Jennifer Barnhill is a columnist for Military.com and writes about military families.
While moving is a part of military life, for families of color and other groups, military moves are more than just an inconvenience: They threaten their safety and endanger our country’s readiness.
“There’s an unspoken factor that’s known that places are off-limits to people of color,” says Ellie Walker, the wife of a Coast Guardsman and one half of an interracial couple. “The better you get along with your detailer, the better. … That’s what he tells new recruits coming in, too: ‘You know, there are going to be places that aren’t good for you, as an active member or even as a family, and you have to advocate for yourself or you’re at the mercy of whoever they send you to.'”
Although the Walkers had found a safe and welcoming home near their shelter, once they left their neighborhood, they were surrounded by unwelcome messages. The parking lot of their local gas station was regularly filled with pickup trucks decorated with Confederate flags, as various groups used the central location as a meeting place.
The Walkers’ daughter was only four years old when she first experienced both subtle and overt racism. It started with her being physically separated from her classmates, which her parents noticed on the school’s security cameras. It came from her classmates, as two little boys and a little girl repeatedly asked her why she wore braids one week and an afro the next. They frequently touched her hair, took off her hair accessories and made comments about her darker skin compared to her siblings.
When the Walkers informed the school, nothing was done. The school administration dismissed the behavior on the grounds that “kids will be kids.” It was only when the other children began to racially abuse her and call her a “black monkey” that school staff took notice.
“You’re saying racially motivated things to her, and that’s not OK,” Walker said. “That’s a very specific term you’ve heard somewhere.”
Walker said that despite her young age, her daughter fully understood that the intention was to make her feel like she was not human.
Data shows that the Walkers’ experience is not an isolated case. According to a 2021 study by Blue Star Families (BSF), one in three service members of color (33%) experienced “at least one threat or harassment” in their local civilian community between January 2020 and June 2021. BSF began collecting data shortly after the 2020 murder of George Floyd, an event that sparked a national conversation about the prevalence of racism in our country. BSF wanted to understand how this national conversation was impacting military families of color, so it conducted and released a survey that confirmed what people of color already knew: military members are not immune to racism.
In May of this year, these fears were confirmed when 23-year-old Senior Airman Roger Fortson was shot and killed in his own home by a police officer in Okaloosa County, Florida.
“Most media reports about his death show photos of Roger in his Air Force uniform, which shocked some of my neighbors that racial discrimination can still occur in the military, but I was not shocked,” said Brandi Jones, organizational director of the Secure Families Initiative (SFI), an organization that helps military families participate in the political process. “Roger’s death brought to light a truth that many of us Black and brown people already knew: A military uniform cannot protect you from violence.”
This awareness causes people of color to make their decisions about military careers based on very real dangers.
According to the 2021 BSF survey, 46% of military personnel of color considered racial/ethnic discrimination in their deployment ranking decisions and 42% expressed safety concerns based on their (or their) racial/ethnic identity.
In response to these events, SFI launched its PCS Safety Campaign, which shares stories like the Walkers’ to raise awareness. And Congress has responded.
“We have a duty to protect service members and their families,” said Senator Laphonza Butler, Democrat of California, of the Senate Armed Services Committee in an emailed statement to Military.com. “The Senate Armed Services Committee is now looking for additional measures to protect military families during relocations and make it easier for them to raise safety concerns during the process. Both my predecessor, Senator (Dianne) Feinstein, and I asked for this language to be included in the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), and I am grateful that the committee has prioritized military families in this way.”
Butler and other members of Congress are calling on the services to produce a report detailing their respective humanitarian transfer policies, which include “an assessment of a Soldier’s ability to raise security concerns as part of the transfer or permanent transfer.” Currently, each service offers humanitarian transfers to Soldiers whose personal circumstances require a transfer of duty, often due to a lack of medical care or to enable them to care for a loved one in an emergency.
In 2022, Military.com asked all branches of the military whether their humanitarian transfer policies covered issues of community discrimination. All said they likely did, but none provided numbers on how many soldiers had used the policy to be transferred based on those concerns.
“Since 2021, the Navy has reviewed more than 2,000 Navy Reassignments for Humanitarian Reasons (HUMS) applications and approved more than 80%,” Lt. Cmdr. Sean Brophy, a press secretary for Navy Personnel Command, said in a July email. The Navy was the only branch to respond to Military.com’s request for updated information on the reassignments. The Navy’s relatively modest number of applicants represents less than half a percent of its eligible 340,065 sailors and 362,239 Navy family members. That raises the question: Are these numbers the result of a lack of need or a sign that families are unaware these programs exist?
“Any experience of racism that I’ve shared with one of my colleagues or a leader has historically been dismissed,” said Khiet Ho, a Marine Corps spouse who is Asian American. “People trivialize it. They dismiss it; they tell me I take it too personally; they say people aren’t serious or it’s just a joke.”
In 2020, the Asian American community experienced a period of increased racial discrimination and violence due to unfounded and racist allegations related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On the surface, commands try to combat racism by conducting regular command climate surveys to address issues that disrupt unit cohesion. However, members of ethnic minorities may not feel they can be completely transparent in these unit-level assessments. If they are the only person of color in their unit, their responses are not truly anonymous. And if they choose not to share their experiences, it is easy for white leadership to think everything is OK.
“One of our friends (a leader of a previous command) said, ‘You know, I’ve been lucky throughout my career that there was never really racism in the units I was part of,’ and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I was in the same unit and there was definitely racism there,'” Ho said. Ho recounted that during a night of drinking in that command, a white officer got into an argument with someone at a bar and said he would hang the man – who was black – from a tree. Ho says when others hear about that incident, they downplay the severity of his threat by saying, “He doesn’t mean it; he’s just being himself because he’s from here,” pointing out that he comes from a region of the country where his comments were an acceptable response.
The military likes to think of itself as colorblind, a meritocracy that knows no racial discrimination. But does this idyllic mentality ignore the very real dangers faced by soldiers of color and their families?
The military’s “we all bleed blue” mentality says that people who join the military leave their individuality behind and embrace the unity and conformity of uniformed service. But this mentality does nothing to combat racism. Talking openly about it and admitting past mistakes is the only way forward. But are military leaders, tasked with keeping their soldiers and their families safe, completely free to make policy decisions that would help their military families?
In recent years, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the military have been drawn into partisan politics. The Trump administration and Republicans have labeled diversity programs in the military as “woke” and used that narrative to undermine the Department of Defense’s work to course-correct extremism in the military. If this issue is not addressed, the military would be unprepared to recruit people of color, who will make up the majority of recruitable adults by 2027. Politicians have forced anti-racism efforts behind closed doors, where they have little to no effect, leaving families like the Walkers to navigate racism largely without help.
Black families are afraid to move their black sons to areas where they are at greater risk. LGBTQ families are afraid they will be ostracized. Women are afraid their bodily freedom will be taken away from them. Even straight white families are afraid they could be persecuted in certain states if they choose to use IVF.
“You can’t just leave who you are behind when you put on a uniform and go out to defend freedom, because you inevitably keep your skin, your tattoos, your sexual preferences, your natural hair and all those things that you bring with you,” Walker said.
The story continues
