African-Americans are highly visible in the military, but almost invisible at the top
WASHINGTON — A photograph of President Donald Trump and his top four-star generals and admirals, tweeted in October by Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, was meant as a thank-you to the commander in chief. But it angered a lot of others, and not just those who erupted on Twitter.
Of the 41 most senior commanders in the military — those with four-star rank in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard — only two are black: Gen. Michael X. Garrett, who leads the Army’s Forces Command, and Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr, the commander of Pacific Air Forces. The Trump presidency, minority service members said, has only magnified the sense of isolation they have long felt in a stratified system. “You had the feeling with Obama, that people were looking up” and trying to impress the country’s first black president, Pittard said, adding that similar sentiments existed under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. That pressure, he said, has disappeared with Trump. “There’s not somebody pushing it,” he said.
“I walk their halls, and nobody on their wall looks like me,” said Lila Holley, a former Army chief warrant officer. Until she gets to the portrait. “I exhale when I see Colin Powell,” she said. Graduates from black colleges who had successful military careers typically specialized in logistics and transportation, like moving supplies or driving trucks, and not in combat arms specialties like infantry or artillery. Logistics and transportation are an outgrowth of the segregated military, when many black troops were quartermasters and truck drivers.
“Something else is happening,” said Reuben E. Brigety, a former Navy submarine officer who is now the dean of George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. “Unless you presume that ethnic minorities are just not as good as their white male counterparts, there has to be another reason.”In the Marines, the term for a black Marine is “nonswimmer.” In the Army Rangers, it is “night ranger.
A one-star general later expressed surprise that Smiley was still just a lieutenant colonel and called him into his office. “You’ve got a great file except for this one evaluation,” he told Smiley. “What did you do?”
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