By Brent Ramsey and Michael D. Pefley
“Some 41 percent of the military identify as members of minority groups,” the Department of Defense (DoD) reported on Feb. 9, 2021. That number is much higher than the 24 percent of the U.S. population who identify as non-white. “We all bleed RED,” service members say. Years ago, when a commanding general asked for a report on all disciplinary cases by color, a black Chief Master Sergeant from rural Alabama whose parents grew up under actual racism, reported back, “All our soldiers with disciplinary cases are green.”
The least racist people in America are in our military. It is obvious to all who have served, because one’s identity or race is irrelevant when people are trying to kill you and your teammates. No one cares about race when bullets are whizzing past your head.
So why has President Biden declared white supremacy as America’s number one threat? Why has the secretary of Defense created a Counter Extremism Working Group to uncover extremism in the ranks? The actual record of racial/radical incidents is not the reason — the number of cases is tiny. With 3.1 million in uniform, DoD reports less than 100 annual incidents of “extremism,” without defining extremism. When the DoD spokesman was asked for specifics of extremism, he did not have them. If the government declared that “Trolls” are a threat to the Republic and began an investigation, would we nod our heads and say, “I want to know about Troll Rage” because as a child we learned from fairy tales how vicious trolls can be? Now the fairy tales are about white racism.
