When The Trump Administration Calls Jackie Robinson ‘DEI,’ Here’s What They’re Really Saying

Even baseball great Jackie Robinson isn’t safe from getting labeled “DEI.”

The military history of Robinson — who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947 after serving as a second lieutenant in the Army as a younger man — was wiped off a Department of Defense website as the Trump administration works to eliminate anything it considers “diversity, equity and inclusion.”

The Pentagon has removed thousands of pages documenting the history of people of color, LGBTQ people, women and others from marginalized backgrounds and their contributions to the U.S. military. Among the targets? The Tuskegee Airmen, the Enola Gay aircraft (because it contains the word “gay”) the Navajo Code Talkers, prominent female fighter pilots and the Marines at the Battle of Iwo Jima. (In response to public outcry, a number of the pages have been reinstated.)

The crackdown on so-called DEI content isn’t limited to the Department of Defense; last month, references to transgender people were removed from a National Park Service website for the Stonewall National Monument, a park and visitor center in New York that commemorates a 1969 riot that was a major turning point for the LGBTQ+ rights movement. The “T” is still missing from the website today.

President Donald Trump has called DEI initiatives “immoral discrimination programs.” Apparently, a page featuring Robinson published in February 2021 as part of a series on the website titled “Sports Heroes Who Served,” fit that bill.

The Pentagon restored most of the deleted Robinson pages by Wednesday night while claiming it was acting in the name of colorblindness.

“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,” Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot told HuffPost.

“We do not view or highlight them through the prism of immutable characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, or sex,” he added. “We do so only by recognizing their patriotism and dedication to the warfighting mission like [every] other American who has worn the uniform.”

Christina L. Myers, an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at Michigan State University, finds the removal of Robinson’s contributions troubling, even if the DOD was quick to put the web pages back up.

Digital spaces serve as archives of collective memory, and when key narratives disappear, even briefly, they disrupt historical truth and reinforce patterns of marginalization, she explained.

“The erasure of narratives like Jackie Robinson’s isn’t just about a website ― it’s about control over history and whose stories survive,” Myers told HuffPost.

“If a site can be removed and restored at will, who decides what gets erased or rewritten?” the professor added. “This isn’t just about convenience; it’s about power over which histories are remembered and which are lost; it’s about power over memory and identity.”

Robinson’s legacy isn’t solely about baseball or having served in the military, she noted; it’s about breaking racial barriers and shaping American identity.

A.J. Bauer, an expert in right-wing politics and journalism, finds the broad misuse of the phrase “DEI” to be the most unnerving aspect of what’s happening.

“At some point the press needs to stop adopting right-wing framing that this is a ‘DEI purge’ and call it what it is — white supremacist violence against our collective past,” he wrote on Bluesky Wednesday in reference to the Robinson deletion.

The Trump administration has been audacious in its use of “DEI” ― using it as shorthand to suggest members of various minority groups as unqualified for jobs ― but historically, it has a very specific usage.

Before the term was conscripted into the cultural wars, it was primarily used by human resources departments at companies, nonprofits, universities and governments to refer to efforts to encourage more diverse and inclusive workforces ― not to “propagate racism,” as its critics have argued.

“[DEI] was a reformist response to long legacies of employment discrimination that relegated women and people of color, as well as gender non-conforming and other queer people, to lower paid and subordinate roles, or even barred their hiring outright,” said Bauer, who’s an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama.

When journalists refer to right-wing efforts to whitewash history ― or to remove women, people of color, and queer people from positions of leadership ― as a “DEI purge,” Bauer believes it extends plausible deniability to bad faith right-wing actors.

“It frames explicitly racist acts as concerns with bureaucratic procedure,” he said.

Adding an additional layer of interest to this conversation is that, contrary to popular belief, Robinson wasn’t afraid to get political.

As the first Black man to integrate Major League Baseball in the 1940s, he heard jeers and taunts from the white crowd when he stepped up to the plate but played through it. The discrimination wasn’t anything new to him. When he was a soldier during World War II, his superiors tried to keep him out of officer candidate school.

“He persevered and became a second lieutenant,” wrote Peter Dreier, a politics professor and author of “Baseball Rebels: The People, Players and Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America.”

While nowhere near as radical as, say, the Black Panthers, he was an active member of the NAACP and stood alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington. A year later, he helped found New York City’s Freedom National Bank, which was established out of protest against white financial institutions that discriminated against Black people.

Robinson knew full well that a colorblind world never existed. In his 1972 autobiography, “I Never Had It Made,” he describes his emotions as he stood on the field before his first game as a Brooklyn Dodger, ready to break the color barrier. He noted:

“But as I write these words now I cannot stand and sing the National Anthem. I have learned that I remain a black in a white world.”

The outcry about Robinson and the reinstatement of pages like his and those honoring the Navajo Code Talkers ― American soldiers who were instrumental in every major Marine Corps operation in the Pacific theater of World War II ― shows that public pressure makes a difference, at least.

But beyond outrage, sustained action is key, Myers said.

“Regular Americans can push for systemic solutions: supporting independent archives, funding and engaging with Black-owned and community-driven historical projects, and advocating for policies that protect historical integrity,” she said.

“It’s also crucial to teach and share these narratives beyond institutional control— in our communities, through schools and grassroots efforts — so history isn’t solely dependent on those with the power to erase it,” she said.