The Great Equalizer

...It reminds us that black Americans fought for this country from the Revolutionary War forward...

...There is a mystical, inexplicable, and profoundly illogical appeal to the profession of arms in a worthy cause...

...If blacks are disproportionately represented in a volunteer force, it indicates that the Army offers opportunity and fairness unavailable elsewhere...

...Today’s Army is flatly intolerant of active discrimination-while realizing that not all human beings are destined to love one another...

...The greatest social advance of the past generation has not been the integration of women into the regular force but the loosening of the unspoken rule that divorce made you unsuitable for significant promotions...

...The numbers and testimonies are clear: Military service is coni sistently the broadest path to success for black Americans...

...Many young black men and women elect to stay in the ranks for a full career-but even those who leave when their enlistment is up are better educated, more likely to be employed, and less likely to become involved in crime when they return to civilian life...

...But there is much more to it than that-some of it transferable to the civilian world, most of it not...

...Promotion boards have goals, not quotas (although, to be honest, those “goals” have sometimes become quotas with a nod and a wink...

...Second, the actual black share of fatal casualties was 15.4 percent, at a time when blacks averaged 19.1 percent of active-duty military personnel...

...AU of this makes Charles Moskos, a sociology professor at Northwestern University noted for his field research, a good candidate for lynchmg...

...Similarly, during the build-up to Operation Desert Storm, black leaders who had never served in the military railed that black blood would be asked to pay the price for white oil...

...The volunteers always came, and the demands of two world wars opened increasing opportunities for their advancement, both as NCOs and officers...

...First of all, the blood of all the soldiers with whom I have served for more than 20 years is red...

...In swift, jargon-free prose, Moskos and Butler lay down the construct: When the Army finally made its commitment to integration, it did so with the seriousness of soldiers conditioned to “take that hill...

...The Great Equalizer The color-blind Army gives African Americans what the rest of the country won't By Ralph Peters THOSE AMERICANS WHO VALUE ideology over human beings will hate this book...

...described as our country’s ‘‘unifymg ideals...

...As a soldier who enlisted when the Army was at the bottom of its post-Vietnam trauma, I find this last point crucial, and I wish Moskos and Butler had expanded on it...

...Our freedom is defended by those among us who have chosen to sacrifice much of their personal freedom...

...In any case, career soldiers do not put up with the deprivations of Army life for the money...

...Worse, they have written clearly and well...

...Otherwise, they’re on the road to Sarajevo...

...But we are less likely to hear of the less glamorous, but arguably greater, contributions of black Americans in business, science, and education, and, above all, on the battlefield...

...it accepts diversity of origin but insists on unanimity of purpose...

...Today, the Army is the most successfully integrated major institution in our country...

...Do they want to impose ceilings on the number of blacks allowed to serve...

...Moskos and Butler checked the numbers...

...This book prefigures a unity that will ultimately encompass our society as a whole, despite the resistance of bigots on the right or the left...

...Well, as Moskos and Butler point out, you cannot have it both ways...

...All That We Can Be is a great American success story-and a reminder that a truly color-blind America is a “hill worth taking...

...We hear ceaselessly of the (remarkable and genuine) contributions of our nation’s African heritage in the areas of music and other arts...

...The young soldier is free to listen to his own preferred style of music after duty and to spend his free time as he sees fit (within the legal parameters and at the sufferance of his superiors), but he or she is otherwise behaviorally uniform...

...For many of us, a landmark of our nation’s moral maturation was the deployment of the lOlst Airborne to ensure the integration of Little Rock's schools, but the real drama was what was happening in the division itself, The military was changing faster than America...

...The Army has provided a path to social advancement for black Americans for more than a century...

...But the degree of control the Army exercises over social culture would not work in our broader society...

...How did it get there...

...With the momentous post-World War I1 decision to truly integrate the military, the floodgates opened...

...Above all, young blacks find themselves in a world where blacks routinely occupy positions of authority over whitesand where those black role models teach pride without hatred, achievement instead of complaint, and hope in place of self-pity...

...Army is at least as Calvinist as 16th-century Geneva, and bears a startling resemblance to Thomas More’s Utopia...

...The U.S...

...They enter a structured, disciplined environment with clear-cut rewards and penalties-distributed according to personal merit...

...This is a short book, but it manages to address a broad range of issues...

...In the wake of Vietnam, the Army dramatically increased its efforts to guarantee equal opportunity and make the most of its human resources...

...One lesson both history and our military experience teaches is that, although multiethnic societies can work, they must strive toward a monocultural ideal...

...Vietnam produced a crisis...

...Leftist overseers of vast social programs whose secret bias is that blacks cannot succeed on their own merits will reach to explain away the 35 black generals, 9,000 black officers, and 75,000 black noncommissioned officers (NCOs) currently on active duty with the U.S...

...All That We Can Be tells most of the story, and tells it very well...

