JROTC programs, taught by military veterans at some 3,500 high schools across the country, are supposed to be elective, and the Pentagon has said requiring students to take them goes against its guidelines. But The New York Times found thousands of public school students were being funneled into the classes without ever having chosen them, either as an explicit requirement or by being automatically enrolled.

A vast majority of the schools with those high enrollment numbers were attended by a large proportion of nonwhite students and those from low-income households

parents in some cities say their children are being forced to put on military uniforms, obey a chain of command and recite patriotic declarations in classes they never wanted to take

Being anti-colonial is now trendy. Modern imperialists are thus less forthright about the nature of their country’s conduct in Africa than their predecessors. Many of them, regardless of their actual inclinations, are paying lip service to human rights, and framing their politics and policies as anti-colonial. So much so, they happily accuse each other of neo-colonialism. Meloni’s criticism of France’s “colonial currency” is accurate. Macron’s criticism of Russia’s “predation project” in Africa is also accurate. And even Lavrov and Putin are not lying when they talk of the West’s “bloody crimes of colonialism”. But these “hot takes” are not worthy of celebration coming from political leaders who have no interest in critically engaging with their own countries’ neo-colonial policies or taking steps towards building mutually beneficial relationships with African nations.