Hegseth Blocks Promotions for Black Officers and Women While Preaching "Meritocracy"

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is blocking the promotion of four Army officers to one-star general. Two of the officers are Black. Two are women. The promotion list includes about three dozen officers, most of whom are white men.

Senior military officials confirmed the blocks, which follow Hegseth's removal of several high-ranking officers of color and women from top military positions. The pattern is clear, but the Trump administration insists this has nothing to do with race or gender. Instead, they're selling a different story: "meritocracy."

The New Racism Has a Vocabulary

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt praised Hegseth for "restoring meritocracy throughout the ranks." The word has become the Trump administration's favorite euphemism, rising from the ashes of anti-DEI and anti-"wokeness" campaigns to provide cover for discrimination.

Legal scholar Richard Delgado cuts through the rhetoric: "Merit sounds like white people's affirmative action -- a way of keeping their own deficiencies neatly hidden while assuring that only people like them get in."

The strategy is working. Instead of white robes and burning crosses, today's racists deploy words like "meritocracy," "race neutrality," and "colorblindness" to accomplish the same goals: keeping power concentrated in white hands.

A Pattern of Removals

Hegseth has moved quickly to reshape military leadership. He wrote, "The Left captured the military quickly, and we must reclaim it at a faster pace." His targets so far include:

• Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Black)
• Gen. William Green, Army chief of chaplains (Black)
• Adm. Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations (woman)
• Adm. Linda Fagan, Coast Guard Commandant (woman)

The Pentagon defended Hegseth with a statement claiming military promotions are "apolitical and unbiased" and given to "those who have earned them." That defense relies on the same coded language Hegseth is using -- the claim that this is about merit, not discrimination.

Four Strategies of Modern Racism

The Trump administration's approach to racism follows a predictable playbook with four core strategies:

Denial: MAGA politicians insist America "has never been a racist country." Nikki Haley, Candace Owens, Sen. Tim Scott, and Gov. Ron DeSantis have all repeated versions of this claim. DeSantis even defended Florida curriculum teaching that enslaved people "developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit." If you repeat the denial enough times, you can convince others racism doesn't exist.

Meritocracy: The word has become conservative shorthand for "we deserve what we have, and you don't deserve what you want." It allows white people to claim their advantages are earned while dismissing the achievements of people of color as undeserved handouts. Hegseth's alleged meritocracy has one job: funnel white men into military leadership positions.

Race Neutrality: By claiming to be neutral on race, whites can participate in systemic racism while denying individual prejudice. MAGA adherents can endorse Hegseth's racist actions while claiming not to be racist themselves. This self-delusion hides the structural nature of racism and enables people to shut their eyes to what's happening in front of them.

Colorblindness: The claim "I don't see color" has become a mask to hide racism. This attitude was carved into American law in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case, when Justice John Harlan wrote, "Our Constitution is color-blind. The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time." A colorblind Constitution for a white-supremacist America, gift-wrapped in legal language.

What's at Stake

Hegseth's actions threaten to reverse decades of progress toward a military leadership that reflects the diversity of the nation it serves. By blocking promotions for qualified officers of color and women while claiming to restore "merit," he's turning Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream into a nightmare.

The structures of systemic racism are always hidden, like the steel beams of a high-rise office building. The notions of meritocracy, race neutrality, and colorblindness don't dismantle those structures -- they sustain them. They allow discrimination to continue while providing plausible deniability to those who benefit from it.

Hegseth is moving fast and facing little accountability. Without oversight, he appears prepared to reshape the military into an institution where advancement depends less on qualification and more on fitting a specific demographic profile: white and male.

The Trump administration may have retired the white robes and burning crosses, but the goal remains the same. They've just found more respectable language to describe it.