Of Course the U.S. Military Has A White Supremacy Problem. It’s Baked In. - War on the Rocks

Imagine that you’re a young recruit. You have enlisted in the U.S. Army, and the Army has granted your wish, going so far as to guarantee you the military occupational specialty of your choice — 11X, infantryman. You’re going to follow in the footsteps of a long line of soldiers going back more than 200 years to the Continental Army, a force initially made up almost entirely of riflemen, with a smattering of artillery. Upon induction, you are selected to go to Fort Benning. Having completed basic training, you move across post to attend the Army’s infantry school, emerging as a newly minted infantryman. Now imagine that your name is Pvt. Tyler Washington, and you’re African American. You have spent all of your initial training in the U.S. Army at a base named after a southern secessionist, a member of Georgia’s delegation to the Virginia Secession Convention, and a man who never served in the U.S. Army, only against it. A man who fought for the right to keep people as property — people who looked like you — and who himself owned 89 other human beings. A man who served a cause that was antithetical to what the U.S. Army stood for, even then, and even more so now.