Does the Navy prosper when Sailor are seen, treated, recognized, and rewarded the same? Not white, black, brown, yellow, or any mix - but just Navy Blue?
Or, is the best path to take - the one that the Navy's branch of the Diversity Industry - our Diversity Bullies and their fellow travelers - want us to take? Divide, and encourage division. Demonstrate through your words and actions that you do not treat Sailors as Sailors - but as representatives of their ethnic groups?
Well - here is a test case. A different time, a different context - but something to ponder.
Gregory A. Freeman
has a book out discussing the 1972 race riots on the USS KITTY HAWK (CV-63), Troubled Water: Race, Mutiny, and Bravery on the USS Kitty Hawk
.With more than 5,000 sailors living and working on board, aircraft carriers have been described as floating cities. Being an American city in 1972 meant being part of a major social upheaval, as tensions broiled over civil rights, discrimination, and the war in Vietnam, and the Kitty Hawk was no exception. Although the U.S. military had been officially de-segregated more than two decades earlier, most black and white sailors still kept separate berths, and rarely mingled in the ship’s maze of passageways and compartments. Despite the presence of a black executive officer (XO), the ship’s second-in-command, many black sailors felt they were dealt harsher punishments and menial assignments because of their race. Many of them struggled to reconcile their roles as members of the Navy with their identities within the black power movement.You can listen to the whole thing here via the Pritzker Military Library. I encourage you to listen to the whole thing. It will help you understand why Diversity Thursday exists. Why I have no tolerance for the cancer that exudes from Millington and the CNO's office. It is important to understand 1972 - but 2010 is not 1972.
On October 12th, the pressure burst. With shore leave curtailed and tours extended in support of Operation Linebacker, tempers were already frayed; a racially-fraught confrontation between several black sailors and the ship’s Marines sparked an explosion of violence that caught the ship’s command unprepared, leading to several hours of rioting. In Troubled Water, Freeman weaves together the eyewitness accounts of the captain, XO, and several crew members to reveal the causes of the riots, the chaos unfolding, and the bravery that finally brought the violence to an end.
Gregory A. Freeman has won over two dozen awards for his writing, including the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Excellence from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is also the author of Lay This Body Down: The 1921 Murders of Eleven Plantation Slaves and Sailors to the End: The Deadly Fire on the USS Forrestal and the Heroes Who Fought it.
Here is a short clip though in case you don't have the time.
47 comments:
Sounds like an interesting book about an interesting time in our Navy's history. I joined just a few years later and even then when guys would talk about past problems it seemed like ancient history. Sadly, the jobs created and actions taken to fix a problem never went away when the problem was mostly solved.
On a side note to show how out of it I am right now, my first thought on seeing this post was to think you screwed up. "It's not Thursday, it can't be Thursday yet . . . It's Tuesday er maybe Wednesday." Then I check the newspaper and yep it's Thursday, 15 April (also known as National Beat a Congressman Until They Support Tax Simplification Day). Need more coffee.
In honor of PC (Perpetually Clueless) day, when will the Navy get a ship named after the very astute gentleman from GA who is concerned about islands tipping over? With leaders of this remarkable IQ we have nothing to fear from the unknown.
That's a remarkable story. I had no idea that there had ever been a race riot on a Navy ship.
I'm with Largebill. Yes, there were inequities in the past. They've been addressed. The current leadership is solving a different generation's problems, and weakening the Navy in doing so. Sad.
I was around then...
Dark Times
There were several ships that had severe racial troubles in '72, including the Connie (skipper at the time was an old neighbor; poor guy never knew what hit him as nothing in his career had prepared him for anything like that).
Interesting visual vignette of the dynamic aboard in those long ago "Fuzzy Navy" days....
Imagine trying to fight a war with all that going on.
And it sure does seem like the Diversity crowd wants all to believe the social environment is still the same.
BRAVO SIERRA!!!
not having time to read the reference:
during the nam era there was scuttlebutt that every one of the bird farms had a riot and one of them had two.
C
There was some racial activty in Great Lakes,IL around NTC during same time period. It seems like the base was locked down and some areas were placed as off-limits. Those that were actually there could get the real deal truth out as opposed to second and third hand scuttle.
Big difference between the 1960s and 1970s, real issues exited that needed to be dealt with. Now the PC (Perpetually Clueless) crowd creates false issues and then wastes money and resources to fix fabricated issues. PC and diversity manipulation is a fallacy that is self-evident and highly fraudulent.
<span>I had no idea that there had ever been a race riot on a Navy ship.</span>
During just a few week period that fall, there were the two carriers, and a PacFlt AO (Mississinewa maybe?) that made the news.
