Arlington Cemetery strips content on black and female veterans from website
16 comments
·March 17, 2025peterashford
How is that anything but plain racist and sexist? Who can seriously defend this kind of behaviour?
1shooner
I don't hold this opinion, and don't claim to know what these people truly believe, but I think their rhetoric would respond by saying that grouping and featuring people on the website based on their gender/race is sexist/racist.
For instance, Colin Powell is still featured as a 'notable grave', but there is not a page that indexes him by his race.
HeatrayEnjoyer
But they're grouping all the white men together by doing this.
ffsm8
Not specifying gender/race doesn't imply white man... So no, they're not.
There is no reason to specifically point out the gender or race unless it's explicitly about something related to that gender/race, and the only situations of that kind that I can think of right now are at the very least adjacent to racism/sexism.
anonymousiam
Are you referring to the removal, or to the exclusionary promotion of the honored dead who happened to be of a particular skin color or sex?
aaron695
[dead]
tbrownaw
Another article (someone dropped an article about this article in a chat group a few days ago), with additional details: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/arlington-cemetery-scrubs-we...
> Gone from public view are links to lists of dozens of “Notable Graves” at Arlington of women and Black and Hispanic service members who are buried in the cemetery. About a dozen other “Notable Graves” lists remain highlighted on the website, including lists of politicians, athletes and even foreign nationals.
r0ckarong
If you're asking yourself, yes there is a German word for that: "Geschichtsklitterung".
poobear22
I'd like to know who is buried at a national cemetery who was both at a Japanese internment camp and later a Korean or Vietnam POW. Would the help desk blow my request off?
lukev
I don’t think most people have woken up yet to how nakedly racist this new admin is. “DEI” is literally just the new n-word.
yongjik
Damn that gives a whole new layer of meaning to them changing the URL to "deimedal" ...
dylanhassinger
This administration is nazis. doing nazi stuff. just as dems predicted
_blk
[flagged]
readthenotes1
I can think of these reasons for this:
1) malicious compliance 2) overzealous compliance 3) temporary, while they rewrite materials from "Secretary Powell, a Black man" style that emphasizes immutable characteristics 4) intentional provocation 5) stupidity.
Given the proportion of BIPOC in the US military, I would be shocked if racism/sexism was the goal.
But I've been shocked before.
rl3
>3) temporary, while they rewrite materials from “Secretary Powell, a Black man” style that emphasizes immutable characteristics
What?
Did it ever occur to you that the fact some of these veterans are minorities is historically relevant given a climate of abject racism and sexism that persisted well into the 20th century, if not throughout the majority of it? Precisely because of their "immutable characteristics," to use your parlance.
Here’s an excerpt from Charles C. Rogers’ Wikipedia page:
”He attended the town's race-segregated elementary school for "colored children," and then attended the all-black DuBois High School in Mount Hope, West Virginia.[7][8]”
That’s rough. Let's read some more:
"In 1951, Charles Rogers joined the US Army as a second lieutenant through the Army ROTC program at West Virginia State College.[7] The Army was still segregated when he joined and his first assignment was an all-black unit stationed in Bavaria; the executive order commanding racial desegregation of the U.S. military went into effect six months later.[9] By 1954, after Rogers had been denied a path to becoming a chemical engineer with the Army, he submitted his resignation, in part because of a "'clear pattern' of discrimination..."
Huh, seems relevant. This is the same man that went on to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor some years later.
But hey, let’s language police a deceased war hero's official bio because it mentions he’s Black, and otherwise defend the folks issuing idiotic orders that amount to historical erasure.
Supporting this shit via way of whining about malicious compliance is a disgrace. You’re on the wrong side of history.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/16/defense-depa...
See https://x.com/StatisticUrban/status/1901124382996791747
“The DoD has removed the article on Charles Roger's Medal of Honor. He served in Vietnam, and despite being wounded three times in battle, rallied his troops and led them to victory in defense of Support Base Rita. Nixon presented his Medal.
The url is changed to "deimedal"”