The Black Patriots Pushing for a Better American Future

Summary

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Radio Atlantic – The Black Patriots Pushing for a Better American Future

Podcast: Radio Atlantic
Host: Adam Harris
Guest: Clint Smith, Staff Writer at The Atlantic
Air Date: July 6, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode examines the experiences of Black service members under the current Trump administration, focusing on recent rollbacks of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the military. Through a candid interview with The Atlantic’s Clint Smith—author of “The Betrayal of Black Patriots”—host Adam Harris explores how the administration’s policies are impacting Black service members, the legacy of Black patriotism, and broader questions about American identity as the nation passes its 250th anniversary.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Changing Climate for Black Service Members

[00:35–02:26]

• Black exits from the military matter: Clint Smith highlights that the military has long served as an engine for Black socioeconomic advancement. Recent departures or reluctance to join threaten not only individual futures but broader community ecosystems.
• Sense of betrayal: Black service members experience "cognitive dissonance" (Clint Smith, 02:43), feeling the weight of current rhetoric and policies that imply their achievements are unearned.
• Historic tension: The Black tradition of military service is rooted in striving for a country that often hasn’t reciprocated loyalty—yet also contains hope for change, echoed in metaphors about “a storm that will pass” and responsibility to continue the legacy despite hardship.

"They watch as their history is disregarded, as their service is belittled, and they're pissed off. And many of them feel a desire to remove themselves from the military, to not allow themselves to be subjected to this sort of disrespect on a daily basis."
— Clint Smith [03:31]

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2. The Administration’s “Meritocracy” and its Messaging

[05:26–09:11]

• Official rationale: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claims a shift to a “colorblind, gender-neutral, merit-based approach” (Pete Hegseth, 01:36).
• Underlying implication: The administration’s rhetoric suggests that past promotions were illegitimate, feeding the perception that high-ranking women and minorities advanced due to tokenism rather than ability.
• Broader exclusion: While Black officers are the focus, Smith points out that women, LGBTQ+, and other minority service members are also being marginalized under a narrowed view of “warrior ethos.”
• Process overlooked: Failed promotions disregard thorough, established review boards, implying systemic denigration of DEI as “toxic ideological garbage” (Pete Hegseth, 08:42).

"For too long, we've promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong reasons, based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic, so-called Firsts... Our diversity is our strength. The single dumbest phrase in military history."
— Pete Hegseth [08:42]

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3. Why Diversity and Community Matter in the Military

[09:35–14:37]

• Mentorship and representation: Diversity at senior levels provides crucial mentorship, community, and role models for newer and younger service members, especially for those who are often “the only one in the room.”
• Affinity and support groups: Informal social networks, such as gatherings after church, play a vital role in sustaining morale and providing support—loss of these spaces weakens the force internally.
• Military as microcosm: Harris underscores that the military’s strong command structure enabled real integration, making it one of the most diverse federal institutions, with effects rippling into broader society.

"It is the thing that allows people to see that there is a space for them in the military, that there is a future for them in the military that gives them a sense of community in an institution that can sometimes be incredibly isolating."
— Clint Smith [11:20]

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4. Societal Reverberations

[14:17–16:42]

• Impacts beyond individuals: Smith reflects on how the military has fueled upward social mobility for generations of Black families; constraining that pathway harms not just individuals, but entire communities and their prospects.
• Loss of economic engine: If Black Americans leave—or stop entering—the military, society at large loses a key driver of Black economic advancement.

"You are stripping from Black Americans one of the most effective means of achieving a different level of socioeconomic status that has reverberations across society."
— Clint Smith [16:34]

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5. The Military’s Role in Shaping America’s Story

[18:08–21:13]

• The importance of narrative: As the U.S. passes its 250th anniversary, the administration is seen as attempting to return the military—and by extension, the nation—to an imagined, whiter demographic past.
• Parallel to broader policies: Smith connects the military’s direction with Trump-era immigration policies aimed at stemming America’s transition to a “majority minority” nation.
• Enduring Black patriotism: Black service members often reference the Constitution and Declaration as “promissory notes” and see themselves as fighting for America’s potential, not just its past or present flaws.

"What I swear an oath to is the Constitution... our forebears thought of the Constitution as a sort of promissory note, as an aspirational document... reflecting what America could be."
— Clint Smith [21:13]

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6. The Long View: Hope and Historical Perspective

[22:53–26:45]

• Progress as a long arc: Smith relays an officer’s analogy comparing racial progress to a retirement portfolio—don’t judge it by the week or year, but over decades.
• Resilience and legacy: Despite regression, many Black service members view themselves as stewards ensuring that, when political tides turn, the progress of previous generations won’t be undone.

