David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
September 27, 2023
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A top Democratic senator is blasting freshman Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville for his "jaw-dropping" and open talk about white supremacy after the Alabama Republican denigrated President Joe Biden's nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Tuberville, the Alabama Republican who has single-handedly blocked well over 300 U.S. military promotions, said the U.S. military is “not an equal opportunity employer,” appearing to imply Biden's nomination of an accomplished officer was based on the color of his skin, not his achievements and experience.
Air Force General Charles “CQ” Brown Jr., who is Black, is set to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after a strong bipartisan 83-11 vote by the U.S. Senate confirming him last week. Tuberville voted against him, saying Tuesday he had "heard some things that he talked about race and things that he wanted to mix into the military."
Brown is the first African American to head a branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. He was one of TIME's "100 Most Influential People of 2020."
"He is a respected warfighter who will serve America well," wrote former Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson that year, lauding Brown in his TIME profile. "As the former commander of Pacific Air Forces, he’s highly qualified to deter China and reassure allies in the Indo-Pacific. The suppression of ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria was largely accomplished by local forces on the ground, enabled by air power CQ helped orchestrate."
“Let me tell you something: Our military is not an equal-opportunity employer,” said Tuberville, appearing to imply it should not be.
“We’re not looking for different groups, social justice groups,” the senator continued in a Bloomberg News interview, explaining why he voted against Brown's nomination. “We don’t want to single-handedly destroy our military from within. We all need to be one.”
"I think he'll do a good job," Tuberville also said, "but I heard him say a few things that really didn't fit with me in terms of making our military better and better. We have things that that we need to do to make sure that we can uphold – and we can't do that without a great, hard, strong military.
"Let me tell you something, our military is not an equal opportunity employer. We're looking for the best [of] the best, to do whatever. We're not looking for different groups, social justice groups. We don't want to single-handedly destroy our military from within."
Asked for specific concerns, Tuberville said Brown, "came out and said we need certain groups to have an opportunity to be pilots. Listen. I want it to be on merit. I want our military to be the best. I want the best people, I don't care who they are. Men. Women, if that makes any difference, Catholics, Protestants, I want everybody to believe in the one goal that we have in this country for our military, to protect the taxpayers, protect the United States of America. Don't give me this stuff about equal opportunity, because that's not what this military is.
“Our military is becoming so political that we’re going to go south when it comes to readiness,” he warned, despite having been warned repeatedly that his military holds are negatively impacting military readiness, and are expected to do so for years to come.
But as CNBC reported, America's military "is an equal opportunity employer, and the Pentagon is an 'Office of Equal Employment Opportunity.'"
Tuberville has a history of making extremist remarks, so much so that in a rare move, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in July delivered a speech on the Senate floor denouncing Tuberville by name, along with his "one-man mission to defend white nationalism."
Earlier this year, Tuberville insisted that white nationalists are simply “Americans,” and said, “I look at a white nationalist as a Trump Republican. That’s what we’re called all the time.”
As NCRM reported in May, those remarks came immediately after an NBC News reporter told Tuberville, “A white nationalist propagates Nazism, a white nationalist could be someone who doesn’t believe that Black and Brown people are equal.”
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, criticized Tuberville late Tuesday night, responding to the Alabama Republican's interview with Bloomberg.
"The way Sen. Tuberville talks so openly about white supremacy is just jaw-dropping," Murphy said. "I refuse to allow this to feel normal."
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