...You can gripe, but you have to perform to standard...

...These two men have done something remarkable in the field of contemporary sociology-they have told the truth, as best they could discern it, about a subject as sensitive as it is unfashionable...

...Nowhere is this magnificent mongrel of a culture-Afro-Anglo America-more clearly or encouragingly displayed than in the U.S...

...If you want to see what black Americans have done for their country, look at their military record...

...These men and women constitute the highest proportion of black executives and senior- and middle-level managers in any institution in this country...

...The tragedy, which has received bafflingly little attention, is the effect defense cuts have had on opportunities for black Americans...

...population and slightly less than the percentage of blacks then in uniform...

...While each soldier possesses his or her inner individuality, that individuality is surprisingly malleable-and the military tradition holds thousands of years of experience in shaping human beings to its purposes...

...As active-duty military strength dropped from 2.1 million in the late 1980s to 1.5 million in 1995, lS0,OOO jobs for black Americans disappeared-and these were jobs with health and educational benefits rarely available at the entry level in the marketplace...

...Despite the service of these men, the military and social establishments retained an insuperable bias against black troops...

...On the practical level, the Army controls your appearance, limits your verbal expression, demands obedience to regulations and traditions, enforces prohibitions on drug use and alcohol abuse, punishes then eliminates you if you abuse your spouse or incur unwarranted indebtedness, and, if you are a junior soldier, even prescribes your basic diet...

...It is a startling, brilliant, and accurate claim...

...Black fatalities in Vietnam amounted to 12.1 percent of the total-proportional to the number of blacks then in the U.S...

...What alternatives will they offer them...

...Critics need to think their position through...

...At present, young black enlistees are more likely than young whites to complete their enlistments successfully...

...As a soldier, you must subscribe to a demanding central ethos to succeed...

...What greater love of freedom, or sense of human obligation, can you find than the self-sacrifice of men who fought for a general freedom specifically denied them, who bled beside those who spurned them, and who knew that the cost of other men’s freedom would be their blood...

...But perhaps the most threatened Americans will be those black American leaders who profit from a culture of failure, who have done more than all but the most ruinous whites to convince their constituencies that they cannot achieve the American dream...

...The first black graduate of West Point, Henry Flipper, was pushed out of the officer corps on trumped-up charges of financial mismanagement, and the dawn of the 20th century saw black opportunity diminishing across society and in the military...

...But if the nation was all too ready to give up on its black citizens, black citizens never gave up on the nation...

...And it produced dark myths: One dear to demagogues is that the American experience in Indochina used black soldiers as cannon fodder...

...For the converted, the Army is a calling that transcends profession to become a quasireligious faith in higher ideals-which is why soldiers are suspect to many who have not experienced the military rite of passage...

...This point leads to a further charge made by some black leaders and white liberals: that the militaryand especially the Army-is disproportionately black...

...Because of the deep, sustaining nature of the black religious experience, American blacks may be particularly open to this appeal...

...Above all, the Army has imposed what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...

...If you are an NCO or officer, you and your family most likely live in identical quarters or off post in uniform housing tracts, and your career will suffer if your children misbehave...

...An ill-conceived war for an ill-prepared generation, it led to societal and racial polarization, in the military and at large...

...Incomes vary only between ranks, with slight differentials for years of service and special skills...

...Co-author John Sibley Butler, professor of sociology and management at the University of Texas, will likely get off with charges to the effect that he, a black American, has betrayed a trust by praising both the Army and the opportunities his country presents to all Americans...

...The Army is a reform school for the human spirit, and not everybody wants to be reformed...

...that is a national success story...

...Although our military is multiethnic, it is not multicultural...

...If you want examples of spectacular courage, of perseverance in the face of prejudice and bitter adversity, and of ultimate triumph, look at the military experience of black Americans...

...Toward the close of their book, the authors make the point that our unique American culture is, at its core, Afro-Anglo...

...Obviously, soldiers all wear the same baggy battle dress uniforms or Pentagon polyester (perhaps the most hideous uniform in military history), and we all have an equal responsibility to obey orders...

...Those Americans still suffering from a Great Society hangover are far more comfortable praising a saxophonist dead of a heroin overdose than a general with an iron moral center, a rich family life, and a capacity not only to gain this nation’s highest office but also to set the standard for a new century’s presidencies...

...The paradox is that the Army is a profoundly conservative institution that has achieved liberal goals with unprecedented success...

...The stingy, insecure right will fear the message of the Army’s social activism since the Truman eraannoying proof that relentless fairness, high standards, and carefully targeted remedial programs erase those comforting differentials in racial performance...

...The real tragedy is not a higher-than-statisticallyjustified number of black recruits...

...The officer and NCO ranks are declaredly puritanical, and you can be court-martialed for indiscretions most of the country would take as a matter of course...

...It is the only “jobs program” that has ever worked...