"They did it when belief was all they had. Who are we to do any different?”
— Adam Harris [26:34]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “They feel incredibly disrespected. They feel a sense of despair. They watch as their history is disregarded, as their service is belittled, and they're pissed off.” — Clint Smith [03:31]
• “The single dumbest phrase in military history.” — Pete Hegseth on “Our diversity is our strength,” [08:42]
• “We built this. My ancestors built this country. ... My ancestors in the military, helped build the military into what it was. … I'm not gonna let some people come in and push me out because they don't like what I look like.” — “Reginald,” Army officer, paraphrased by Clint Smith [25:30]
• “Part of our job is to ensure that enough of us are still here once this storm has passed ... to pick up the pieces when the sky turns blue again.” — Clint Smith [26:20]

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Timeline of Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Highlight | | ---------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 00:35 | Clint Smith on Black departures from the military | | 02:43 | The “cognitive dissonance” Black service members face | | 05:59 | Hegseth’s “meritocracy” logic and its implications | | 08:42 | Hegseth quote: “Our diversity is our strength. The single dumbest phrase...” | | 09:35 | Why representation and mentorship matter at senior ranks | | 13:09 | Adam and Clint on the lived experience of community in a diverse military | | 14:37 | The ripple effect—how exits impact entire Black families and communities | | 18:08 | The meaning of America’s 250th anniversary in the context of national storytelling| | 21:13 | Black patriotism as fighting for what America could become | | 22:53 | Will the narrative of “slow but visible progress” endure? | | 25:30 | Military as Black legacy and the resolve to persist | | 26:34 | Adam’s closing reflection on ancestral belief and perseverance |

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Conclusion

Bridging the historical with the immediate, this episode grapples with who gets to claim America and shape the military’s future. Through the voices of Black patriots—and the administration seeking to rewrite the rules—Harris and Smith chart a nuanced, sometimes painful, always hopeful vision of progress, resilience, and what it means to serve a country that is still figuring out who it wants to be.

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Transcript

[Carla Lally]

Carla.

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[Clint Smith]

One of the impacts of black people leaving the military at the rate that they seem to be leaving or not even entering the military necessarily at the same rates, is that you are stripping from black Americans one of the most effective means of achieving a different level of socioeconomic status that has reverberations across society.

[Adam Harris]

The military is a kind of microcosm of America. And like America, it has been defined in some ways by the arc of slow, visible racial progress, particularly in its top ranks. Those who have served will tell you what it takes to become a general officer. Grit, discipline, sacrifice, knowledge. But when President Trump returned to office in 2025, appointing Pete Hegseth as Defense secretary, the administration saw something else as a part of that equation. Diversity, equity, and inclusion.

[Pete Hegseth]

DEI is dead. We replaced it with a colorblind, gender neutral, merit based approach.

[Adam Harris]

I'm Adam Harris. This is Radio Atlantic. And this week, we need to think about the story the administration is telling about the military and the nation. My colleague Clint Smith reports in the July issue of the Atlantic on the betrayal of black patriots. Now, the military doesn't just hand out birds and stars because someone is a woman or black. They do it because the person has earned them. How is this administration's take on DEI affecting the people who are serving in the military? And as the country moves beyond its 250th anniversary, how will that reshape the story America tells about itself? My colleague Clint joins me to discuss.

Clint, welcome to the show.

[Clint Smith]

It's good to be here.

[Adam Harris]

You wrote a piece in the July issue of the magazine called the Betrayal of Black Patriots.

And I guess first, can you just

talk a little bit about what you mean there, what has been happening to

black service members since the beginning of the Trump administration?

[Clint Smith]

