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African-Americans and the Gulf War
Conflict abroad, domestic crises outline hypocrisy of America's "new world order"
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By Matthew Stewart
Contributor
By now there has been plenty
of talk on campus and around the
country about the high percent
age of African-Americans in
Operation Desert Storm and in
the U.S. military in general. Let
us begin by briefly reviewing the
sutistics. While we know that
roughly 1 out of 8 Americans
(about 12%) are of African de
scent, Pentagon statistics show
that between 1 out of 4 and 1 out
of 3 soldiers in Saudi Arabia now
(26-30%, depending on which
Statistic you choose) is an Afri
can-American. This means the
percentage of black people in the
military is more than twice as high
as it is in the American population.
In addition, about 45% of the
women deployed to the Middle
East are African-American.
(Meanwhile, C.T. Vivian, in his
address to UNC during Martin
Luther King Jr. week, asserted that
the front lines are 70% black and
Latino).
Many say these statistics repre
sent racism in some form. Colin
Powell, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, tells us this is a
time to ignore questions of race in
deference to the larger issues in
volved. BCC Director Margo
Crawford, at a forum on this topic
in Hamilton Hall, pointed out that
the reason we are all so preoccu
pied with these and similar statis
tics is because “we are not one
people” as Americans: racial in
equity clearly plagues us today in
many areas, and we look to statis
tics such as these to determine
whether justice is being done. I
believe the statistical disparity
between the troops and the Ameri
can population as a whole is so
troubling we cannot ignore it, and
so we should try to understand the
cause.
It is clear that, despite what a
majority of the white population
bebeves, no race or national ity has
a monopoly on patriotism. We can
safely say that many African-
Americans chose military sCTvice
because they wish to serve their
country like their counterparts of
all races. But this fails to explain
the disproportionate concentration
of African-Americans in the mili
tary. Certainly, we cannot say that
black people are twice as likely to
wan t to serve their country or twice
as likely to want to serve their
country or twice as likely to want
to fight or any other nonsense.
How, then, do we explain this
difference? I believe that, as in
many if not most cases of racial
disparity, we must look to the
economic root of this problem.
We live in in a time when Afri-
can-Americans are vastly over
represented among the less wealthy
classes of society. The frightening
rate of unemploymentamong black
youth is directed related to the lack
of jobs available, especially those
jobs that are meaningful and pay
decent wages. I don’t have to
remind anyone that most black
students still struggle to afford a
college education, and many drop
out because they cannot afford it
So many African-Americans join
the military, because it offers re
sources for economic and educa
tional opportunities that may not
otherwise be available. This is stark
evidence of an “economic draft’
that manifests itself along racial
lines. In these times, advertise
ments that promote military sctv
ice and encourage people to “be al
you can be” have a chilling ele
ment of truth in them for many