Creating an ecosystem for change – Racism in the military
There are two main reasons why I do the LinkedIn Lives: firstly to give people, who are trying to have the hard conversations about systemic racism in their organisations, something to think about, something that enlightens and informs from different perspectives, maybe supports them someway towards a ‘eureka’ moment in advancing racial equity; and, also for those of us who have been impacted, and continue to be impacted by racism, the hope that there are people who care, people who are trying to fight the good fight in whatever way or capacity they can.
It is for both these reasons this Live took place, and they are the ‘why’ behind converting it into a blog piece. We may not think systemic racism within the US military has relevance to our everyday lives, but the racial equity issues they face, the questions they’re asking and the realisations and solutions they’re working with are very relevant. So read on.
Recently I spoke with Sergeant Major Griffin of the US Army, Major Daniel Walker of the US Air Force, and Margie Crowe former [Margie’s credentials] about the conversations they’re having and the work being done to acknowledge and change systemic racial bias in the US military.
And to say the US military is a vast, complex organisation would be putting it mildly, but one of the reasons why I love my extended brothers and sister across the pond is that we are able to have these conversations, ones that are relevant in the UK and I can’t access here because I’m still knocking on the door of the British military and no-one is answering.Back in December 2020 the US Air Force published its research into race disparity contained in their discipline processes, personal development programmes and career opportunities for Black aircrew and space professionals. As the report states, “While the data show racial disparity, it does not indicate causality. Data alone do not address why racial disparity exists in these areas.” As Margie told us ‘It very much mirrors what’s going on in society, with our Black community, that the discipline rates are fundamentally different than it is for whites. And so one of the key things of the findings that I saw is how Black service members in the Air Force are saying ‘look, we don’t trust our chain of command. We don’t feel protected.’ These are some pretty serious issues.”
Table of Contents
Racial bias is already in place
Margie went onto explain that when the disciplinary instructions were scrutinised there was nothing in them that was overtly racist, which meant people weren’t looking at it the right way. “It’s masked.” she said. “A key piece of Critical Race Theory here in the US”, added Major Walker “is explained really well in the book by Richard Rothstein ‘The Color of Law’ and it struck a chord with us. Our researchers may not be racist, but after you steep something in racism for so long, just removing it doesn’t actually erase it because the system is already in place.
Starting Points
An example of that is in the Air Force Academy we have a honour code, but when someone joins up at the age of 18 we don’t know what they did before they came to the Academy, what their normal looked like, what biases are in their system. And this gets personal. I noticed that, for example, diversity and inclusion are very broad subject matters that point at an organisation or enterprise, but when you start talking about bias and prejudice, now that gets personal. And you have to be vulnerable yourself to tell your own story, for instance, your own interactions, your own challenges, to get people to think about their own behaviour, which can be uncomfortable for the receiver. And so now we’re at a point in this national conversation, or even international conversation, I would say, where the sender and the receiver of these messages really have to be conscious of what we’re saying to each other. Because offence, you can achieve offence really, really quickly. And we’re just people. And as soon as you offend someone, they’re going to shut down. That’s just what we’re built to do. And so I say that’s the challenge. How do you keep these lines of communication open while also not backing away from the very critical conversations that need to be had?”
Equitable Merit-Based Systems
For so long we’ve assumed the systems were fair so we only ever focused on individuals and individual behaviour. And what we’re now starting to recognise is we’ve got to go back and unpick the very premise of what’s propping up all of our systems and therefore all of our organisations. This is knowledge we need to learn because if you haven’t had training on racism, racial literacy and equity, unwittingly you are perpetuating harm.
And you think you’ve got the failsafe of the system underneath you, but you’ve never looked hard at the system’s structure because it perpetuates itself.
The example here Margie Crowe talks about is progression and promotion within the US military. It’s a merit based system. This means the system and the people within in need to be held accountable to ensure it’s equitable. “For this to happen the desire and design of an equitable structure can’t just come from the top, equity has to be happening throughout. And it’s going to have to be explicitly taught because it’s not going to come naturally to most people. So the question to solve is, how do we build all these things? We’re going to have to refit the entire system so that merit equity infiltrates every aspect of it. And it has to contain accountability otherwise what’s the point.”
