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We're talking today on Veterans Radio with Captain John P. Cordell, retired from the
U.S. Navy and Lieutenant Commander Reuben Keith Green, retired from the U.S. Navy as well.
Both gentlemen, we've talked to a number of different times on important subjects, but
they recently wrote an article that focuses on a subject we've had some passing discussion
on but I want to have some more, which is the tragedy of the lost generation.
And that's about the lack of representation of minorities, African Americans, in the United
States Naval Academy.
Image wise, I think John, you were telling me that while the Navy overall has a 17 percent
black census, the Naval Academy only has about 6 percent.
Is that right?
Right.
I recently looked up their demographics of the class of 2024 and it's about 6.8 percent.
Now the numbers get a little fuzzy because some people identify with multiple ethnic
groups.
Black, father was white, and as we were talking about the past with folks applying, General
Williams reminded me that hey, back in the day, if you had the option to not put black
when you knew that nobody could look you up on the internet or interview you in person,
you didn't put black, you put white.
And so the numbers may be skewed a little bit, but that's what they said, about 6.8
percent black.
And you referenced a book that I think we ought to give a little mention to, which is
Blue and Gold and Black, Racial Integration of the U.S. Naval Academy, by historian Robert
Schneller.
That's correct.
When I read your article and looked at his writing and it sort of, you know, when you
say it out loud it makes sense.
There are certainly states that his, because appointments are made by senators and congressmen
and women, there are certain areas of the country that have just avoided nominating
to the academies a diverse racial population.
Was this something that just was obvious and I just never thought about it?
Not at all.
The path to that was through actually the Navy History and Heritage Command, a friend
of ours named Denise Kremp, who actually advocated for the renaming of a base that was named
for one of her ancestors, because he was a confederate.
And she actually pointed me towards the Naval Academy archivist, who basically sent me a
database and we got permission to use it.
And essentially of all the nominations from all of the Naval Academy going back as far
as digital records, which was 1978.
And then we basically searched through that data and sorted by state and then we looked
at the demographics of the state and said, okay, all the demographics of the state, you
know, the percent Black population represented by the percent of nominations.
And when you sort those two columns, magically all 12 southern states percolate to the bottom
with the worst ratio, with Mississippi with the absolute worst ratio.
So no, it was not readily apparent and nobody else that I've talked to had even looked at
it.
So that was kind of mind boggling to discover.
And Keith, talk a little bit about why it's important that the academies, not just the
Naval, but we're focusing on the Naval Academy, that the military academies kind of reflect
our general population in terms of who gets into these prestigious positions.
Well, during the Vietnam War, the number one complaint of Black sailors was that they had
no Black officers to go to their, to share their concerns with.
And the Navy and Army took very different approaches on that.
The Army banned the Confederate flag in theater in the Vietnam War and powerful people like
Mississippi Senator John C. Stennis pressured the Army to reverse that ban.
You had KKK rallies, cross burning, etc., etc.
You would go into your commander's office and he'd have a big, giant Confederate flag
on the wall behind him sitting in his office in Vietnam.
So because there were so few Black officers, Black people felt like they weren't getting,
they weren't being heard, they weren't being respected, and they weren't being treated
fairly.
And all of the statistics bear that out.
That's what we're to today.
We've got all these claims of DEI hires and color over merit when they don't even understand
the history of how we got to the limited number of Black officers that exist right now.
It is important if you're going to have a diverse force that they have people that look
like them and represent them.
One of the biggest problems in the military justice system is that there are very few
Black judge-advocate general officers.
And many of the issues that are treated as disciplinary issues are actually cultural
and communications issues.
And when you've got someone that has racial bias and they are trying to communicate with
someone that is experiencing racial bias, you're setting yourself up for failure.
I don't want to see the military go back into a period where you're having this racial strife
because you've got a majority White leadership leading a very diverse force and they have
no skin in the game in terms of changing that dynamic.
But the Black people and the minorities, Jewish, Black, Hispanic, etc., they know what they're
experiencing on a day-to-day basis.
Yeah, I think it's one of those situations where if you, and I think the language you
use, John, if you don't start out as an admiral, you've got to work your way up from being
an ensign.
You're not coming out of an academy with a bunch of ensigns who are in the minority classifications.
They're not going to, by attrition and everything else over 30 years, they're not going to be
there in the flag ranks, are they?
Right.
Yeah, that number never gets bigger, right?
It can only start where it starts and then start to work its way down as you would try.
And that's, you know, but back to Keith, you know, one of the big counterarguments that
I see, and there was a recent article in the Naval Institute making this argument that,
you know, we're sort of post-racism now and that we need to focus on meritocracy and that
the military should be a pure meritocracy.
