The Marine Corps: Always Faithful…to White Men

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.

-President Lyndon Johnson 

Howard University Commencement Address 1965

 My fellow Marines, I ask that you give me a chance and read this until the end. The things I say will make some of you angry, but that does not take away from the fact that many Marines hold my same view. If nothing else, at least you will have heard this perspective.

The Marine Corps is a microcosm of America, and the polarization that is occurring in our Nation can occur in our Corps as well.  John Boyd, the father of our foundational warfighting and C2 philosophy, said only through the combination of multiple perspectives can an understanding of something closer to the truth be attained. With that understanding, I sincerely believe you will be able to better lead all your Marines and perhaps even question some of our unintentionally racist policies. The Marine Corps should lead the way for our Nation with its ethics and moral courage. Here is an opportunity to do so.

With respect to my background, I am half European American and half Asian American. My mother was born and raised in Japan but renounced her Japanese citizenship so she could marry my Foreign Service officer father. They took a risk when they married since interracial marriage was illegal in Virginia and over half the states in the Union until the Supreme Court announced its 1967 ruling in Loving vs Virginia. In early grade school, my American classmates told me to go back to where I came from. In fourth grade, my father was stationed in Japan, and there the Japanese called me a gaijin, or outsider. They told me to go back to where I came from. We did go back to the United States when I was in middle school. I thought I was home, but I was called a chink and told to go back to where I came from once again.

I believe these experiences helped to provide me the empathy to question our policies and their impact on minority and female Marines. I am not relaying my experiences for sympathy, but to give you insight into one of the lenses through which I see the world (or, as Boyd would say, one filter that shapes my orientation). 

Now, almost 40 years later, I am a retired Marine infantry colonel with three combat tours. I am 50 years old and my President is telling brown and black American congresswomen to go back to where they came from. Many Americans, almost all white, cheer when he says that. The feelings I felt from my childhood are back. Would he consider me a traitor because I disagree with him? Would my President tell me to go back to where I came from because I am brown? Would my own neighbors call me non-American despite what I have done during my almost three decades of service? Could I or my family get gunned down in Walmart because of the color of my skin? Yes, the answer is yes to all these questions. 

Having lived in Japan as a child and as an adult, I realize Japan is a xenophobic country with racist policies. Experiencing racism there in the 1970s and again in the 2010s is not surprising. However, I am horrified and deeply hurt to see it now and to see it so openly in America. White supremacists are no longer afraid to take off their hoods.

I was raised in a privileged family, lived in privileged neighborhoods, and went to privileged schools among mostly white people. As a Marine officer, one cannot help but have mostly white friends since the vast majority of officers are white men. None of my white friends would call me a chink or tell me to go back to where I came from, but many of them voted for President Trump. Many of those friends will not speak out against the President, even in private with me, despite witnessing the things he has said, done, and caused (I am talking about my retired friends and give my active duty friends a pass). I feel betrayed. To me, this discussion is not a friendly debate after which I can happily return to whatever I was doing. To me, this is about fear, safety, life, and death. That my white friends do not see how politics has become existential for me and those like me is heartbreaking. Their continued blindness begins to feel like willful ignorance and is fast becoming a wall between us. That they do not feel unsafe or violated by the things said and done is a privilege of their whiteness. There is no other explanation. They do not worry about it because they do not have to worry about it. 

This experience with my friends is how I have come to believe that responding with “I am not a racist” falls short in our discussions of broader racism. To silently stand by while brown people are shot in El Paso as a direct result of our President’s language, or as unarmed black men are destroyed by police, is to condone racism. Being a “non-racist” still allows racist policy. Therefore, borrowing from Ibram X. Kendi, you are either racist or anti-racist. Furthermore, what I am suggesting goes beyond confronting the personal attacks of racist individuals, but the recognition and action against the subtle, quiet racism of deeply ingrained policy at all levels of government. I will not delve into every example of existing institutional racism. You can do the research on your own. Just google redlining, voter suppression, racist farm loan practices, or who missed out on the Montgomery G.I. Bill and Veterans Administration zero interest home loans after World War II for examples of existing institutional racism. 