Changing Recruitment and Selection Programmes
“It is as the guys have said,” Major Griffin explains, “Leadership’s having these conversations and national conversations are happening. But what I hear you guys saying is that the leaders of small units are where change really happens, you know the 12 to 20 person outfits, those are the ones that have to do it. So you have to put systems in place. And it’s got to start, like Daniel was saying, when they’re coming off the street, who are we recruiting? And then who are we selecting for certain positions, because we’ve been doing it for years: ‘I’m gonna select people that have the traits that I’ve had, because I got picked because I have his traits and characteristics etc’. So our recruitment process was a self-licking ice cream cone over and over and over again. Our assessment and selection programme, we realise will make the biggest change. It’s a system we can change to change this issue.”
Issues with ‘Neutral’ Policies
“And the Air Force has the same problem,” adds Major Walker, “the way we bring in pilots is an example of a systemic policy that on its face is neutral. Part of the pilot candidate selection method through a scoring process is whether you have a private pilot’s licence or not. And it cost about US$6,000 to get one of those. Right off the bat you’re eliminating an entire socioeconomic spectrum. But then if you peel the onion back even more, who are your poorest people, and it turns out, those are also your people of colour in certain regions of the country. So you’re missing out, and you have no idea whether these people can fly aeroplanes or not. You just don’t know, you’ll never know, as a matter of fact, because you have this process that on paper sounds like a great idea. Well, sure, if you have flight time, that ups your percentage of being able to fly aeroplanes, that’s a fairly neutral idea, but until you have someone that comes along and says, ‘Ah, have you thought about these other factors that may not register? Because this is the case with me. I fly aeroplanes and I fly okay. I did not have my private pilot’s licence. Had this policy been in place when I was selected I would not be flying US Air Force aeroplanes. It takes someone to point that out, and go hang on a minute.”
Finances and Primary Functions
“Every organisation has its primary function.” says Major Walker, “and when that primary function starts to get weighed upon by operations, you start cutting from the bottom up of your priorities. So you know, when High School money gets tight, they start cutting the band and the art classes. When military money gets tight, the affinity and social programmes go away. That’s just our priority. But I think Nate this is where I would like to ask you a question.
Our history is a threat to itself. We’ve done this for like 400 years, and I think it would require a lot of hubris for us to say that it’s just gonna be over one day. We were founded on this. So we can’t just say, something that was at the beginning of our entire existence, is just going to fade away. But there are elements where, for example Nate’s a white man, but along the line, he learned this stuff, and from what my experience is, you can bottle experiences like that and say, ‘Okay, what did they learn? And how did they learn it? And how do we make this a part of our military, not just a programme that we put in place that’s going to change out with the next step? How do we as a military, and how do we as a nation say, this is a problem? This has to be the way that we do business? Or else, we’re going to fall back on what we know’. So I guess I would my question to you is, ‘how did you learn these things? What did you learn? Why do you sit where you sit now? Knowing what you know?’”
The Swim Test
“Thanks Daniel,” says Sergeant Major Griffin, “I think some of it has to do with the way the military is rank structured. And it’s not godlike, but it’s close to that on the control and influence you have of people below you. That’s how we work because we need that order to come through and say ‘take that hill’, and we do it. And that mindset perpetuates daily life in the military, because when they say do something you say ‘Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am’. But how did I become aware of it? Well, I’m in a predominantly white, military occupational code. So we’re mostly white males. I mean, there’s diversity but very little and not representative of the nation. So how did I become aware of it? I would say only recently. I’m Army Special Forces and they changed their selection criteria to diversify. And this was a hot topic because they removed the swim test.
In response to this, rank and file said, ‘you’re lowering standards’ and now equated lowering standards with diversity and questioned how lower standards would make us the best army or military in the world. And it’s not a simple relation between ‘lowering standards’ and diversity, the standards are lower because you are changing them. Because we’ve drilled into people ‘the standard is the standard, because its the standard so it can’t be changed’.
Major Walker adds, “And people have worked hard to reach the previous standard. Like, all the standards that we have to do to be an F 22 pilot or to be a special forces operator, they were hard, they were hard for me. It was difficult, and not everybody made it. And now I’m proud of that, right. And that’s become me. And that’s my identity. And that’s my hubris. So if you tell me that the next wave isn’t going to have to do all those things, and I say, ‘Well, why not? You know, I did it. Look at me’.”
