Dr. Bryon L. Garner
Researching memory, policy, and the lived cost of service.
Author of "Black Veteranality: Military Service and the Illusion of Inclusive Patriotism." (Routledge, 2025). Through teaching, public talks, and the #Paradox250 archive, Dr. Garner centers the stories of Black veterans so policy and public memory finally match what people lived.
Dr. Bryon L. Garner
Researching memory, policy, and the lived cost of service.
Author of "Black Veteranality: Military Service and the Illusion of Inclusive Patriotism." (Routledge, 2025). Through teaching, public talks, and the #Paradox250 archive, Dr. Garner centers the stories of Black veterans so policy and public memory finally match what people lived.
America’s systemic betrayal of Black veterans is not a closed chapter in history. It is a living wound echoing through generations, reshaped by each new war, and silenced beneath the myth of equality. Black Veteranality gives language to that lived contradiction: the double identity of being honored and unseen, patriotic and peripheral, celebrated yet never fully included
Dr. Bryon L. Garner
Dr. Garner is a scholar, veteran, and cultural theorist whose work bridges military experience and racial identity. His lived service became the foundation for his inquiry into how patriotism, race, and moral injury intersect. Drawing from personal history and historical research, he created Black Veteranality to illuminate the unseen struggle the double battle fought by Black veterans across generations.
What is Black Veteranality?
Black Veteranality is a critical framework that names the racialized condition of being a U.S. veteran while Black how state power, policy, and public memory together determine who counts as a veteran, whose testimony is believed, and what care and repair are actually delivered.Born from the fusion of W.E.B. Du Bois’ double consciousness and Veteran Critical Theory, Black Veteranality confronts the paradox of loyalty and exclusion. It examines how Black veterans embody national ideals through service yet are still forced to prove their belonging in a country that benefits from their sacrifice while denying their full humanity. To understand Black Veteranality is to grasp the tension between soldier and citizen, patriot and marginalized.
What is Black Veteranality?
Black Veteranality is a critical framework that names the racialized condition of being a U.S. veteran while Black how state power, policy, and public memory together determine who counts as a veteran, whose testimony is believed, and what care and repair are actually delivered.Born from the fusion of W.E.B. Du Bois’ double consciousness and Veteran Critical Theory, Black Veteranality confronts the paradox of loyalty and exclusion. It examines how Black veterans embody national ideals through service yet are still forced to prove their belonging in a country that benefits from their sacrifice while denying their full humanity. To understand Black Veteranality is to grasp the tension between soldier and citizen, patriot and marginalized.
Black Veteranality - Core Ideas
Memory
Who writes the archive, and who benefits from remembrance?
Benefit
How care systems reproduce moral and racial judgments.
Proof
When bodies are used as evidence of national virtue, what’s left out?
America’s systemic betrayal of Black veterans is not merely a historical footnote it is a persistent and unbroken pattern, echoing through generations into the present.
American Paradox
A narrative series centering veterans' voices across eras. Listen to the latest episode and subscribe on major platforms.
The Heritage Phenomenon
Where service meets social responsibility.
As a Black veteran and scholar, Heritage Phenomenon influences my perspectives on Black military service and America’s multigenerational betrayal of that service. I frame the tension between Black military service and multigenerational betrayal as Black veteranality. Black veteranality illustrates the foundational philosophy of Heritage Phenomenon – the service and sacrifice of Black veterans are grounded in social justice, equity, and an inclusive conceptualization of American...
Legacy Coins, Books, and Bundles
Honor the story. Own a piece of the legacy.
Each coin, book (signed), and bundle carries the weight of memory and the promise of a more honest America.
American Paradox: Black Veterans & America 250
What does America look like from the perspective of those who fought for it and still had to fight it at home?
American Paradox is a multimedia series documenting the lived truth of Black veterans and other veterans of color across generations.
Each episode exposes the tension between loyalty and harm asking one question over and over:
Is America worthy of the people who keep saving it?