WASHINGTON (Reuters) - By the time he saw a swastika scrawled in the
bathroom at Barksdale Air Force base in October 2018, Deven Sherk was
already disillusioned with how the Air Force handled racism complaints.
The Black airman had filed a complaint alleging discrimination that June
when a fellow airman, a white man, hung a noose near him on the base.
“I felt that was a direct threat to my life,” said Sherk, who was a
staff sergeant specializing in B-52 bomber maintenance at the time.
Along with the noose, he reported seeing a whip on display at the
hangar where he worked, with slogans including “Fuckin Attitude
Adjuster” written in marker. Sherk says he never felt the Air Force's
Equal Opportunity office took seriously his complaints of racism. So, he
decided against filing a formal complaint about the swastika.
By February of 2019, the Air Force said it quietly censured several
people over Sherk’s complaint, but the sergeant’s career was over. He
says he found himself pushed out of the service with an honorable
discharge after suffering depression and anxiety.
“Incidents like these must stop,” an Air Force spokeswoman said of
Sherk’s case. “We are committed to ensuring our Air Force is a place of
respect, diversity and inclusion.”
As America confronts the question of systemic racial injustice, the
U.S. military, which has long promoted itself as an egalitarian system
focused on merit and achievement, is undergoing its own moment of
reckoning.
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Earlier this summer, as the military braced for a deployment amid
nationwide protests over police violence against Black Americans, top
defense officials acknowledged a lack of diversity among leadership. The
Air Force’s newly appointed first Black chief of staff supported these
concerns when he shared his own stories of bias during his climb to the
top. The Army is grappling with calls to rechristen bases named for
Confederate generals. And the Pentagon has launched an initiative to
“ensure equal opportunity across all ranks.”
But interviews with dozens of current and former U.S. service members
reveal deep skepticism about whether coming forward with concrete
allegations of discrimination will be beneficial. Especially daunting,
they say, is using the complaint process specifically set up to address
concerns from members of the Armed Forces.
So-called Equal Opportunity offices are located on U.S. military
bases around the world, established to give troops access to some of the
protections against discrimination that American civilians can tap
through a separate system, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity. Troops,
who are not considered employees, have the right to seek investigations
through EO offices.
But many service members, including Sherk, say the EO process is
often a dead end, resulting in little action, or worse, backfiring on
the complainant. That’s because filing an EO complaint is often viewed
as an act of defiance in the military, they say.
Data obtained by Reuters show that service members rarely file formal
EO complaints when compared to their civilian employee counterparts
within the Defense Department. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines
employ some 1.3 million active duty personnel, about double the civilian
workforce. But civilians file far more complaints than troops.
Last year, 71 sailors formally complained of discrimination on the
basis of race or color, one-sixth as many as the 404 complaints filed by
the Navy's smaller civilian workforce. Navy uniformed personnel filed
about 21 complaints per 100,000 personnel while their civilian
co-workers filed about 200.
The Army saw 107 formal Equal Opportunity complaints by soldiers
involving racial discrimination in 2019, one-fifth the number filed by
its civilian workforce. The Air Force reported 92 formal complaints in
2019 involving race and color from a force of 400,000 active duty or
reserve airmen. That was a third of the number filed by civilians in the
service.
The vast gap between uniformed military complaints and those of their
civilian counterparts in the Army, Navy and Air Force has not been
previously reported. Few troops’ complaints were substantiated in 2019:
6% in the Navy and 18% and 35%, respectively, in the Air Force and Army.
Reuters does not have sufficient data to compare those rates to
outcomes of civilian complaints.
“There is a career downside risk to coming forward and rocking the
boat,” said Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who leads the
Military Personnel panel on the House Armed Services Committee.
In corporate America, and in government jobs, too, employees can sue
their employer over discrimination. Not so for U.S. troops, who enter a
process in which the military investigates itself, said Don Christensen,
a retired chief prosecutor for the Air Force.
“There's not much incentive to use the process because it rarely
works, and they rarely rule in their favor,” said Christensen, who leads
the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders, whose research has drawn
attention to racial discrimination in the military.
Informal complaints focus on finding an agreeable resolution and can
include mediation. The formal complaints process is the most in-depth
form of inquiry.
That system begins when a service member fills out an EO form that
kick-starts the process. From there, an investigating officer is
appointed by a commander and conducts interviews and collects evidence,
from photographs to emails and evaluations, that could indicate racial
bias.
EO officials work to ensure that service members understand the
process and are kept up to date on developments. But ultimately,
military commanders decide whether a complaint is founded and, if so,
what punitive action should follow. A military judge advocate can
provide input.