“Right,” says Sergeant Major Griffin, “The military is all about getting people to so the same thing, the same way over and over again. So they fall in line otherwise their life is going to be very difficult, which is great when it’s time to take a hill or something, but it’s not when you need to change as there is something beyond the standard to take into consideration”.
Be Very Purposeful
“And I had to reflect on that as standards are difficult to innovate whether its military or not. So when we’re asking a group of people who are all about the standards, because their life depends on it, you’re asking them to trust you. Communication is so key. Explaining it’s the right thing to do, and it will usher us into a more competitive state of being for the rest of our time as a country. We need more brains, we need more different brains with more thoughts. We’re going into places where we’ve showed up and no-ones spoken the language.
You know, like that’s unacceptable if we’re going to be a global power for good, which I would say both, you know, the United Kingdom and the United States have had those aspirations for a long time. But you only have a single group of people who speak pretty much one language trying to do all the good and just doesn’t add up. That’s that’s like two plus two equals six right there. And so you need more women, you need more people of colour, you need everybody on deck in order to accomplish these goals. And that’s how I became aware of it, the general conversation and looking around and being like, ‘Yeah, well, you know, we’re all white guys, and other white guys on the walls that are our chain of command all the way up to the president are all white guys’.”
Dismantling Power Dynamics
“It’s a complicated problem that one person can’t solve,” says Sergeant Major Griffin, “It’s like asking me to go and refashion a weapon for a specific task that’s needed now.”
“Yes, we need something very different than before,” adds Major Walker, “We see that every time we go to a different theatre, plenty of generals in the Air Force say, ‘Well, now we need this plane. Or I need this shark with lasers. Or I need these Chinese women for this fight that I think is coming up’. But even when we talk about technology and not just people, the issue we run into is ‘Well your enterprise isn’t set up to acquire that technology. Your contracting isn’t fast enough to even build a thing like that, that you need right now’. So we need to fix the process. The same thing applies to to diversity. Which is bringing in people that you can operate within the 21st Century. Our system isn’t even built to find or recruit them here, so how we gonna find these Chinese women? We operate around the globe, needing different ideas, ways of life, languages etc and our system isn’t set up to even look for this in our own country. So this is an existential issue, and at some point we’re not gonna operate anywhere, or we’re just gonna throw money at it until we’re out of money.”
I see this same dilemma in business circles as there is recognition we’re part of a global community. We need to be representative of the global world we are now all part of because all of a sudden borders have relaxed, technology has allowed us to access different people and different markets. We need the ability to be able to connect as it is not enough to do command and control. Not enough to say ‘Just because I’m from this country, and I look like this, then you take my word as said and then expect, you know, the red carpets roll out.’ And the conversations, particularly in the UK, are reconciling our history of colonialism and imperialism with how that has impacted on how we engage with other countries and people from other countries.
Taking Steps: Big and Small
“Yes,” says Major Walker, “it’s time to stop talking, stop talking and start acting. However, I do know something that’s changed about this period of time is the conversations that are happening now in public were not happening before. It’s not just pundits or CNN. It’s not people talking for us and that’s wild.”
“I agree,” adds Sergeant Major Griffin “I validate the work that’s been done so far. But it’s not enough. The military is a giant bureaucracy, and it’s tough to change. But I think that’s where the military is going to need some help. We serve the the Constitution, and the American people and we need their help, to vote with their feet and help us change too, because it’s going to take us a long time, because we’re so entrenched.”
“Right,” says Margie Crowe, “and like the guys I’m hopeful, because the US military is doing something different that they haven’t done before, which is reaching outside their borders, you know, letting me come in, as a civilian and have a very open discussions with new officers. I mean, it is about as informal as it gets. So the fact that they’re willing to have these conversations, shows they’re not afraid. I think one thing I love about the military is there’s so many brilliant people in there. And they just need to be given the tools and support and they will run with it. So that’s kind of my final thoughts. That’s why we have the Nates and the Daniels of the world that are in the military, blazing trails and will continue to do so when they retire.”