Post-backlash from anti-DEI campaign, Air Force resumes with showing Tuskegee Airmen and WWII women videos
Tuskegee Airmen stunt confirms how much Trump plans to desperately erase Black history
Update on January 27, 2025: According to Air Force Times, the Air Force is reinstating its “basic training class” that was suspended last week for revisions. Material related to the World War II-era Black and female pilots, along with the Tuskegee Airmen, was temporarily removed in response to the Trump Cabinet’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) demands. However, as of Monday, Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson, head of Air Education and Training Command, confirmed that a revised class on “airmindedness” will include removed material about the Tuskegee and WASP pilots.
Original publication date: January 26, 2025
I could see my grandfather’s lip twitching and I knew he wanted to laugh so badly. Instead, he cleared his throat and carefully asked, “So how exactly did you — as a Black woman — fail a Minority Studies class?”
(The way I heard it in my head was, “Girl, how’d yo’ Black self fail a class about Black folks?” And because my grandfather and I share the same sense of humor, I know that’s how he wanted to say it too — but he has couth.)
I narrowed my eyes and said, “It’s impossible to pass a class when the instructor is saying something wrong every time he opens his mouth.”
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This was true. At the predominantly white institution (PWI) that I attended before transferring to a historically black college and university (HBCU), I was having so much trouble taking the instructors seriously. It was painfully obvious that I may have been the first Black student that these instructors had ever encountered — or, at the very least, the first one who pushed back.
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One instructor saw absolutely nothing wrong with asking our classroom full of white students to read Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” book aloud (with the word “nigger” used more than 200 times) and didn’t seem to realize that only one white guy in the room would read when I didn’t. Meanwhile, the remaining 20 or so white women and men in the class refused to raise their hands to read and shifted in their seats while my eyes burned a hole in the forehead of the n-word-loving student.
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By the time I’d made an enemy of the school newspaper, the English department (minus one journalism teacher, all due respect to her) and the History department, I knew it was time for me to go. And they knew it too, waiting until I returned to Chicago for the summer to send a letter threatening me with expulsion for a teacher evaluation miscommunication. I smirked. I’d already submitted my transcripts and told them I was transferring, so they could write the rest of their threats in their diaries.
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For someone who grew up with Black instructors who consistently taught Black history in the classroom, the problematic way that this problematic Michigan school was teaching English literature and history was wearing on my patience. I was furious damn near every day. One minority instructor called me into his office to check on my mental health because I was fighting this fight alone. My social circle complained about the racism but were all about quietly getting their degree. Not me. I fight. Loudly. Natural leaders don’t do a very good job of shutting up or backing down. My grandfather, who was an army veteran, would call me “contumacious” on occasion. But he did it in the kind of tone someone would use to call a woman “pretty.”
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Is Trump supposed to be the president or one of my racist former professors?
I have several veterans in my family in the army, navy and Air Force. All of them are strong leaders, incredibly business-minded, and proud as hell to be Black men and women. They were the first ones to come to my mind when I heard about Donald Trump’s executive order for the Air Force to remove what he considered to be a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) video: the history of the Tuskegee Airmen. In turn, the Air Force has reportedly removed training courses with footage of the Tuskegee Airmen and the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). (We’ll see how long this Air Force website page lasts.)
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This is a level of stupidity that I just didn’t see coming. While I had a laundry list of reasons why I wasn’t into former President George W. Bush as a president, even Bush awarded the Tuskegee Airmen the Congressional Gold Medal in a ceremony at the Capitol Rotunda in 2007. Once again, I was reminded of Bush’s assessment of Trump’s last inauguration speech: “That was some weird shit.”
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For all the Snoop Doggs and Nellys and Kanye Wests and Ice Cubes (and a few other rappers who aren’t worth mentioning by name because they have never ever in my entire music-loving life been important to me) who insist on defending this man while he spits in the face of Black men (and women) in history, I don’t know how many examples he can give you before you realize his entire goal is to disrespect Black people as much as possible in another four-year term.
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And to the white people who insisted they’re not racist and voting for Trump was all about the price of eggs, I’ve yet to see those egg prices go down. Have you? What I have seen is him lambasting DEI programs, complaining about history he can’t erase and rambling on incoherently about immigrants. Was your run to the grocery store worth all this?
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