Also, the Marines suffered a big dustup on Okinawa as I remember.
There are more details on the Kitty Hawk & Constellation incidents at the following link
http://www.history.navy.mil/library/special/racial_incidents.htm#5b8
Lots of problems ashore, too, when alcohol was in the mix. At Nas CorpC,Tx weekends in the late 60's could be counted on for an occasional incident. We had problems with those project 100,000 enlisted personnel who thought mess cooking and cleaning was being dumped on them. They had been given special consideration for entry under reduced standards and expected to be special throughout their enlistment. Thgough the linked article referres to Army, we had 'em in Navy, too
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000
and just when we were all trained we were equal and the same,,, along came a spider who says now we are all different and we should celebrate those differences....
history... doomed to repeat it...
Mr T you nailed it.
"Diversity" is the antonym of what should be getting the time money and attention...
And this is UNITY.
Seriously, do you really want to be trapped in a compartment with glowing bulkheads -with no clear way out- with a bunch of folks steeped in their "specialness"?
What about in a liferaft?
(Oh yeah...Forgot. That kind of thing doesn't happen in today's navy. Sure, but its more and more likely to happen in tomorrow's)
Or would you rather be in the company of folks who -like you- have set aside their differences, and are steeped in a spirit of unit cohesion?
Can someone please explain how the Diversity Directorate contributes to unit cohesion?
During the era in question, in San Diego an EM Club brawl was in the offing when a group of black sailors heard a group of white sailors wearing dolphins refer to "that miserable black bitch" in conversation. Fortunately there was a black sailor wearing dolphins present to explain that the submariners were referring to their ship, rather than a young woman of color. While outside the lexicon of sailors from large gray ships which were flat on top, this was recognized after some debate between both parties as an authorized pejorative characterization when within the family, but best avoided in public due to potential misunderstanding. No longer a matter of honor (and throw weight of the two groups being essentially equivalent) they opened on diverging courses by mutual consent, (all) the boat sailors reconvening at Darby's, where submariners could let down their hair without risk of misunderstanding. Life being simple there, one is either qualified, or not.
Also true at the Horse and Cow.
Jeez, Grandpa, I didn't know you were a bubblehead! ;)
I thumbed through Freeman's book while at Barnes and Noble a couple of weeks ago. Although his description of the events are pretty much correct I didn't care much for the style or emphasis. Needless to say I didn't buy it.
I was around at the time too, in fact my DE plane-guarding was on CONNIE's starboard quarter at 1200 yards while the "incident" was taking place. We had deployed with KITTY HAWK in February and returned in August. The fact KHK was still in the Tonkin Gulf was a major factor that led to the riot. There was a racial undercurrent that ran through the Navy at the time and, as sid correctly states, the leadership wasn't always equipped to deal with it. In KHK's case this led to rumors that her command failed to dispel because of their concern with operational matters.
I have nothing against studying these events as I feel that we can learn a great deal by looking back at our past problems. However, our discussions often don't go far enough. One of the major contributing factors in both incidents was a program called "Project 100,000" which brought people into the services who didn't meet the requirements on the belief that the opportunity provided by military service and technical training would be beneficial. Unfortunately, because many of these sailors didn't meet the requirements for that training they were assigned to "General Detail" billets aboard ship involving work in the deck force or the engineering plant. Their morale was bad, advancement opportunities were non-existent, and things festered in the racial undercurrent that was the early 1970s. The personnel aboard CONNIE who were being processed for discharge, the factor that led to the "sit in" there, mostly fell into this category.
There is something to be learned here that's applicable to the current day but it involves leadership and communication.
Byron:
Over the years I have been many things in many ships. Most of them did not involve employment on dry land, unless in a shipyard. Hence the Nom du Blog (although a low fondness for word games plays its part, doubtless a secondary effect of the fact that I am no longer authorized or etc to play with the barmaid, per CincHouse directive).
Now that I'm an old retired fart I delight in asking all the snarky questions I kept to myself when I was in uniform.
"You say that diversity is a strength, please explain why and how."
"You say that the Navy needs to shed 100,000 billets to stay at the newly mandated level. You also say that the 100,000 women in the Navy face sexual discrimination. Has it occurred to you that there is an easy way to solve both problems with one action?"
'You said that putting women on my aircrew wouldn't change the way we operate. Then why do the twelve men on the crew have to be so careful what they say around the one woman?"
If standards weren't lowered in order to get women into the cockpit, how do you explain that women get extra time on the cross country course and don't have to climb the two obstacles?"
There were still some echos of this through the 70's and it wasn't until the 80's that all of that crap was pretty well gone.