Yeah, I think that a lot of these folks have been experiencing a sort of cognitive dissonance in the sense that, on the one hand, they are being subjected to rhetoric and policy coming from the very top of this administration that suggests that they are unworthy of the positions they hold that suggest that they are incapable of ascending to certain high ranking offices within the military. And if they have ascended to those positions, it's only because it suggested affirmative action or DEI or the remnants of a sort of quote unquote woke military under Obama and Biden. And so they feel incredibly disrespected. They feel a sense of despair. They watch as their history is disregarded, as their service is belittled, and they're pissed off. And many of them feel a desire to remove themselves from the military, to not allow themselves to be subjected to this sort of disrespect on a daily basis. But on the other hand, there is this acute sense of the history of black service in the military. And you know, a lot of the folks I spoke to are second, third generation in the military. And they are acutely aware of the fact that they have ancestors who fought, you know, who were freed slaves, who fought for the Union, who were, you know, living in the Deep south where people were being lynched while they were, you know, fighting for their country in World War II and World War I, you know, during the Civil Rights movement, Korea, Vietnam. And so there's always been this, this tension within the context of black military service, of fighting for a country that has not always necessarily fought for you or in fact that that has fought actively against you. And so in some sense there's a sense of, you know, our ancestors had it harder than this. As difficult as this moment is, as, as hard as it is, we are aware that this is part of what it means to be a black member of the military. And we have a responsibility to build on the work of our ancestors and not to allow these folks who are only going to be here for a season. They use all these metaphors like, it's a fever that'll break one day, it's a storm that'll pass one day, it's a season that will change one day. And so they're aware of this sort of temporary nature of what they're experiencing, even if it is incredibly difficult and feeling as if they have a responsibility to stay or that at least some of them have a responsibility to stay in order to preserve the work that has been done and to continue to build on it once this current administration is out.

[Adam Harris]

Yeah, because being black in the military has always been a sort of, they've

always sort of had to prove their patriotism.

Right. You mentioned that the administration had been sort of belittling their service. What is the administration given as reasons to explain its stance, to explain the sort of almost forced resignations to source the blocked promotions. What has the administration been giving as its reasons for this current push?

[Clint Smith]

The ostensible reason, as promoted by Hegseth and his aides, Secretary Hegseth, is, is that they are moving toward a purely meritocratic system within the military. It's suggesting that previous iterations of the military have not been that promotions have not been based on merit or capability, but instead have been based on tokenism, on symbolically putting people in positions that they don't necessarily deserve. And what's underneath that seems to be the suggestion that if a black person is in a high ranking position, if they are a general, if they are an admiral, if they are a lieutenant colonel, that they got there at the expense of a more deserving white man. And it's not only black people who are experiencing this. You know, Secretary Hegseth has a very, it seems, narrow conception of what a warrior ethos looks like. And it seems to be the case that black people and women, LGBTQ individuals, people from a range of different historically marginalized and oppressed backgrounds, do not necessarily fit into that. And what's interesting, and I think what people don't fully understand is that like these folks who Secretary Hegseth has struck from the promotion list, as he's done over and over again at this point, in a way that's pretty unprecedented in sort of modern administrations, they go through a really robust military board that is essentially going over their career, going over their service, going over their deployments, their combat. They're getting character references. And so for someone to go through this process and to be recommended for promotion to a one star general, to an admiral, whatever the case may be, These aren't decisions that are made on a whim, and these are not decisions that are made singularly based on whether someone is going to check a box or fit into a sort of identity marker that the military service needs. They are people who are being rewarded and promoted in, in a way that is commensurate with the service that they have given to this country. And yet Secretary Hegseth, you know, and it's. There's this question of like, I can't really get into Secretary Hegseth's head, but in some ways I don't need to because he's written so much of it down and he said so many of it, much of this in his speeches.

[Pete Hegseth]

For too long, we've promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong reasons, based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic, so called Firsts, this administration has done a great deal from day one to remove the social justice, politically correct, and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department. Our diversity is our strength. The single dumbest phrase in military history.

[Clint Smith]

He thinks that if you are a woman, if you are black, if you are someone who is. Who has promoted the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion, then you are similarly reflecting a sort of military that he does not want to be a part of, a military that he does not want to lead.

[Adam Harris]

Yeah, I'm a military kid, and so I have all of these memories of black generals. There weren't that many of them. I remember two of them that I got to meet personally. So Fig Newton was the base commander at a base we were stationed at, and then General Boddy, who I went as, literally went as for Halloween one year. And they were both right, sort of mentors to my dad. But what is the significance of those people who have earned those positions? What is the significance of that diversity in the upper ranks of the military?