Closer to home, I will use the policy and practices of military occupational specialty (MOS) assignment at The Basic School (TBS) to illustrate how institutional racism operates under the surface while powerfully reinforcing inequity. This example is one all Marine officers can understand. My realization took almost 30 years to develop and needed the insight gained from study, introspection, and hindsight. I was a part of the racist system. Now I want to be a part of the solution. Please hear me out.

I served as a Staff Platoon Commander (SPC) at TBS for four consecutive classes between 1995 and 1998. Therefore, I was a direct participant in the military occupational specialty (MOS) assignment process four times. As most Marine officers already know, each TBS class is divided into thirds. To ensure “quality spread,” all available MOS slots are divided across the thirds so each community gets its share of top, middle, and bottom third lieutenants. In my personal experience, when it came time for MOS assignments, all SPCs would gather in a room with the company executive officer and sometimes the company commander. The lieutenants lined up according to lineal standing from top to bottom. One by one the lieutenants entered and picked the MOS they wanted from what was available. The choices became more limited as lieutenants neared the bottom of their respective third until only one option remained. Therefore, the top lieutenants in each third usually got what they wanted. Put another way, to increase the certainty of getting a desired MOS, being the top of the bottom third was better than being the bottom of the top third. However, other than the honor graduate, the top few lieutenants, or flight contract lieutenants, MOS assignment of everyone else was at the whim of the company staff—well, almost everyone else (I will discuss the “almost” situation in a moment). If I had a lieutenant that was selfish but got their first choice, then I might give away that slot to another SPC in exchange for a MOS desired by one of my unselfish lieutenants. The only stipulation was that bartering had to remain within each third to maintain quality spread.

As the lieutenants entered in order of their lineal standing, I noticed black officers had higher representation in the bottom third as a percentage of their overall population when compared to white officers. I also noticed that most of the black officers in the bottom third did not want combat arms and preferred a MOS that gave them a marketable skill for their post-military career such as logistics or communications. With the bartering done, the data was sent to Headquarters, Marine Corps for approval. In my experience, the list was always sent back to put more minority officers in combat arms (the “almost” situation mentioned above). This experience was the first time I became aware of minority quotas even though I was likely a quota myself as a lieutenant. Remember, many black officers were in the bottom third and most of these officers did not want combat arms. Yet, the institution forced them into the infantry, for example, to meet racial quotas. Putting an officer into a job they did not want purely because of their race is at odds with the noble intentions of that policy. We were setting those officers up for failure and reinforcing long held biases. 

What has remained with me ever since is the question of why so many minority officers struggled at TBS. Over time, I have come to understand the cause. TBS is a high-pressure environment where lieutenants are in direct competition with one another.  The first three significant tests at TBS are swim qualification, rifle/pistol qualification, and land navigation. Many of the minority officers I led grew up in low income areas, mostly poor city neighborhoods. They did not have access to boy scouts, neighborhood pools, gun ranges, or hunting. The first event was swim qualification, and many of my minority officers struggled. Ultimately, every one of those officers passed, but at a cost to their prestige, confidence, and lineal standing. The next big test was rifle and pistol qualification, and again many of my minority officers struggled. Land navigation was the third major hurdle and the pattern of struggle continued. In addition, remediation and reattempts at qualification were time intensive and created a vicious cycle as the lieutenants fell behind in other topics as a result. Confidence, peer reputation, and lineal standing eroded further. These three major evaluations occurred during the first third of TBS. By the time those events were finished, reputations were set for the remainder of TBS and, one can argue, the remainder of their Marine Corps careers. 

The other aspect of TBS that favored lieutenants from white middle- and upper-class families is the language we use in the Marine Corps, particularly among officers. We speak “proper” English, that is English decided as proper by those who have had power and determine the standards. Again, many of my minority officers were challenged with writing and briefing five-paragraph orders. Even if no one ever said it out loud, those who struggled to write and speak “correctly” were not respected by the officer culture, a culture determined by white men over the past 244 years. If in doubt, just look at the wall of commanders at any headquarters, almost all are white men. At Marine Corps Combat Development Command (MCCDC), every past and current commanding general is a white male with one exception from the 1980s (Lieutenant General Frank Emmanuel Petersen Jr., who was also the Marine Corps’ first African American aviator and general officer). Even at TBS, this pattern has only just been broken. White male culture is THE culture of the Marine Corps to this day. No Commandant has been anything but a white male. Of all the books on the Commandant’s reading list, only one specifically addresses race, that is The Marines of Montford Point: America’s First Black Marines. I can find no titles specifically addressing the perspective of women or their struggle for equality.