We had some minor incidents in 77-80, especially in Rota, which had racial, as well as anti-American overtones.
The major driver in Rota, though, was the Spanish had demanded we remove the Nuke boats we had stationed there. the Navy complied, moving them all up to Holy Loch. What the locals didn't realize was that when the boats went away, so did all the good-paying jobs. THAT caused a LOT of hard feelings, and not a small part of the anger was directed towards black sailors, which for the life of me I never understood.
But there were also a couple incidents in my squadron in '77 that were definately racial in nature, and made for some VERY tense and unhappy times for a couple weeks.
Curiously enough, the women can be as crude as they like.
I learn so much from the commenters here, and I don't say thank you often enough. You guys are great.
Are you under general supervision, or close confinement? :)
Freeman discusses Project 100,000 in the Pritzker lecture - I believe in the Q&A portion.
Thanks for the Eye Witness view of History! I love me a good sea story!
He is Class Charlie for sure....
For all the emphasis on diversity and preferences in all their forms, the only actual differences in current standards are based on gender. All forms of preferential or different treatment will produce bad results and should be eliminated.
The Project 100,000 fiasco in the 60's is proof that this is has not just been a contemporary problem. Presumably those sailors, whom I believe were below normal standards for education/aptitude/intelligence, were not told this in so many words. As they and the Navy struggled with this, resentment and poor morale were inevitable.
This reminds me of when we (my whole division and myself) went to mandatory "Equal Opportunity Training" in the 1970s. They called it something different back then, but it was basically the same. There was an exercise where the minorities were to sit in a circle and the non-minorities were to sit in a circle around them. We were supposed to discuss things. At the time I had a very good tan and with naturally very curly hair I looked like a light skinned African-American, which I am not. The facilitator came in and asked me why I was not sitting with the minorities and I politely explained to her that I was not a minority and the I was taking my division back to my ship and out of her racially prejudiced class. All hell broke lose then and I, a lowly Ensign at the time, spent many a long hour talking to VERY senior officers who thankfully saw my point. You know they never taught another of those classes again. The whole curriculum was changed and I never saw that facilitator at that training command again.
So even the people who should know better aren't much better at this than the rest of us.
P.S. My racialy mixed division thanked me stood up for me.
CAPT, I'm also veteran of the "UPWARDS" (Understanding Personal Worth And Racial Dignity Seminar) program. During my seminar the Ops Officer and I remained ashore with about 20 sailors while the ship went to sea for local ops. At one point our "facilitator" (an ET2 with "granny glasses" and his hair parted in the middle) asked one of our Filipino SDs why he wasn't contributing. He responded, "It's all black, black, black. You've said nothing about me!" and walked out. Needless to say we went on a break.
A year or so later I was at Destroyer School where they were running the seminar for all the shore duty guys that hadn't gotten around to doing it previously (EVERY guy that was coming off sea duty had completed the course). Because they needed a minimum number of blacks to run the seminar they approached my one black classmate and asked him if he would repeat the seminar. He told them "No" in no uncertain terms. They eventually imported some residents of the Newport Brig to meet the requirement.
I kept a second copy of my graduation certificate for many years to ensure that I wouldn't have to repeat the experience.
AW1, My experience too. In '77 as CDO, I had to break up a fight on the pier at SRF Guam between a bunch of white guys from my ship and a group of black sailors from the AO moored down the pier. I reported the incident to the XO who asked if I'd heard anyone use any racial slurs. When I told him "No" he said "Then it was just a sailor fight", rolled over, and went back to sleep.
When I went through diversity training again as a LCDR in the first class the facilitator asked if anyone could summarize the policy we were about to learn. Being the Wise-acre I am I said sure.
"You can think anything you want, you just cannot speak it, write it down or act upon it. If you follow that rule there will be no diversity or sexual harassment or other problems." I was excused from the class.
Works in the corporate world too. :)
By the way C-dore 14 based upon yours and my experience with the quality of the Instructors we have encountered as part of the Navy's Diversity, Equal Opportunity and Harassment training, it makes one wonder where they found them and what were their qualifications.
CAPT, Good assessment and similar to the one I came to.
Anthony, Although Project 100,000 officially ended in 1971 they were still recruiting people who would have fallen under it during the early days of the "All Volunteer Force". As a ship's Weapons Officer in the mid-70s I had two sailors in my Deck Division whose GCT/ARI combination scores were below 80 (as a point of comparison one of my Sonar Technicians had an ARI score of 77). While neither man was a major disciplinary problem both required significant attention by their Petty Officers to ensure work (mostly manual labor) was completed properly, that they didn't "drift off" during the work day, and to enforce minimal standards of hygiene. Both went to Mast repeatedly for UA offenses and their rank never went higher than E-2 (to make E-3 they would have had to pass a written test). After 18 months we were finally able to discharge them as "Administrative Burdens".
don't go bringing facts into the argument. You'll distract Anthony from his point that the damn split tails need to get out of the military and into the kitchen.
since you're retired you're probably old. And since you're old, I'd feel bad about doing physical violence to you.
