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The Department of Defense removed its webpage on the history of baseball and civil rights icon Jackie Robinson amid the Trump administration's anti-DEI push, but later restored the site after calling the move a "mistake."
Robinson's Pentagon webpage includes the history of his service in the Army during World War ll, which occurred before he broke the color barrier in baseball and joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. On Wednesday (March 19), Robinson's page displayed a message saying the site "might have been moved, renamed, or may be temporarily unavailable." The letters "DEI" were also automatically added to the URL that links to the baseball legend's DOD webpage.
The removal came as other pages honoring a Black Medal of Honor winner and Japanese American service members were also taken down amid efforts by the department to strip content singling out contributions by women and minority groups.
“We were surprised to learn that a page on the Department of Defense’s website featuring Jackie Robinson among sports heroes who served in the military was taken down,” Robinson's son, David, said in a statement Wednesday amid the removal. “We take great pride in Jackie Robinson’s service to our country as a soldier and a sports hero, an icon whose courage, talent, strength of character, and dedication contributed greatly to leveling the playing field not only in professional sports but throughout society.
“He worked tirelessly on behalf of equal opportunities, in education, business, civic engagement, and within the justice system. A recipient of both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, he of course is an American hero.”
The page reappeared on the Pentagon's website later on Wednesday. The department suggested that they were correcting a "mistake" amid its directive to remove DEI content.
“We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms,” press secretary John Ullyot said in a statement. “In the rare cases that content is removed — either deliberately or by mistake — that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct the components and they correct the content so it recognizes our heroes for their dedicated service alongside their fellow Americans, period.”
“Everyone at the Defense Department loves Jackie Robinson, as well as the Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen, the Marines at Iwo Jima and so many others — we salute them for their strong and in many cases heroic service to our country, full stop,” he added. “We do not view or highlight them through the prism of immutable characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, or sex. We do so only by recognizing their patriotism and dedication to the warfighting mission like (every) other American who has worn the uniform.”
In his statement, Ullyot referred to DEI as “Discriminatory Equity Ideology.”
“It is a form of woke cultural Marxism that Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with the services’ core warfighting mission,” he said.
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