American Privilege

Sixty-six years ago, racism was part of the fabric of America, especially in the deep south. Few of us actually experienced separate water coolers, segregated bathrooms, or all white schools. I am glad that I did not. The Supreme Court ruling in the Brown vs Board of Education was supposed to change all that, but it met with stiff resistance. Sixty-three years ago, nine students required military escorts to and from school in Little Rock, Arkansas. White privilege was real, and racism was endemic in American society. We have come a long way since then. We are now prohibited from considering race in hiring, housing, or education. Ethnicity cannot be a reason to refuse service to anyone anywhere in this country. Even racial speech is now a crime.

On the fifth day of July two months before my eighteenth birthday, I stood on the plains of West Point and was sworn in as a new cadet. I was privileged to be included among those eight hundred and four of America’s finest. I never thought of it as white privilege. We were a mixed lot; some Asians, a couple with Arabic ancestors, a few native Americans, and more than a few who could trace their family trees back to Africa. They considered themselves as privileged as much as I did. I was on the track team and shared a locker with a young man from Philadelphia named Dave. We both were commissioned in the Air Force and became life long friends. I was in Viet Nam when I learned that Dave’s life was cut short when his fighter plane was shot down shortly after takeoff form DaNang Air Base. Dave had been selected to be the first black pilot to fly with the Thunderbirds.

Before I went to flight school, I managed an office that determined manpower requirements. I developed a mathematical algorithm that proved useful in our statistical models and was privileged to brief the Commander of the Air Training Command, General B. O. Davis. General Davis just happened to be black. He didn’t know that privilege was reserved for white officers. He only knew he was our commander. A few years later, I was privileged to be in Viet Nam when I heard the report that Chappy James had led a flight of F4s that shot down seven MiG 21s in a single day. He went on to become a four star General and the Commander of NORAD. General Colin Powell was the Chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff during the first Gulf War. He later served as National Security Advisor, and Secretary of State. I doubt that General Powell thought American privilege was based on skin color. In 1947 President Truman, as Commander in Chief, decreed that all vestiges of segregation in the U. S. armed forces be abolished. The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Mike Gildway, recently apologized for implicit bias in the Navy and vowed to root it out. If racism exists in the Navy, it is his fault. What has changed since Colin Powell and Chappy James retired?

We are no longer working toward unity as Americans. We have become more parochial and combative. Not just politics, but society in general. We are either left or right with no inclination to compromise. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ushered in two full generation of progress, during which we eliminated many racial barriers and moved toward equality. Then things began to change; and rather than continue integrating, we separated into combative groups, one working toward white nationalism and the other toward black power. Our schools were at least partly to blame.

After I retired from the Air Force, I went to Eastern Washington University to prepare for a second career as a school teacher. The majority of my professors had student deferments that insulated them from the military draft. I never met any who served in Viet Nam. It was there that I learned that the model of the melting pot wherein diverse cultures were forged into Americans was obsolete. The new concept is a stew where each culture keeps its identity. Thus, each diverse segment of society is encouraged to form separate enclaves and fight for their share of the American experience. We are now living with the consequences. Our universities need to teach equality and integration. We need to change what we teach our youth if we are to quit fighting long enough to heal.

Frank Watson is a retired Air Force Colonel and long-time resident of Eastern Washington. He has been a free-lance columnist for over 20 years.