The Pentagon, presented with Reuters’ findings, said survey data show
service members prefer to take complaints to their chain of command
instead of an EO office. And, the military explicitly encourages troops
to first attempt to resolve their cases at the lowest command level
before going to an EO officer.
Some say the system is wrought by an inherent conflict of interest.
The only way to improve the process “is to completely remove the
reporting system from the chain of command,” said Captain Deshauna
Barber, a Black officer in the Army Reserve and activist on behalf of
women service members.
The end result of fewer complaints, Reuters found, is that the
military is likely less aware of discrimination happening day-to-day
than it would be if U.S. troops were incentivized to come forward.
The Pentagon said it encourages reporting of “problematic behaviors.”
But it acknowledged troops’ concerns about the EO process and said
Defense Secretary Mark Esper has directed the military’s independent
Inspector Generals to investigate the efficacy of the program.
DISPARITY AT THE TOP
The U.S. armed forces have great racial and gender diversity at lower
ranks, but the top brass is predominantly white and male, a fact made
plain in a revealing photo last year of President Donald Trump
surrounded by American military leaders, with not a single woman or
Black officer in sight at the time.
From the halls of the Pentagon to the military academies, minorities
who make up more than a third of the armed forces are starting to speak
out about a culture that, they say, creates a feeling of exclusion.
After becoming the first Black American to be the top-ranked cadet at
West Point in 2018, Army First Lieutenant Simone Askew said in a letter
circulated online that she found a photoshopped picture of her, slipped
under her door, “with a monkey's face over my own.”
“More racist caricatures and comments continued to circulate online.
One of the popular images even depicted me as Satan himself,” Askew
wrote. She declined to comment.
Askew's testimony was included in a June letter by a group of
prominent graduates and cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West
Point that denounced pervasive racism in the Army's most hallowed
institution. It came less than two weeks after President Trump delivered
a commencement address there.
“I had a racist roommate that would call me the n-word and spit on me,” said a cadet in another example cited in the letter.
The U.S. Military Academy said it received the letter and that the
West Point Inspector General “has begun a comprehensive review of all
matters involving race.” A spokesman added, “The Academy expects all
Cadets to be treated with dignity and respect.”
Air Force General Charles Brown Jr made history on August 6 by taking
over as the first Black chief of a U.S. military service. Before
assuming command, Brown candidly recounted in a video his experiences
with discrimination during his career.
In one example, he spoke of wearing the same flight suit and wings as
his peers “and then being questioned by another military member: ‘Are
you a pilot?’”
One sailor stationed in Naples, Italy, took the opportunity to
address racism in a town hall July 17 with Defense Secretary Esper and
General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“In my experience in the Navy, although it's been a great one, I ran
into some people that only judged me by the color of my skin, and not by
the quality of my work,” said Operations Specialist First Class Heandel
Pierre. Milley replied that U.S. troops were “willing to die” for core
American principles like equality.
U.S. military leaders appear to be listening, taking stands that
clashed with Trump after he defended people flying the Confederate flag
and threatened to militarize the U.S. response to protests of the May 25
death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Esper opposed using active duty troops to quell protests. He has
issued a de facto ban on the flag of the Confederacy, the breakaway
Southern states that waged war on the United States to preserve slavery.
General Milley, Trump's top military adviser, has called for a hard
look at U.S. military facilities named after Confederate generals.
Milley recalled in July how a Black Army staff sergeant once told him
at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg that they “went to work everyday on a
base that represented a guy who enslaved his grandparents.” Fort Bragg,
one America’s largest military bases, was named after Confederate
general Braxton Bragg.
NO RELIEF
Lieutenant Commander Kimberly Young-McLear said she contemplated
suicide in the weeks after announcing her intention to file a formal EO
complaint at the Coast Guard Academy in 2016, where she was a professor,
alleging workplace bullying tied to her race, gender and sexual
orientation.
Young-McLear said she was subjected to degrading comments, her work
was undermined and her reputation damaged. As she pressed her
accusations, Young-McLear said she was retaliated against with a lower
performance evaluation – an allegation confirmed by an inspector
general’s investigation.
Even after being vindicated, she worries that little has changed.
“Either people are too afraid to report because they don't trust the
system because of retaliation, or if it is reported, it gets immediately
swept under the rug,” she said.
A June report by the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector
General found repeated failures in the Coast Guard Academy's response to
discrimination complaints. Many cadets surveyed said they understood
how to report harassment, “but may not do so out of fear of negative
consequences,” the report said.
