As a Black woman from a family of vets, all I thought about during the big Army parade was Trump’s attacks on DEI

WASHINGTON — Long after night fell, after the final salute, and after the last Bradley tank rolled down Constitution Avenue, it was difficult to shake the contradictions surrounding the parade honoring the 250th anniversary of the Army’s founding.

We had spent hours celebrating the oldest branch of the nation’s military, while the parade’s chief orchestrator has used the past four months to denigrate nearly half the people who serve in it with the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

First, it was the removal of web pages honoring prominent Black veterans — including Jackie Robinson, the Tuskegee Airmen, and others — who have honorably served. (After an uproar, the pages were restored.)

Then, it was the shabby treatment of Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr. — a pioneering Black fighter pilot — who was abruptly dismissed in February as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because of his support for diversity efforts.

The latest outrage took place earlier this month when President Donald Trump announced plans to restore the names of seven Army bases that had been changed because they honored Confederate generals.

All of that and more was in the background during Saturday’s parade, which was supposed to be a celebration of the Army’s semiquincentennial, but which also happened to fall on the president’s birthday.

And Trump, being Trump, he seized on that coincidence to throw himself the massive military show of force he has been salivating over since his first term.

At times, the parade felt like a much more disorganized version of Philadelphia’s annual Fourth of July celebrations — albeit with armored tanks and thousands of uniformed soldiers.

My father, in his younger days, might have been out there, too, sporting his prized Korean War veteran baseball cap. He wouldn’t have been there for Trump, but because of his love for the Army. He, my uncle, and some of my in-laws fought honorably in this country’s wars even though America treated them like second-class citizens.

They were proud of having served their nation, despite how Black soldiers faced considerable resistance to integration and unfair treatment long after President Harry Truman desegregated the military in 1948.

Black people make up about 20% of the Army’s ranks. Seventeen percent of those in the Army are Hispanic, and roughly another 7% are Asian or Pacific Islanders. Together, that’s about 44% of the Army’s active-duty soldiers.

As the parade stretched along the route, I thought about all those people of color and what the past few months have been like for them. I also thought about my own family.

My dad served in the Army during the Korean War, as did my paternal uncle, who was one of the nation’s first Black officers after Truman’s integration order.

My brother graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. My late cousin, Michael Armstrong, was a retired colonel and army doctor. Of my husband’s five uncles, three served in the military during World War II, as did his father.

My husband and I had our wedding reception at an officers’ club on a military base. And for one of my first jobs after college, I briefly worked in an Army communications office.

For many Americans of color, including generations of Armstrongs, the post-1948 Army has represented opportunity, upward mobility, a chance — for those who weren’t able to start adulthood with a “small million-dollar loan” from our parents — to do and be … well, “all that you can be,” as the recruiting slogan used to go.

The president’s elimination of inclusion programs feels like someone yanking a ladder out from generations of Black and brown people to come.

I would have given anything to have had my dad there with me on Saturday to help me differentiate among the various armored vehicles and historical uniforms on display.

Instead, I chatted with random people also stuck outside the parade route, including retired Col. Lonnie Bellamy Sr., 82, who told me: “A military celebration is a great idea. I’m glad to see the troops.”

But the idea that the event had been linked to Trump’s birthday didn’t sit well with him. “I think it is not a good idea to combine the two,” he said. “In fact, I’m almost offended by it.”

Robert Lee, a 73-year-old Navy veteran, was seated in a wheelchair and using a cell phone and laptop to monitor the parade. He called the military procession “a waste of money.”

Lee pointed out that “the money spent on this could have been spent on food and air-dropped into Gaza.”

Meanwhile, as attendees who could actually see the parade watched, millions of demonstrators in cities and small towns around the country hit the streets for “No Kings Day” to decry the Trump administration’s wannabe authoritarianism. For the most part, the protests were peaceful, although a protester was allegedly shot and killed by a peacekeeper at a demonstration in Utah.

Back in Washington, Trump, his cabinet, and VIP big-money donors got to sit on an enormous grandstand while so many regular Joes had to wander around and fend for themselves.

I, like hundreds of others, was much too far away to hear any of the speeches — not that I wanted to hear draft-dodging Trump chest-thump about the military.

But that turned out to have been a blessing, because it helped keep the focus where it should have been — not on the million-dollar birthday boy, but on the troops.