A Black serviceman returning from deployment.Jacob Lund
On September 17, Pete Hegseth—newly dubbed our secretary of war—announced that any member of the US military who needs a shaving exemption for more than a year will be forced out of the service, tossing out a decades-old policy created for mainly Black and brown troops with pseudofolliculitis barbae, a skin condition that makes daily shaving lead to cuts, sores, and scarring.
“The Department must remain vigilant in maintaining the grooming standards which underpin the warrior ethos,” wrote Hegseth in an August 20 memo made public last week.
For years, the US military required members to have clean-shaven faces as a condition of service. However, amid the extensive drafting and recruitment of Black troops during the Vietnam War, the armed forces saw growing demand for “no-shave chits,” shaving waivers that covered pseudofolliculitis barbae, colloquially known as PFB or “razor bumps.” The condition affects at least 60 percent of Black men and causes painful pustules on a person’s face. If untreated, it can lead to infection, and in some cases, permanent scarring.
Hegseth’s order states that any service members in need of a shaving waiver will be required to start a medical treatment plan to “resolve” their PFB—and if they still need a waiver after a year of treatment, the US military will discharge them.
However, medical and military sources generally concur that the only reliable treatment for PFB is not shaving. Hegseth’s new policy practically guarantees an unfathomable wave of terminations, with Black service members likely to face the brunt. Does the secretary know who mainly benefits from the waivers? There’s almost no way he doesn’t.
For years, Black troops fought for policies that allowed them to thrive in the service—including around grooming. To Hegseth and the White House he serves, that’s the whole problem: a military with Black leadership, with women in senior roles, and without obstacles to a diverse officer corps is one in which white men have to take orders from the wrong kind.
The initiative falls in line with the Trump administration’s wider campaign to purge any inkling of diversity from federal ranks. As the Guardian recently reported, Trump’s layoffs of federal workers have disproportionately hit Black women, who—despite only making up 6 percent of the workforce—constitute 12 percent of reported federal government layoffs.
With more than 200,000 Black active-duty members serving in the military—historically one of the country’s few avenues of social mobility for the Black community—Hegseth’s grooming policy will no doubt have a devastating impact. That’s no accident.
