Anthropoid
Posts: 3107
Joined: 2/22/2005 From: Secret Underground Lair Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: JWE quote:
ORIGINAL: Anthropoid @ Rev, JWE, etc.: IIRC, the U.S. military was really the first segment of American society where African Americans had substantial opportunities, and where desegregation, equanimity and eventual integration all took place. Is my memory in error on this? If not, wasn't there one watershed date in the 1950s where fullscale integration took place by breaking down "Black units?" Superior black combat units fought in the Revolutionary, Civil, Spanish American, and First wars, and many were integrated to an amazing degree. I wish I could say this was true in the War-II period, but unfortunately it was not. Black units were segregated and the designation (Colored) was part of their official nomenclature. It wasn’t till Truman’s Executive Order in 1948, that men with deeper tans were able to serve side by side with the more melanin challenged. Ah yes, Truman's 1948 was what I was half remembering. Interesting that things seem to get a bit worse in the WWII period before they eventually started to get better. quote:
I think it was more a recognition of personnel assignment efficiency, than any intent or purpose on the part of the services to promote social integration. But it had the unexpected effect of throwing men together, from different social milieus, where they discovered that they could drink from the same bottle of beer without untoward effects, and ‘Damn! He bleeds red like I do!’. Thoughtful men, whether black, white, yellow or red, came to some damn appropriate conclusions as a result of this exposure. And still, there were men like my father, who rose to the rank of Chief Petty Officer, as a gunner on a Destroyer during the Korean War. A man who used the N word with impunity, and hubris, and who professed to hating/distrusting/dehumanizing "them" till the last day he had the unwarranted privilege to draw breath . . . Even today with a "black" President, I have no doubt that small, semi-covert, but resistant and unrepentant bastions of pure explicit racism persist in our society. How these pockets of hatred can be fully and finally eradicated from a society in which a trend toward equality is so clear and definite I cannot fathom. I guess it is one of the unexpected foibles of a democracy that everyone can think what they want.
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