Race issues in the ranks

There is an ongoing national awakening of the need to examine our institutions and practices for race inequity that is not readily apparent. For example, Business and Professions Code Section 6070.5 now states that as of Jan. 1, 2022, the State Bar of California shall adopt regulations to require mandatory continuing legal education to include training on implicit bias. The military is also undergoing scrutiny for racism and implicit bias. Maybe a better way to say it is that the military is now paying more attention to racial issues than it has in the past.

In 1971, cadets at West Point issued a "Black Manifesto" after President Richard Nixon proposed the construction of a Confederate Monument at the Academy. Almost half a century later, on June 25, 2020, cadets at West Point submitted a policy proposal for "An Anti-Racist West Point." They want the academy to redress three major failures: (1) that systematic racism continues to exist at West Point; (2) that anti-racism is not part of the curriculum at West Point; and (3) that the conditions for an anti-racist space are not present at West Point.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper must have been paying attention to the cadets and to the country's reaction to the killing of George Floyd. Within a few weeks of the cadets' call to action, Esper issued a military-wide directive barring the use of photographs by promotion boards and ordering the development of new hair and grooming standards devoid of racial bias. On the same day, July 15, 2020, Esper established a Department of Defense Diversity and Inclusion Board as well as a long-term advisory committee for the DoD on diversity and inclusion.

Esper also ordered the development of educational requirements to educate the armed forces on unconscious racial bias. Whether or not that education and training was delayed by President Donald Trump's Sept. 22, 2020 Executive Order 13950, banning the military from teaching, instructing or training about "divisive concepts," such as "the United States is fundamentally racist," is unknown. On the same day President Joe Biden was sworn in, he rescinded EO 13950.

Esper was fired in November 2020. The report from his Diversity and Inclusion Board was issued on Dec. 17, 2020. It contains 15 recommendations, all of which the DoD has accepted. Several are discussed below.

A Few Past Events

In 1991, Congress launched an investigation into why African-American World War I heroes had never been either recommended for or never received a recommended Medal of Honor. Within a few years, the families of those heroes were awarded Medals of Honor by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. An ensuing Army study revealed the Medals of Honor had not been awarded due to racial bias on the part of the Army Decorations Board.

During World War II, Langston Hughes penned his poem "Beaumont to Detroit: 1943," with this stanza:

You tell me that hitler

Is a mighty bad man

I guess he took lessons

From the ku klux klan.

In that same time period, a Black chaplain was not permitted in half-empty officers' quarters; instead, the Army drew up plans and built a special "colored officers' barracks," where the chaplain was housed by himself. Jackie Robinson was court martialed for refusing to go to the back of an on-base bus and not keeping quiet when he was called a racial slur.

Decades later, entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr., who served in World War II, told Black soldiers he visited in Vietnam, "They're regarding men as individuals. When I was in the Army, I was on a post where a colored guy couldn't get his hair cut."

Black soldiers saw German prisoners of war, easily identifiable by the letters PW painted of the back of their fatigues, enter the "Whites only" entrance to the post-exchange cafeteria, while Blacks could not. In another incident, a group of Black soldiers were required to eat their meal out of the back window of a train. Through the window, they observed Italian prisoners of war sitting inside, chatting with the staff while enjoying their meal.

In 1948, President Harry Truman issued Executive Orders 9980 and 9981, ordering the desegregation of the federal work force and abolishing discrimination in the United States Armed Forces. But desegregation did not end racism in the military.

Some Things Changed; Some Went Under the Surface

Promotions

Truman's 1948 Executive Order 9981 states: "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin." Nonetheless, Black service members continued to suffer discrimination with regard to promotions.

Apparently trying to curtail lingering institutional bias in 2020, Esper not only ordered that all photographs be eliminated from the promotion and selection process, he also directed the military services to establish diverse selection boards, and to remove all references to race and ethnicity in personnel packets. One of the recommendations of the Diversity and Inclusion Board is to increase the transparency of promotion selections and career opportunities. Another is to remove aptitude test barriers that adversely impact diversity.

Occupational Assignments

Historically, the military excluded Blacks from many job classifications. Early justification was that for troop morale, races need to be kept separated. According to a 1998 Law & Inequality journal article, a survey of job assignments for Black Marines serving in the Pacific theater during World War II found that 85% were either menial laborers, stewards, or worked in munitions depots performing the most dangerous warehouse work in the military.

But even after segregation was ruled unconstitutional, inferior job assignments for Blacks continued. In Chappell v. Wallace, 462 U.S. 296 (1983), five Black men sued their superior officers for assigning them to undesirable job classifications due to their race. The Supreme Court ruled against them, holding that enlisted military personnel may not maintain a suit to recover damages from a superior officer for alleged constitutional violations. A 1987 Yale Law Review article states that discrimination in assignments had not disappeared, but merely went underground.