And I fully agree that your advancement should be based on merit.
But one of the purposes, and Keith can probably articulate this better than I can, of affirmative
action was to try to close that gap between opportunity, whether it was wealth opportunity,
education opportunity, it was a racial gap, and at least give people who had not had those
opportunities a leg up so they could compete in a meritocracy on an equal basis.
But you can't have a meritocracy if I can't get in the door in the first place.
Well, and you point out from the statistics, it's sort of a quiet, we just won't make any
appointments or a limited number of appointments.
It's a very subtle and quiet bias.
Keith, react if you would.
Well, in addition to that, about a few years ago, I did an interview with Steve Walsh at
KPBS and the article was why there's so few black admirals in the US Navy.
And Admiral Sinclair Harris talked about the death valley phase of a black officer's career.
After about 10 or 12 years, when they've been fighting this perception of lack of qualification
and subtle racial discrimination and open racial discrimination, they finally decide
that they're just not willing to do it anymore and throw in the towel.
And then those people are taken out of the selection pool, or some of the most motivated
people decide that I can't do this anymore.
I'm not going to do this anymore and go get a job in civilian community.
And then they get blamed for not being able to hack it or not willing to hack it when
they're competing against people that have not had in any way, shape or form to deal
with those issues.
I left the Navy at 22 years because I simply could not take the discrimination I was facing
from my commanding officer who asked me when I challenged him on why he was mistreating
me.
He asked, he smirked at me and said, do you feel like a second class citizen?
And he was completely protected by the people when I filed a five page discrimination complaint
against him, a rock solid, thoroughly documented case.
And he was protected and went on to abuse a ship full of people before he retired as
a Navy captain.
Well, we're having this discussion as it was about admissions to the academies in part
because the US Supreme Court in the last year struck down race conscious admissions at civilian
schools and that raised a question of, well, can race or gender be used in a qualifying
applications to the academies?
And there are many groups who have are filing briefs and motions and saying, yeah, you've
got to be able to use these factors if we're going to have the right officer corps going
forward.
And I know earlier in the year, I spoke to the National Association of Black Women Veterans
and it was one of the major issues for that group that they were advocating for.
If this is not improved, do you see, John, based on the statistics you ran, are the southern
states going to continue what they're doing?
Can California make up the difference?
New York?
How does, how do the statistics tell you this will all work itself out?
Well, you know, when you draw two dots on the board, they lead to a line and you can
follow that line.
And so if you change, if you do away with the ability to at least consider race, you
know, the numbers aren't going to go up.
The other two things, points I would make, Jim, number one, no one records the number
of nominees who were not accepted.
And so we don't even know how many applications there were by any sort of demographic means
and what percentage were rejected, whether it was white, black, Hispanic.
And you know, let me just give you an example of why this is important.
When the first black secretary of the army, Clifford Alexander, received a promotion list
for a, for one star general, there were no black people on the list and he rejected the
list.
He said, you can't tell me that there's not one black Colonel in the entire United States
army that is not ready and, and capable of being promoted and has not earned it.
So he sent the list back and said, go back and look at your top black candidates.
And when they returned the list to him, the name of Colin Powell had been added to that
list.
Colin Powell was preparing to retire as a Colonel.
His career was over.
And then all of a sudden he gets a new lease on life because the black secretary of the
army knew that they needed to have a more diversified army corps.
So imagine how many times that has happened since then, particularly in the Navy, where
these very highly qualified black people have been looked over because they're not part
of the same group as the rest of the people being considered.
It's a great example.
And as I think most people know, Colin Powell didn't go to the academy.
He got his commission through an ROTC scholarship.
Again, kind of highlights, he probably would never have gotten an appointment back in that
point in time, and we really need to encourage the representative grouping of folks who get
appointments to our academies to reflect the diversity of our country.
There certainly are folks who have plenty of skills for it.
But if you keep rejecting people, then at the same time, they're not going to apply.
They're going to go, as you're saying, Keith, hey, I don't have a shot at this.
Why am I even bothering, right?
That's correct.
Well it's an important issue, and it's one that folks certainly need to think about and
work on.
And hopefully our congressional and senatorial staffers who really do the grunt work in getting
academy appointments pulled together in the interviewing committees will approach this
with a little bit of 2024 insight and not exclude people because of their race, ethnicity,
gender.
Lieutenant Commander Ruben Keith Green, US Navy retired, as always, Keith, great to
talk to you.
Keep us informed as these things move forward.
And if the Veterans Radio audience can provide any assistance, please feel free to reach
out.
Thank you very much, Jim.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.
I am Jim Fossone.
It's been a pleasure to be your host.
I'm a Veterans disability lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans.
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