Victory in the desert won’t end the national debate about who fights our wars. But Desert Storm highlighted the military’s stature as an institution of opportunity for African-Americans. Up and down the chain of command, the war showcased stalwart models of black achievement, from Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell, to deputy Desert Storm commander Gen. Calvin Waller, to three members of the Patriot missile crew decorated for shooting down Scuds over Riyadh. The rigid enforcement of antidiscrimination rules has placed unprecedented numbers of black men and women in positions of power, winning them a legitimacy they find nearly impossible to duplicate outside the service. “The military is so far advanced from the civilian population, it’s pathetic,” says Sgt. Charles Lewis Davis, an Army recruiter in Los Angeles.
Black gains were hard won. Long before President Truman ordered the integration of U.S. forces in 1948, African-Americans were fighting with distinction in U.S. wars. Still, a 1925 Army study ludicrously asserted that they were cowardly and superstitious. In his new autobiography, Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., commander of the Tuskegee Airmen, the black fighter group that saw action in World War II, wrote: “Combat was not easy, but you could only get killed once. Living with the day-to-day degradation of racism was far more difficult.” Integration took hold quietly in the early cold-war years. But racial strife nearly tore the military apart during the last years of the Vietnam War. One reason was a virtually all-white Army officer corps leading an enlisted force that was 14 percent black.
Conversion to an all-volunteer force in 1973 prompted the Pentagon to make military service more attractive to minorities. Ambitious racial-sensitivity programs were launched to limit tensions. Naval enlistees now share prejudices and perceptions in blunt, compulsory seminars. At West Point, first-year cadets watch a Bill Cosby film on bigotry and follow up with discussions on other “isms” like sexism and ethnocentrism. The message hammered home is clear: any whiff of discriminatory behavior can be a career killer. “You can’t expect to change people’s minds overnight. If you do have prejudices, though, you better hide them in a heartbeat,” says West Point First Class Cadet Rory Anglin.
Civilian critics say African-American soldiers were victims of an “economic draft”–forced to volunteer as a last refuge from poverty and crime–and blacks supported the war at a far lower rate than whites. But blacks in uniform argue that their military experience speaks to the possibilities, not problems, of black advancement. They see no comparable prescriptives in the civilian world. “What are our leaders doing in our communities to get our young black males off drugs? What are they doing to keep them in school or from dying in the streets?” asks Waller, 53, who enlisted in 1957. Some bristle at the condescension implicit in antiwar rhetoric that suggested black soldiers were underclass cannon fodder, thrust into the gulf conflict to fight a war for the privileged. They say it devalues their intelligence and patriotism. “The question we need to be asking as a society is how we have raised two generations of white middle-class youth who have no sense of service to their country,” says John Sibley Butler, a black military sociologist at the University of Texas.
At home and on the front lines, African-American troops say military culture gives them genuine authority in a white-majority organization. “The Army is the only place in America where a white will routinely be bossed around by black superiors,” says Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University. A typical platoon leader, at the age of 22, commands 30 people and $1 million worth of sophisticated equipment. “I’ve been shown respect, if not for me then for my rank,” says Army Capt. Jacqueline Jackson. Many blacks point to Powell, a son of Jamaican immigrants with a public school education, as an example of what’s attainable for blacks. “That brother came a long way,” says Remon Allen, an 18-year-old from Chicago who planned to enlist. “He started out just how I did. In the military, we’ve got a fair shake.”
Even those who already have a foothold in the middle class find that a uniform blunts the sting of discrimination. Six years ago Mark Bright, the son of a Washington, D.C., dentist, had a bachelor’s degree and a bank job. After rejection from a management-training program–for what he believes were racial reasons–he joined the Navy. He’s now a lieutenant on the guided-missile cruiser USS Gridley. “I’ve lived on both sides of the fence,” says Bright, 31. “The Navy is by far a less racially motivated lifestyle.”
The terror of combat, where life or death can ride on the actions of comrades, further shrinks racial divisions. “You know the saying, ‘There’s no atheists in a foxhole’? Well, there’s no racists in a foxhole either,” says Marine S/Sgt. Bruce Shaw, part of the Desert Storm ground force. But Shaw concedes that racist attitudes remain. “You still have to deal with that hard-core 10 percent who will never change no matter what,” he says. Shaw says he left his last unit because a senior NCO was “down on blacks.” Off duty, military culture resembles the civilian world, with little socializing between races. “I don’t hang out with any white officers. I don’t know any black officers who do. And I don’t know any whites who hang out with blacks,” says Marine Capt. Phillip Thompson.
Serious obstacles still hinder African-American progress. Their representation remains heaviest in low-skill, nontechnical jobs. Forty-three years after the military’s desegregation, the officer corps is still largely white. Eighteen percent of the enlisted Navy is black, while 96 percent of its officers are white. In the Army, where three in 10 enlistees are African-American, 11 percent of the officers are black. Advances in the ranks are obstructed by “glass ceilings,” where networking and old-boyism still speed the advance of mediocre whites. “You see it all over the place,” says Thompson. “There’s a feeling that you have to be not just as good but better in order to get a promotion.” General Waller warns young officers that the playing field is not level. “If you are a black officer, you don’t get many second chances,” he says. Manpower cutbacks in the post-Desert Storm military are likely to put an added squeeze on opportunities for advancement.
Those who do make it to the top can’t count on moving into the kinds of lucrative civilian jobs available to white counterparts. A recent survey of 30 retired black generals found just one had landed a top private position. Col. James Jones, the Army’s congressional liaison in the late 1980s, recalls when retired four-star Gen. Roscoe Robinson came to his office in search of a job. “I remember taking him to Capitol Hill and very few people knew who he was,” says Jones. “It was very deflating.” It’s also a stark reminder that for all their achievements, black soldiers still face their fiercest battle–one for acceptance in the society they took an oath to serve.
PHOTO:The success of leaders like General Powell, son of Jamaican immigrants, has become a model for young blacks in the military/RICHARD ELLIS–DOD POOL
George Bush calls the U.S. military “the greatest equal-opportunity employer around.” During World War II, 8.7 percent of American soldiers were black; in Vietnam, 9.8 percent; in the gulf, 20 percent. A breakdown by forces:
Percent of blacks in: Forces Desert Storm Army 28.9% 29.8% Navy 15.9% 21.3% Marine Corps 19% 16.9% Air Force 15.2% 13.5%
SOURCE: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
