The Senate Armed Services Committee is expected to hold a confirmation hearing in the coming weeks for Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, who was tapped by President Joe Biden last month to become the next chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
While legacy media’s coverage has largely focused on the “history-making” nature of Brown’s nomination, such coverage has ignored the Air Force general’s previously disclosed support for the same DEI ideology currently wreaking havoc on the U.S. military. For context, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives (often abbreviated to DEI) employ a divisive and poisonous ideology dismissive of merit to discriminate based on characteristics such as skin color and sexual orientation. Individuals who qualify for a certain position due to their merits but don’t meet the discriminating entity’s goal of being more “diverse” are passed over in favor of those who meet the preferred identitarian standards.
Following the May 2020 death of George Floyd, Brown issued a video statement expressing his thoughts on the situation and his personal experience as a black American in the Air Force. In the video, Brown questioned whether non-black airmen viewed racism as a problem, saying “I’m thinking about how these airmen view racism, whether they don’t see it as a problem since it doesn’t happen to them or whether they’re empathetic.” At the end of the video, Brown also expressed his desire to acquire “the wisdom and knowledge to lead, participate in, and listen to necessary conversations on racism, diversity, and inclusion.”
While participating in a virtual discussion hosted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs later that year, Brown indicated that“[a]t the higher level of the Air Force, diversity ha[d] moved to the forefront of personnel decisions such as promotions and hiring.” During the same event, Brown also admitted to using his post to increase opportunities for so-called “diverse candidates” in the Air Force, saying he “hire[d] for diversity” when building his staff.
Brown has also pushed back against sentiments from congressional Republicans who have expressed concerns about the Biden administration’s attempt to spread DEI instruction throughout the military, saying in a February 2022 interview, “[Y]ou’ve got to look at the demographics of our country, how it’s changing. If you have that approach [of opposing inclusivity efforts] you’re gonna have very few people that come serve.”
In addition to espousing racialist rhetoric, Brown has also seemingly taken several actions as Air Force chief of staff to expand so-called “diversity” and “inclusion” efforts throughout the branch. During a January 2021 interview with The Washington Post, Brown — in response to being asked about a PBS report alleging a lack of diversity among Air Force personnel — claimed the Air Force was taking several actions to address such purported issues.
“We broke up our promotion boards to actually do developmental categories, so it wasn’t kind of about a big one-size-fits-all by and large, and that gives us a better little better chance to work some of the talent management aspects,” Brown said. “The other things that we have to do is ensure that we have diversity on the boards, but also diversity on the candidate list. And that’s something we have been doing, but I don’t know that we’ve been doing as purposeful as we probably could and as purposeful as we plan to do.”
Additional examples of Brown’s attempts to woke-ify the Air Force can found here.