My white lieutenants who did well at TBS did well because they worked hard. This fact is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether the institution created a level playing field for all officers. I believe the institution has not and does not. The institution is biased toward middle- and upper-class white culture. The institution perpetuates the unspoken narrative of white superiority by setting up minority officers for failure. It puts reluctant minority officers in MOSs they do not want or have not been thoroughly prepared for by the system. Then officers of all races pass through headquarters like MCCDC, and the silent message of racial and gender hierarchy is reinforced by the command photographs everyone sees on the walls. Meanwhile, our exclusive institution truly believes in its own meritocracy as it points to the handful of minorities and women who have made it to the top as shining examples. That we should be grateful for the opportunity, as some of my friends have actually said, cannot be the end of progress.

TBS does not allow overt racism, as it is non-racist. Yet, it falls short of being anti-racist because its policies continue to lead to biased outcomes. White middle- and upper-class culture is the standard, that is the way it is. I am not proposing we change the existing norms of speech or lower existing standards. I am proposing that those officers needing a boost so they can start from an equal footing should be deliberately prepared by the institution before commencing TBS. Perhaps officers who are identified through some type of pre-test or survey should attend a “mini-TBS” to learn the fundamentals of swimming, navigating, and shooting, and to practice communicating to desired norms before they are placed into the mix. A program like this will better ensure minority officers are adequately represented across all MOSs and the use of mandated quotas can end. A program like this will result in genuine meritocracy. This is meaningful affirmative action.

In writing this proposal, I considered the Naval Academy Preparatory School (NAPS) model. The NAPS mission is “to enhance Midshipman Candidates moral, mental, and physical foundations to prepare them for success at the United States Naval Academy.” A study, almost 20 years old, called The Performance of Preparatory School Candidates at the United States Naval Academy by Brian S. Fitzpatrick leads me to believe a mini-TBS, or preparatory school for TBS, is worth pursuing. The author concluded that NAPS was “successful in facilitating the graduation of these traditionally disadvantaged groups from a top-notch college.”

Although I came to my observations and conclusions independently, I felt looking for previous literature on TBS and minority performance would be prudent. Interestingly, this topic was discussed extensively in the early 1990s. In a 60 Minutes interview, then Commandant Carl E. Mundy Jr. raised the same observations about African American lieutenants doing worse at TBS than white lieutenants using the exact same categories previously discussed (of note, General Mundy was unfairly criticized for his observations, and his statements were stripped of the context in which he made them). The Assistant Commandant at the time, General Walter E. Boomer, even pointed out the same causes for performance differences that I do now: socioeconomic background and lack of access. 

Why then have we not adequately tackled this problem and only marginally improved the racial distribution among officers, particularly senior officers? The percentage of black officers as part of the overall officer population still lags far behind that of black Marines as a part of the enlisted population (see Marine Corps by Gender, Race and Ethnicity published by the DOD’s Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity, released in 2016). I watched every Capstone class of O7 general/flag officers during my final active duty assignment. In each of the three classes I observed, out of a group of 50 or so brigadier generals and rear admirals, only one or two were black and only one or two were female. The Marine Corps welcomed its first African American woman to the general officer ranks in 2018, 54 years after the Civil Rights Act. Among the active duty ranks, there is currently only one black Marine general officer from the infantry community. General Mundy and General Boomer recognized the problem and its causes over a quarter century ago. Not much has changed.

Martin Luther King, Jr., in paraphrasing the abolitionist Theodore Parker, said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Maybe so, but not without deliberate force. Newton’s first law of motion, or law of inertia, states things in motion stay in motion unless acted on by a greater force. King himself was that force in bending our Nation away from Jim Crow and toward civil rights. The inertia of institutional racism at TBS will continue unless acted on by a greater force. The institution must be made to change course, for left to its own devices it will not. Being non-racist allows inertia. Thus, we are either racist or anti-racist. Perhaps this letter will be the start of introspection, real discussion, and change forceful enough to knock the systemic bias off course and toward a new and fair system. With that accomplishment, the Marine Corps can be an example for all of America.

Thank you for reading this until the end.