NY Times on Memorial Day Weekend: US Military celebrates white supremacism


As Americans reeling from coronavirus stay-at-home orders struggle to celebrate the nation's heroes on Memorial Day, The New York Times published an editorial over the weekend that claims the U.S. military celebrates white supremacy.
On Sunday, The New York Times Editorial Board published the piece titled “Why Does the U.S. Military Celebrate White Supremacy?” The editorial made the argument that it’s time to rename military bases after “American heroes, not racist traitors.”
Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Rath Hoffman tweeted Sunday night in response: “On a solemn day for remembering those that have given their lives for our country fighting against tyranny and subjugation, the NYT has more than a million possible stories of the ultimate sacrifice by American patriots that they could tell. But they don’t.”
He followed up, in a statement: “The Department of Defense is the most diverse meritocracy in the country and the most powerful force for good in world history. We have many stories of valor still waiting to be told this Memorial Day weekend.

 The New York Times editorial board wrote that “the federal government embraced pillars of the white supremacist movement when it named military bases in the South.”


The editorial listed Fort Benning, Ga., as an example, noting that the military base honored Henry Lewis Benning, a Confederate general “who devoted himself to the premise that African-Americans were not really human and could never be trusted with full citizenship.”
The editorial pointed to Benning’s “now-famous speech in 1861” during which “he told secession conventioneers in Virginia that his native state of Georgia had left the union for one reason — to ‘prevent the abolition of her slavery.’”