The Military Front

Edward Moore enlisted in the Navy in 1963. The day after his high school graduation in Little Rock, Arkansas, he was aboard a plane bound for San Diego, en route to boot camp. It wasn’t long before he began questioning whether he’d made the right decision. Moore is black.

“My experiences in the Navy with racism indicated to me this wasn’t the outfit where I could have the kind of life I wanted,” Moore recalls.

And yet, 38 years later, Moore—now Vice Admiral Moore—is commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and the highest-ranking member of a minority group in the U.S. Navy. It’s been a long haul since 1963, but the days of white sailors refusing to salute Moore because of his skin color are over.

“Today the American armed services is light years ahead of the rest of American society in its dealing with race relations and in its treatment of minorities,” Moore maintains. That seems to be the consensus among soldiers and academics alike.

Charles Moskos is coauthor of All That We Can Be, a book on racial integration in the armed services. In the book, he contends the U.S. Army is the most successfully integrated institution in the country. “The Army is the only place in America where so many black people boss around so many white people,” he writes.

In conversations, enlisted men offer up a similar assessment. Aboard the USS Cleveland at Pier 32 in San Diego, most of the sailors dismiss racism as not a serious problem. A quick survey of tables in the enlisted men’s mess hall hardly reveals a hotbed of segregation: three blacks at the first table; two whites and one black at another table; two blacks and a Korean; four whites and a black; four whites and two Hispanics.

In the officers’ ward room, Michael Taylor, the number-two man, sits at the head of the table. The ship’s commanding officer—an African-American—is on leave for the holidays. Taylor is white. Of his boss’ skin color, he says, “That doesn’t even come into it. I respect him because he is a very competent naval officer. It’s not because of his race; it’s because of the man he is.”

But the armed services are, in some ways, a reflection of society as a whole. And beneath the smooth surface, some discontent simmers.

Around Taylor sit 15 or so of his fellow officers. At the table are two blacks, an Asian and a couple who might be Hispanic. The rest are white. This collection of the Cleveland’s officers illustrates an issue of concern to critics. In every branch of the military, minorities are overrepresented in the enlisted ranks and underrepresented in the officer corps. According to the Department of Defense, as of September 2000, minorities accounted for 37.5 percent of enlisted men; only 17.5 percent were officers.

Moore believes it will take time to balance out the ranks. “You don’t recruit admirals; you grow them,” he says. “If there is an underrepresentation at the higher ranks, it’s because at the time that I came into the Navy, it wasn’t a high priority to recruit people who look like me.”

Others, however, argue it will take more than time to right the scales. Inequality within our education system and unequal opportunity within inner cities hinders minorities, according to some. “We have pretty much tied receipt of an officer’s commission to receipt of a bachelor’s degree,” says David Segal, University of Maryland sociology professor. “And blacks and Hispanics get disproportionately fewer college degrees compared to whites. In the inner cities, you get a lesser education. It’s a vicious circle.”

While sailors aboard the Cleveland weren’t inclined to view race relations as a major issue, a report released last year by the Department of Defense unearthed troubling attitudes. The report surveyed more than 75,000 people in the armed forces on the subject of racism. Seventy percent of minority enlisted men said they’d experienced an offensive encounter involving discrimination; more than half expressed doubts that their complaints were thoroughly investigated.

On the up side, service members across the board felt that race relations were better in the military than in their local communities. And more than 80 percent reported having a close personal friend of a different race in the service. Mirroring San Diego Magazine’s poll, the DoD survey revealed greater pessimism about improved race relations among blacks and Hispanics than among whites.

For the military, avoiding conflict is paramount. As executive officer Taylor puts it, “We depend on these guys to back our butts. If we have these racial problems on board the ship, it’s not going to help us any.”

To this end, each ship has an equal opportunity adviser, an officer whose collateral duty is ensuring the ship’s social gears remain well-oiled. The military appears to have taken on the issue of discrimination with determination, and it appears to be overcoming—or at least, effectively easing —the problem with militaristic efficiency and a keen eye for self-image.

As Peter Feaver, a Duke University expert on race relations in the military, says, “You can’t kick all the racists out of America, but you can kick them out of the military.”

—Charles Levinson

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