[Clint Smith]

Well. Well, this is the thing. I mean, one purely, obviously, on a moral and ethical level, it is wrong to prevent someone from being promoted to a certain position because they have promoted themselves. The importance of inclusion, empathy, generosity, and a thorough examination of history and how history shapes both the military and the sort of larger country that you are tasked with defending. But it's also the fact that now the military is, in fact, a less robust, less healthy, less effective institution to do the work it is tasked with doing. Because in order to engage in the sort of myriad tasks that the military engages in across the world, with a wide demographic of people, with wide groups of people from all manner of different backgrounds, even within the military. You know, to your point, the thing that came up over and over again was that a lot of these top officers, and I'm sure you and your family and your dad know this, they serve as the mentors to the younger officers. And that's not in a sort of, like, hokey way, like. I mean, it is literally the mentorship of the officers who have been in the service for 10, 20, 30, 40 years who help the younger officers not only navigate what it means to be in the service, what it means to how to navigate opportunities for promotion, for education, for becoming an officer. It is the thing that allows people to see that there is a space for them in the military, that there is a future for them in the military that gives them a sense of community in an institution that can sometimes be incredibly isolating. I spoke to so many officers who talked about Being the only one in the room. And over and over again, they were the only one in the room. And it was the affinity groups, it was the sort of informal spaces. Right. People getting together after church on a base in South Korea that allowed them to come together and share that shared culture, that shared music, that shared food. That is what sustained people's ability to do their good work. It is what sustained morale and kept it as high as it has been. And so when you destroy affinity groups, when you destroy opportunities for people to come together and be in community and see one another and be there for one another and serve as mentors and mentees for one another, you are in fact, destroying the morale of the people who are serving in your military.

[Adam Harris]

Yeah. So it's both sort of being able to actually see those people, but also you're going to the officer's club after church with your family on the weekend to do brunch. It's clearly a very clear memory in my mind.

That stuff matters to people.

[Clint Smith]

It matters so much to people.

[Adam Harris]

Yeah. It's ability. That ability to be in community with another person and share some of those similar stories. Even down to the things that you wear around, around base. Right. Thinking about the military, too. The military is a microcosm of society in a lot of ways. And I think about the command structure of the military a lot. I wrote this piece a couple of years ago that looked at the things that were still integrating America. And as we know, one of the biggest tells of integration is whether there is a federal force or a strong central government that is pushing, pushing on that integration. Which is why the military, with its strong command structure, is one of the most diverse entities in American society. Right.

And so I guess that gets to

this broader societal question about, like, if it happens to the military, what are the knock on effects for our society? So what else can be lost alongside the military culling diversity from its ranks?

[Clint Smith]

This may or may not be a sort of peripheral reason or impact rather, of what's going on, but what is true is that the military, as you've alluded to, has been one of the primary mechanisms throughout American history by which black Americans can achieve social and economic mobility. And what happened? I spoke to so many people, you know, I spoke to two dozen people for this story. And over and over again, one of the things that I heard was that those folks often became the sort of financial centerpiece of their entire family, and not just like their sibling or their children or their spouse, but like entire ecosystems of their family, relied on the stability that they provided. These are for often folks who came from working class backgrounds. These are often folks who were the first in their families to go to college, the first in their families to ascend to certain positions and to achieve a level of economic stability that was unseen in their family previously. And so when you, when you create the conditions to make it so that someone has to retire early, when you create the conditions that push somebody out, you're not only impacting that person and their immediately family, you're actually impacting the tentacles of that decision to leave shape so many people beyond just that individual. And so one of the impacts of black people leaving the military at the rate that they seem to be leaving or not even entering the military necessarily at the same rates, is that you are stripping from black Americans one of the most effective means of achieving a different level of socioeconomic status that has reverberations across society.

[Adam Harris]

When we come back, how the Trump administration is trying to rewrite the American story and what that means beyond the 250th anniversary.

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[Adam Harris]

We're thinking about anniversaries right now, right as we're, you know, July 4th, 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

But anniversaries are really just so much

about the stories that we tell ourselves, and they're also not the end of that story. Right? You celebrate the anniversary, and then the next year comes. So what story, as we move into 251, right. What story is the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, trying to tell about America's military and what it represents?

[Clint Smith]

I think the story that Secretary Hegseth is attempting to tell is one that is sort of reverting back to or hearkening back to. A demographic makeup of the military that increasingly reflects the sort of country that Secretary Hegseth would like to live in more than the country that he does live in. And I think that that is part of a larger phenomenon that is related to so much of what's going on in this administration. Obviously, so much of the immigration policy being enacted by this administration is quite explicitly, as many of our colleagues have written, attempting to make it so that America is not becoming an increasingly majority minority nation. That is the trajectory that we were on, and that is the trajectory that Stephen Miller and many others in these positions of power would like to stop. And so you see that in our asylum policy, you see that in our policy around undocumented immigration, you see that in our policy around legal immigration, they are doing all that they can to ensure. And this is not conjecture. I mean, they've. They've. They've said this to ensure that there is. They maintain a level of homogeneity within America or attempt to move back toward a level of homogeneity within America in terms of its racial makeup, in terms of its ethnic makeup, in terms of its religious makeup. And it seems to be the case that Secretary Hegseth is that his vision of the military is in line with other members of this administration's vision of America, which is to make it increasingly white.