The Coast Guard told Reuters it was working on improvements and that
it recognized “there are members that still experience discrimination,
bullying and harassment.”
Many service members conclude they’d gain little by filing formal
complaints. “If you want to progress, you don't make a whole lot of
waves, do you? There's no great incentive to come forward,” said Vincent
Stewart, a retired Marine three star general.
LESSONS FROM SEXUAL ASSAULT
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The full extent of discrimination in the military is unclear. The
latest publicly available Pentagon data dates to a 2013 survey, which
said some 16% of minorities in the active duty force experienced
harassment, discrimination or both because of their race or ethnicity.
A higher percentage, 39%, of minorities reported potentially
discriminatory behavior prohibited by Pentagon policy, anything from
racist jokes to offensive remarks about their accents or language
skills. Thirty percent said they considered leaving the military. Still,
the vast majority didn’t report the issues to anyone.
Advocates say the military’s handling of sexual assaults provides
additional clues that the problem is greater than the number of EO
complaints would indicate.
In the latest Defense Department survey, in 2018, nearly one out of
every four female service members indicated experiencing behavior
consistent with sexual harassment. That would suggest over 50,000 women.
But the actual number of formal harassment complaints was 1,021 last
year. Advocates see a parallel with racial bias concerns.
Maryland Rep. Anthony Brown, a retired Army Reserve colonel and the
only member of the Congressional Black Caucus on the House Armed
Services Committee, secured House passage of an amendment that would
require more regular surveys on racism and white supremacy. The aim is
to create a consistent set of data on racism that’s closer to what is
available on sexual assault and harassment.
Disciplinary data and reports by government agencies and nonprofit
advocates reveal racial disparities in the military’s rate of
investigations and punishments.
A 2019 report by the congressional watchdog U.S. Government
Accountability Office said Black service members were more than twice as
likely as whites to face judicial investigations in the Coast Guard,
Army, Navy and Marine Corps from 2013-2017.
Blacks were also about twice as likely to be tried in courts-martial
in the Army, Navy and Marines, the GAO found. In the Air Force, Blacks
were about 1.5 times more likely to face a court martial.
SUPREME COURT CHALLENGE
In the regimented world of the U.S military, service members accept
that they cannot exercise all the liberties enjoyed by civilians. They
do not have the same freedoms of speech, are not free to leave their
jobs whenever they choose and can be court martialed if they attempt to
do so. Given the risk of death or injury in war, under longstanding
legal precedent they cannot sue if killed in combat, by accident, or
even from medical malpractice.
One former service member is trying to get the U.S. Supreme Court to
weigh in on troops' inability to sue over racial discrimination.
Gary Jackson, who was discharged from the Marine Corps nearly three
decades ago, is trying to sue the Navy, alleging discrimination that
ultimately cut short his career. He said a supervisor transferred him at
a Marine base in Arlington, Virginia, and then said, “That’s one less
Black Staff Sergeant,” according to a written statement by a witness
submitted in the case.
If Jackson prevailed, troops could seek legal recourse under Civil
Rights Act protections against workplace discrimination. But legal
experts are unsure whether the Supreme Court will agree later this year
to take up the issue, seeing the case as a longshot after lower courts
ruled against him.
In an amicus brief in support of Jackson’s motion, Protect Our
Defenders and another advocacy group, the Black Veterans Project, called
the EO process a “woefully inadequate system for addressing racial bias
or discrimination.”
Sherk, the airman shown the noose, said his final months in uniform
left their mark. Before leaving the service in 2019, he was accused of
dereliction of duty involving an unattended aircraft. Sherk fought the
charge, saying the incident at the Louisiana military base was not his
fault, and in a court martial hearing was found not guilty. The Air
Force declined comment on his case.
Asked about Sherk’s reports about the noose and other allegations,
the Air Force said several service members faced administrative action,
which can include a censure, but did not elaborate.
Reuters saw a single letter of reprimand given to an airman over the
noose incident, which Sherk obtained through a Freedom of Information
Act request. In the letter, the Air Force wrote, “a noose represents
lynching; a historic act used to traumatize African Americans into
obedience and segregation.”
These days, Sherk said he is piecing his life back together after the loss of his military career, selling used cars in Detroit.
“I feel cheated,” Sherk said. “This is not what I imagined myself doing.”
By Phil Stewart, M.B. Pell and Joshua Schneyer
(Reporting by Phil Stewart, M.B. Pell and Joshua Schneyer. Editing by Ronnie Greene)