In a 2020 opinion piece in MilitaryTimes, retired Marine Thomas Hobbs said that the occupational specialty assignment process of Marine officers results in racist outcomes, and that it illustrates how racist policy operates under the surface while powerfully reinforcing inequity. One of the Diversity and Inclusion Board's recommendations is that the military offer internships in science, technology, engineering and mathematics as part of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, ROTC, program to improve diversity in assignments. Another recommendation is to develop an organizational governance structure for diversity and inclusion.

The Equal Opportunity Process

Following the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the DoD mandated race relations training in 1971. The website for the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute states that the DoD does not tolerate or condone harassment because harassment jeopardizes combat readiness and mission accomplishment, weakens trust within the ranks, and erodes unit cohesion.

Equal Opportunity offices are located on all military bases, but it's the civilian employees who file most of the discrimination complaints, even though there are far fewer civilians than troops on bases. Service members fear their military careers will be adversely affected if they report incidents of harassment and discrimination.

A few weeks ago, a Washington Post story said nearly a third of Black U.S. military servicemembers reported experiencing racial discrimination, harassment or both during a 12-month period. The Post reported that it obtained that information from "a long-withheld Defense Department survey" done in 2017. The survey also showed that U.S. troops who experienced racial discrimination or harassment had high levels of dissatisfaction with the complaint process and largely did not report the incidents.

Black troops are often subjected to demeaning and frightening harassment. At Barksdale Air Force Base, a White airman hung a noose nearby a Black airman. After he complained, he found a swastika drawn in the bathroom. Not long afterward, the Black airman found himself pushed out of the service, according to reports by Reuters. In a separate incident, after becoming the first Black top-ranked cadet at West Point in 2018, the cadet found a photo-shopped picture of herself with a monkey's face over hers, slipped under her door.

The recommendations of the DoD's Diversity and Inclusion Board include one that would require the military to collaborate with equal opportunity offices.

Military Justice

Protect Our Defenders, a national organization, is dedicated to exposing and eradicating bias within the military justice system. In 2017, the group issued its findings of "Substantial and Persistent Racial Disparities Within the United States Military Justice System." The study concluded that over the previous decade, racial disparities have persisted in the military justice system without indications of improvement, and that these disparities are particularly striking for Black service members. The study found Blacks face military justice or disciplinary action at much higher rates than white service members in every service branch.

In December 2020, the Inspector General of the Air Force confirmed racial disparity exists for Black service members in apprehensions, criminal investigations and in military justice overall. The IG recommended that the Air Force forthwith develop systemic action plans and milestones to address the identified disparities.

White Supremacy

The MilitaryTimes conducted a survey of 1,630 active-duty military, reporting that more than one-third of the troops and more than half of minority service members had personally witnessed examples of white nationalism or ideological-driven racism within the ranks in recent months. Poll participants said they witnessed incidents including racist language and discriminatory attitudes from peers. They also reported more specific examples like swastikas being drawn on service members' cars, tattoos affiliated with white supremacist groups, stickers supporting the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi-style salutes between individuals. A similar poll performed the previous year showed that only about one in five reported the same. The recent report noted a troubling snapshot of troops' exposure to extremist views while serving, despite efforts from military leaders to promote diversity and respect for all races.

According to a spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center, the MilitaryTimes poll findings should not come as a surprise. She said the center has been pushing the DoD to take the issue more seriously since 1986, stating: "There are certain parts of the white power movement that value military experience and are often recruiting there." Apparently that statement is not hyperbole as NPR reported one in five of the persons involved with the Jan. 6 insurrection served in the military.

In 2020, an Army veteran was charged with trying to illegally transport weapons. The former soldier was identified as a member of The Base, a small militant group espousing Adolf Hitler's ideals while preparing for a race war in America as part of its ideology. Military.com reported that encrypted messages on the group's website discussed acts of violence against Blacks and Jews. In 2019, according to the Army Times, the Army National Guard discharged two service members for activity with an extremist group. At the time, one of them was on active duty in Afghanistan. Both echoed the 14-word motto of extremist groups: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

The recommendations of the Diversity and Inclusion Board include one that asks the DoD to draft legislative language to update the Uniform Code of Military Justice to address extremist activity within the military.

Conclusion

It is obvious the military needs to do a lot more to both protect and to be fair to its Black troops. If it doesn't, Blacks will probably stop volunteering to serve. And that would be a shame for many reasons. Not the least of which is that the military provides valuable job training, and often acts as a steppingstone to respected civilian career opportunities.

According to the Army Center for Military History's website, after the end of the draft in 1973, the first eight years of the all-volunteer force saw a dramatic rise in the number of Black enlisted soldiers in the active Army, reaching 33.2% in 1981. The reason for this increase was that the Army offered many African Americans better opportunities than they could find in civilian life. Also increasing the attractiveness of the service was the Army's efforts to eliminate institutional racism. Alas, the number of African-American volunteers has been steadily decreasing since then. Black recruits dropped to 13% of the Army's total enlistments in 2006.

Why the DoD kept that 2017 survey outcome a secret is a mystery. The results are now out in the open, and sunlight is the best disinfectant. Hopefully, as the military assesses issues involving racial discrimination and bias, and tackles solutions by following the recommendations of the Diversity and Inclusion Board, matters will improve.