a full six years before the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling against segregation in Brown v. Board of Education—underscored the importance of military service in the broader struggle for civil rights. And by the mid-twentieth century, with Jim Crow in the South and de facto segregation in much of the rest of the United States, the U.S. military offered Americans of color unique opportunities for professional advancement. As the Civil Rights Movement accelerated in the 1950s, there was thus some truth to Department of Defense officials’ claims that the military was a model of racial integration. As historian Beth Bailey writes, a common refrain among DoD top brass was “the only color in the Army is olive drab.”
The racial upheaval of the late 1960s, however, combined with the intensification of the U.S. war in Vietnam, led many African Americans to reject the idea that the United States was a beacon of democracy and the U.S. military a force for peace. As boxing champion Muhammad Ali put it, “I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over.” Correspondingly, as new forms of racial pride and identity—exemplified by James Brown’s 1968 anthem “I’m Black and I’m Proud”—took hold at home, racial tension wracked the U.S. military, with African Americans increasingly demanding recognition.
In response, DoD officials began experimenting with ways to acknowledge both equality in the ranks and differences among soldiers. The transition from military conscription to an all-volunteer force (AVF) in the 1973 accelerated this process: in order to meet its annual quota of fresh recruits, the military needed to enhance its appeal for African Americans.
At the same time, the power of the modern conservative movement surged in the 1970s, along with a free market ethos that marked the end of a liberal order rooted in the New Deal. Casting racial discrimination in America as a thing of the past, conservatives rejected the politics of Affirmative Action by arguing that all Americans—regardless of characteristics such as race or sex—had the right to rationally pursue their self-interest in a competitive marketplace. This “colorblind” conservatism underpinned president Ronald Reagan’s slashing of federal welfare programs, which, given the concentration of poverty in Black communities resulting from the long history of structural racism in the United States, disproportionately affected African Americans.
As a result, in recent decades the US military has become even more important for young men (and increasingly, women) who perceive military service not as a way to bolster citizenship claims, but as simply the least worst option to make up for the public policy failures that bedevil American society: poor public education, overpriced universities, lack of affordable health care, and the Walmartization of employment opportunities. Often referred to as a “poverty draft,” the US military has become the default option in a society that privileges warfare over welfare, and it’s no surprise that many of these soldiers are Black.
Seen in this light, Trump’s anti-DEI initiative is part of a long history of colorblind conservatism, predicated on a refusal to acknowledge ongoing inequalities rooted in deep-seated structural racism and emphasizing equality of opportunity over equality of outcome. It is also an assertion of racial supremacy: in Trump’s military, African Americans will still fight and die, but the default color won’t be olive drab. It will be white.
