Speaker
Clint Smith
Appearances over time
1 episodes
Episodes
1
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Hegseth's aides use AI-powered online searches to find any instance where a promotion candidate expressed support for DEI, LGBTQ rights, feminism, or Black history, and use it to deny their promotion.
After 20 years of military service, members receive a pension for the rest of their lives — a powerful incentive shaping whether Black officers stay or leave despite hostile conditions.
The portrait of General Chappie James — the first Black 4-star general in U.S. military history — was taken down from the Air Force Gallery in the Pentagon early in Trump's second term.
General Chappie James, in a famous military mythology moment, pulled his gun on a young Muammar Gaddafi during a confrontation at a US base in Libya, forcing Gaddafi to back down.
Lonnie Bunch is the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the first Black person to serve as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
The first enslaved people arrived in the British colonies that would become the United States in 1619, and from that moment they were fighting for freedom — mostly without living to see it.
Shirley Chisholm was the first Black woman to run for president as part of the Democratic primary process, and is considered a foremother for Black women in politics.
Bayard Rustin, a key architect of the March on Washington, was consistently pushed to the background of the civil rights movement because civil rights leaders feared his visibility as a gay man would undermine their efforts.
Senegal defeated reigning world champion France 1-0 in the 2002 World Cup, which Clint Smith described as one of the greatest upsets in World Cup history.
The military has served as a singular mechanism for intergenerational Black economic and social mobility in the United States, with many Black families having multi-generational ties to military service.
There is a good-faith argument for auditing DEI programs for effectiveness. That argument is not what the Trump administration is making. Hegseth's campaign isn't about efficiency — it's about reconstituting a federal and military infrastructure that excludes Black people from positions of power, full stop.
America has never fully lived up to its founding promise — and right now it's backsliding. But the aspiration of a multiracial, multiethnic, multi-faith democracy at this scale has never been attempted anywhere else. Clint Smith refuses to abandon that project, even as he acknowledges how far we are from it.
Black and female military officers are being blocked from promotions they earned, subjected to DEI loyalty tests run by AI, and watching their history erased from Pentagon walls. Hegseth hasn't just introduced hostility — he's removed the top-level accountability that once kept racist behavior in check, effectively writing a blank check for discrimination throughout the ranks.
Hegseth's staff use AI-powered searches to scour the records of every promotion candidate for any positive statement about diversity, feminism, or Black history. Those findings are handed to Hegseth and used to deny promotions — not based on military performance, but based on ideological purity. The result is a senior officer corps being reshaped to look and think the same.
Chappie James was a Tuskegee trainer, Korean and Vietnam fighter pilot, Reagan's model soldier, and the first Black 4-star general in U.S. history. He once pulled a gun on a young Muammar Gaddafi and made him back down. When the Trump administration removed his portrait from the Pentagon's Air Force Gallery, Black officers didn't just see a picture disappear — they saw their own futures erased.
Lonnie Bunch is the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the first Black Secretary of the Smithsonian. Trump has repeatedly attacked the institution, but has never directly named Bunch — and when they met for lunch, Trump skipped the culture war and spent the time asking Bunch about chandeliers. Bunch is navigating the impossible: protecting the institution he built without provoking the president who could destroy it.
From 1619 to 1865, enslaved people fought for an emancipation the vast majority never lived to see. Clint Smith argues that the responsibility passed down to him — and to all of us — is to keep chipping away at the wall of injustice, knowing we may not see the breakthrough ourselves. That's not despair. That's the longest tradition in American history.
Children on middle school tours have no trouble accepting that America has done both great things and terrible things. The complexity only becomes a problem when adults impose their defensiveness onto the conversation. Clint Smith's approach — with students and with his own kids — is age-appropriate honesty, not erasure or sanitizing.
The administration isn't just being selective about history out of nostalgia — it's a deliberate power move. If people don't know why one neighborhood in D.C. looks different from another, they assume inequality is the natural order of things rather than the result of deliberate policy. Controlling the story is how you control the present.
Bayard Rustin was the organizational genius behind the March on Washington — handling permits, logistics, speakers, and hundreds of thousands of attendees. He was also the man who taught Dr. King Gandhian nonviolence. But because he was openly gay, civil rights leaders pushed him to the margins, afraid his visibility would undermine the movement. His erasure is one of the civil rights era's great injustices.
Tim Miller opens the episode by reading two texts: Thomas Jefferson's 1826 letter lamenting he can't attend the 50th anniversary of the Declaration, and Gerald Ford welcoming new Americans on the 200th anniversary. Together, they articulate America's dual promise — to welcome those who come seeking freedom and to export the idea of self-government to the world.
The U.S. military has functioned as one of the most powerful and consistent vehicles for Black upward social and economic mobility in American history, creating multi-generational military families. That context makes Hegseth's erasure campaign not just a moral offense but an attack on the economic lifeline of entire extended Black families.
Analysis
What they talk about
- History 42%
- Government 33%
- Society & Culture 17%
- Education 8%
Connections
Shows they appear on and people they share episodes with. Drag to explore.