AR, I assume that you're talking about the "Old NFO" although I'm old and retired too. BTW, I'm also "...out of the Navy and [into] the kitchen..." now too. ;)
I refer specifically to the bit about cutting 100,000 billets by separating 100,000 victims of sexual harrassment.
Granted, people who think that hearing someone say "P&*sy" on the mess deck is sexual harassment need to grow a pair...er...metaphorically. However, I've see some pretty egregious conduct. Example: breaking into a barracks room and assaulting someone in her sleep. Example: A physician sexually assaulting his patients (e.g. come in for a knee sprain and get told you need a pap smear) etc.
I bristle at the notion that we should retain individuals like this and kick the victim out of service.
HAHAHA I love that! Filipino nailed it!
C'mon AR.
However bluntly, he exprressed his point. Agree, disagree, but personally threatening violence is a bit much. Hell, if I lumped up everyone that deserved it for something stupid and offensive they said, the State House would only have a quorum in the Emergency Room...
I didn't threaten violence. I did the opposite, actually. I said I would feel bad about inflicting violence upon the old and clearly senile.
Oh, well, that is different. Like Frankie Pentangeli declaring "You ain't gonna get no trouble from ME!" 8-)
Man we got alot of old farts on here. Not everyone can be 29 and stuck.
AR,
What in my post was unfactual or contradicted by C-14's comments? Perhaps if you'd actually read what I wrote you'd realize that. In my experience with your comments, it's you who ignore facts and substitute ad hominems for arguments when you do. And if you can't recognize the broader point - which is about what happens when there are double, separate or lower standards for classes of people - then your legal training needs some work.
I think I mentioned it here before. I worked for GSA many moons ago and one of the women I worked with was a U of MD grad. She was of Chinese ancestry and applied for a minority scholarship as she met the qualifications wrt income and grade performance. When she went in to accept her award, they halted and told her that there was a mistake. She was not allowed to get a minority scholarship. She asked why and they said that it was for Blacks. Her reply was that they didn't word it as such so she was, in fact, due the award based on the way the grant was written. Some pigs are more equal than others.
Shawn P:
29 and stuck on what?
Stupid?
The future is closing with a zero beating rate at one second per second.
You can:
a) learn from the experience of others who came before
b) be learn from painful personal experience
c) not learn and have endless painful personal experience.
Based on my experience, I recommend COA A. But I'll be pleased to use you as a horrible example for the next (there is always a next) cohort.
Which curtain will you choose...A), B), or C)?
Ah, youth. Too soon old , too late smart.
As usual.
QM: Under convincing threat of a life of endless pain and sorrow, same as you!
Shawn, what I would give to be 29 and know what I know today...
Byron, I just wish I was as smart now as I thought I was when I was 29.
I was there. I was on the hanger deck. I was struck with an aircraft tie down chain. Did I see the racial overtone? Yes. Do I hold a grudge today? You betcha!!! I also say that the government with their always asking what 'race' you are on every form from home purchase to loan at the bank extends this as a quota. You can promote the NAACP (but ask a black if he is 'colored' and he will tell you he is either black or African-American. You can promote the United Negro College Fund, the Black Caucus, the Black Miss America Padgent but you can NOT have anything caucausion. (That is racist). With the issues currently going on in Arizona, someone has not defined Hispanic as a 'race'. I don't know when that change was made, but do not feel it is a race issue. Back to Mr. Freeman's book. I think it was well written. It answered many questions I had since the night of the riot. I have talked to other Kitty Hawk crew members (white ones) and the actions of the US Navy that night has affected how my live was altered for last 37-1/2 years. I look at the disipline of society since then and even in 2010, bad parenting is to blame for what happend then and today. Yes, I am one of the old guys. I was NAVY through and through, but that event showed me that whatever opportunity you offer someone, if they are not qualified to do the job, it's going to cost someone. I am just making sure it is not me-again.
It was not really a riot. It was a MUTINY. There is a reason we have her a nick name "Shitty Kitty". There was even an "underground" newspaper circulating around San Diego named "Kitty Litter". I have several issues stuck back in my 72-73 cruise and 1974 cruise books (like a high school year book, photos of all of the sailors, candid photos of different activities, etc).
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