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Should White Privilege Cards be sold on Military Installations? [1]
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Date: 2025-06-12
Selling ‘White Privilege Cards’ on-base:
Undermining Military Neutrality, Cohesion, and Core Values
Yesterday felt like another gut-punch to American ideals. At Fort Bragg, President Trump turned what should have been a nonpartisan address to the troops into a full-blown campaign rally, lacing it with digs at Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom while branding immigration an “invasion.” Soldiers in uniform cheered the most incendiary lines, a scene that blurred the line between civilian politics and the apolitical military tradition the nation counts on.
Then the news got uglier. Reporters on the base discovered pop-up tables hawking MAGA gear—among the flags and hats, a plastic wallet insert reading “White Privilege Card: Trump.” The card’s success and happiness flow automatically to its bearer by white skin supposedly “linked” to Trump. Letting that kind of merchandise onto a military installation is more than tone-deaf; it’s dangerous.
Why does the White Privilege Card have no place on a U.S. base?
It violates military neutrality.
DoD rules prohibit partisan, inflammatory sales on the post; the display alone undermines the Army’s hard-won image of political impartiality. It insults the ranks.
For service members of color—or anyone who’s worn the flag to help dismantle racism—this “gag” feels like a slap. It glorifies privilege, stokes division, and poisons unit cohesion. It contradicts core values.
The Army touts respect, selfless service, and equality. Selling a token that celebrates the whiteness of the skin as an advantage tramples those principles It trivializes a real, ongoing injustice.
Turning structural racism into a novelty card frames centuries of exclusionary policies as punch-line material—exactly the opposite of the sober reckoning America still owes itself.
The bigger hazard
White privilege is an invisible force baked into housing, hiring, healthcare, and—yes—military life. A mock privilege card normalizes that inequity, dulling the urgency to confront it. Worse, pairing the card with a commander-in-chief’s partisan pep-talk signals to troops that racism can be treated as brand merch, not a threat to readiness.
Selling the “White Privilege Card” at Fort Bragg wasn’t just tacky—it broke regulations, corroded morale, and telegraphed that some soldiers count more than others. The armed forces can’t afford that message, and neither can the country they swear to defend.
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