Demonizing diversity belittles the Americans who saved Americans

The Trump administration's executive orders ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs disregard and dishonor the 250-year history of women, ethnic minorities and historically underrepresented people — especially descendants of the New World's native and enslaved inhabitants — who rescued Americans from their biggest challenges and worst calamities.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's Expedition commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson after the Louisiana Purchase never would have succeeded without Sacagawea, the pregnant Lemhi Shoshone teenager, who represented the peaceful intention of the mission. Her disarming presence was the safeguard. She proved invaluable advising Second Lieutenant Clark to follow what is known now as the Bozeman Pass that became the Northern Pacific Railway route across the continental divide.

Jewish physicists, many of whom were European refugees certain to be murdered by Nazis during the Holocaust, accounted for two-thirds of the leaders in the Manhattan Project's 1945 Theoretical Division, which calculated critical mass and modeling implosions associated with atomic energy that ended the Second World War. The so-called T-Division operates today as the only group uninterrupted at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

In World Wars I and II, U.S. Marine Corps' Code Talkers numbered as many as 500 Native Americans, including Camanche, Cherokee, Choctow, Cree, Crow, Hopi, Loctaw, Meskwake, Mohawk, Muscogee (Seminole and Creek), Navajo and Tlingit people. Their little-known language was the secret communication credited with the most decisive victories. Their code was never broken. "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines never would have taken Iwo Jima," according to Major Howard Connor, the Fifth Marine Division signal officer. Connor had six Navajo code talkers working "around the clock" during the first two days of the battle in the Second World War.

Despite the military's racial segregation during the second world war, the Tuskegee Airmen, comprising the first black flying squadron (99th Fighting Squadron) and the first black flying group (332nd Fighter Group), flew 1,578 combat and 179 bomber escort missions in Europe, substantially reducing U.S. losses of white bomber pilots and servicemen.

The Tuskegee Airmen proved to be among the best pilots in the Army Air Force. The 992 pilots trained at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, of whom 355 were deployed overseas, were awarded at least one Silver Star, 96 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 14 Bronze Stars and 744 Air Medals and at least 60 Purple Hearts. The Tuskegee Airmen collectively received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007 and their original airfield is now the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site. (After Trump took office, The Associated Press reported that the Air Force removed training videos of the Tuskegee Airmen along with ones showing the World War II contributions of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, at its basic training base in San Antonio. The videos have since been restored.)

Charity Adams Earley was the highest-ranking African American woman in the army at the end of World War II, and the first African American woman to become an officer in the Woman's Army Auxiliary Corps. When she became the commanding officer of the 688th Central Postal Directory Battalion, consisting of African American women serving overseas, the mostly white American servicemen belatedly received their wartime mail for the first time, an achievement overcoming incompetence abetted by the racism and sexism depicted in the 2024 film The Six Triple Eight.

American astronauts wouldn't have succeeded in their initial spaceflights were it not for African American women, led by Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, three mathematicians at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and subsequently the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). They were the human computers who enabled John Glenn to become the first American to orbit the Earth. These "Hidden Figures" calculated rocket trajectories for the Mercury and Apollo missions after being allowed into all-male meetings when their mathematical abilities were transparent and recognized.

During the Vietnam War, more than 265,000 women served the military, including 11,000 as volunteer nurses in Vietnam. Seven died in combat. Air Force nurses were part of evacuation teams as were Navy women on the USS Repose and USS Sanctuary off the coast of Vietnam. The percentage of women wounded in battle was about the same as men, according to military records (5.8% wounded, 20% with service-related disabilities and 8% were held as prisoners of war). They also were physical therapists, dietitians, administrators, air traffic controllers and staffed the Red Cross and U.S. Agency for International Development.

Diversity is essential in the pursuit of excellence. There is no record of J. Robert Oppenheimer saying "antisemitism defeated Hitler by making the bomb," as he does in the 2023 biographical film about the American theoretical physicist who helped create the first nuclear weapons. Adolph Hitler's contempt for the "Jewish science," which included the quantum mechanics developed by Albert Einstein in Europe and Oppenheimer at the University of California, meant that Nazi Germany may have been less invested in developing nuclear technology, giving the Allies an advantage.

Diversity, as these examples show, enables Americans of different backgrounds and experiences to become persistent innovators in the pursuit of efficiency, productivity, prosperity and excellence. The current administration's denigration of DEI belies its greatest attribute and is nothing more than a sop to mediocrity.

The "new birth of freedom" that President Abraham Lincoln declared at Gettysburg was followed by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, all of which enshrined diversity as the pathway to the "more perfect union" Lincoln invoked in his first inaugural address. That's why the Latin phrase "E Pluribus Unum," meaning "out of many, one" remains on the great seal for the United States of America since 1782 and continues to be acknowledged as the true motto of the US.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Matthew A. Winkler, editor in chief emeritus of Bloomberg News, writes about markets.