Black Medal of Honor recipient removed from US Department of Defense website; The Guardian, March 16, 2024

Maya Yang, The Guardian ; Black Medal of Honor recipient removed from US Department of Defense website

[Kip Currier: Shame on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and all those responsible for dishonoring this deserving veteran by removing him from the Department of Defense website and adding DEI to the website's URL, as if the acronym DEI (i.e. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) is a mark of infamy and dishonor.

The essence of DEI is ethically-grounded and has been and is still about (1) recognizing that human beings are made up of near infinite varieties of individual and collective qualities, (2) righting historical wrongs that have been done to groups of people, (3) inviting everyone to share their voices and votes in the democratic experiment, and (4) having an equal opportunity for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".

Believing and knowing that these kinds of spiteful acts -- like this one done to the late Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers -- against individuals and communities who have experienced genuine marginalization and/or who have fought against injustice and discrimination will someday be overturned and rightfully remedied keeps my spirit hopeful and optimistic for the long term.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]

[Excerpt]

"The US defense department webpage celebrating an army general who served in the Vietnam war and was awarded the country’s highest military decoration has been removed and the letters “DEI” added to the site’s address.

On Saturday, US army Maj Gen Charles Calvin Rogers’s Medal of Honor webpage led to a “404” error message. The URL was also changed, with the word “medal” changed to “deimedal”.

Rogers, who was awarded the Medal of Honor by then president Richard Nixon in 1970, served in the Vietnam war, where he was wounded three times while leading the defense of a base.

According to the West Virginia military hall of fame, Rogers was the highest-ranking African American to receive the medal. After his death in 1990, Rogers’s remains were buried at the Arlington national cemetery in Washington DC, and in 1999 a bridge in Fayette county, where Rogers was born, was renamed the Charles C Rogers Bridge."