[Adam Harris]

How do you square that with

[Clint Smith]

a

[Adam Harris]

sort of broader, more inclusive story of America?

Right.

That the power structure of America right now is trying to tell a different story than this sort of broader, more inclusive America is representing.

[Clint Smith]

You know, I think about these conversations that I had with these. These officers and these soldiers, and one of the things that kept coming up over and over again was that they said that they were fighting not necessarily for what this country is right now, but they were fighting for what this country can be. They kept invoking the Constitution. They said, I'm fighting for the Constitution. I swear an oath to the Constitution. I don't swear an oath to Secretary Hegseth. I don't swear an oath to President Trump. I don't swear an oath even to, you know, my neighbor in America. What I swear an oath to is the Constitution and what we know from the black tradition, is that our forebears thought of the Constitution as a sort of promissory note, as an aspirational document that was tothat reflected not necessarily what America was at the time when it was signed, but reflected what America could be. That reflected what America had the potential to be. And these members of the military are keenly aware of that history and are situating themselves within that history and believe themselves to be fighting for what they want this country to be, what this country itself has suggested it aspires to be, and that they are part of an intergenerational project of black members of the military who are trying to push this country to be the best version of itself, to be what it sought out to be in the Declaration of Independence, in the Constitution. And that is in many ways a sort of guiding light for them.

[Adam Harris]

One of the refrains that I saw kind of come up again and again in the story was about America as a nation of slow but visible progress, right? The military being a microcosm of that. Will we still be able to say that the story is one of slow but visible progress, the visible racial progress being the key phrase there. Will we still be able to say that 25 years from now?

[Clint Smith]

You know, one guy I talked to, he talked about it as, he was like, you almost gotta think about it like your, like your retirement portfolio in the stock market. He's like, if you look at it every day, then you'll go crazy and you'll feel like maybe we're going backwards, maybe you're gonna want to pull, you know, pull out all your money from it. He's like, but what's do is you take the long term view, right? And you, you don't think about it necessarily on a daily basis or a weekly basis or even a sort of a year by year basis. What you do is you think about it in the context of your entire tenure, in your entire life, you know, in the entire life of this country. And I think there was a recognition that it may be the case that we are slipping backwards in this moment in terms of the progress that has been made in the military, and that we may be slipping backwards in terms of the progress we've made in broader society. But there is a belief in the long view. There is a recognition again of the fact that these folks won't be here forever and that a new administration will come in, whether Democrat or Republican, that presents an opportunity to move back toward progress in a way that this once seems not to. You know, one of the folks that I talked to in the piece, who I call Reginald, who's an officer in the Army, I think he said, like, we built this. Like, we. My ancestors built this country. Like my ancestors in the military, helped build the military into what it was. And as we said at the beginning of this conversation, like, they did it when they were part of segregated units. They did it when they weren't allowed to carry a gun because they didn't want black men carrying guns. They did it when they were, you know, driving the trucks through France that brought the supplies to people on the front, even when it put them in danger from, you know, the German air force dropping, Dropping bombs on them as they're making their way down these. Down these French roads. You know, over and over again, there's this. There's this sense of, we have done so much to defend this country. We have done so much to serve this country. My direct ancestors, they would say their literal blood is in the soil of this country and abroad, defending this country. And I'm not gonna let some people come in and push me out because they don't like what I look like or they don't like what I sound like, or they think that I'm in this position simply because I'm here to fill a quota. I know the truth. We know the truth. And part of our job is to ensure that enough of us are still here once this storm has passed, as they would say, to ensure that there are people to pick up the pieces when the. When the sky turns blue again.

[Adam Harris]

Yeah.

[Clint Smith]

Yes.

[Adam Harris]

It's almost as if the ancestors did it when belief was all they had. Who are we to do any different? Clint, thank you for giving us so much to think about. And thank you for joining me.

[Clint Smith]

Appreciate it always.

[Adam Harris]

That's all for today's show. This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Mike Pasoli and Hadley Robinson. It was engineered and has music by Rob Smirciak. Claudine Abade is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. If you like what you saw here, new episodes of Radio Atlantic drop every Monday and Thursday. You can subscribe on the Atlantic's YouTube page, on Apple or Spotify or wherever it is you get your podcasts. And if you want to support this work and the work of my colleagues, you can subscribe to the [e-mail] listener until next time, I'm Adam Harris.

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