Dedicated to those who didn't make it home.
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| After patrol, exhausted, no color lines, Washington D.C., 1967 |
Recently, I
read something I’d never heard, and that was, throughout history, Vietnam was the
first American war fought by a racially integrated military, which meant, from
Korea, back, every U.S. military campaign had been fought by a segregated military.
In 1948, President Truman signed into law Executive Order 9981, desegregating the military, but the policy was mostly ignored, that is, until Vietnam.
How did I
miss that? I mean, I’ve seen movies of racially segregated units, like in the
Civil War, WWI, and WWII, so why was it such a surprise? Maybe I never thought
about it. Maybe I just took for granted all of us in uniform were Americans,
regardless of color. Yet, if I give it a lick of thought, I recall 1966, myself,
a 19-year-old-kid reporting for duty at Fort Bliss, Texas, I, one of many from
around the country, bunking beside other soldiers, eating, working, and living together.
We didn’t give skin color much thought.
In the
1950s, I grew up “American,” for that’s how I identified as a kid on Los
Angeles’s integrated Westside. What did I, or any of my friends, know about
race, ethnicity, segregation, or integration? Our teachers didn’t discuss the
topic in school. Though I knew I descended from Mexicans, I saw myself as
American as the next kid. It never seemed to be a big deal.
Oh sure, we
saw racial and ethnic stereotypes in the movies and television, Zorro, the
Cisco Kid and Pancho, Charlie Chan, and Amos and Andy. There were flashes of
Civil Rights clashes from someplace called “Alabama” on the television news, the
dogs and water hoses, but nobody talked about that, either. By the time we
reached high school, we saw the images of Watts burning, and the news anchors
using the word “riot,” something about cops getting tough with a kid on a bike
and letting the situation get out of control. To us, it was more a situation of
police abuse than race.
All that
was like, far from us, like it was happening in another state, or country. Alabama,
Mississippi, and Watts might as well have been Austria or Angola. Out here on
the Westside, we just went about the business of graduating high school and
growing up, the American Graffiti generation. We had our problems, sure, but
nothing like we saw on television. That was like my mom saying, “Eat your
vegetables. Children are starving in China.”
Situated between
the Pacific Ocean and, say, Beverly Hills, the Westside was mostly “White,” relatively
peaceful, many of the early residents New York transplants from Jewish
neighborhoods, like Brooklyn, old-time Dodger fans, Midwesterners looking for open
land and fresh air, and poor migrants from Oklahoma, Arkansas, and parts of
Texas, escaping the Dust Bowl. We were separated more by class than by color.
Japanese
had been on the Westside since the early 1900s, farming and opening the first
nurseries and developing the gardening/landscape businesses. A few Chinese
owned laundries and restaurants. Mexicans had a longer and more complex history,
some families going back to the early Californio days, when California was
still Mexico, but most came between 1890s and 1925, refugees fleeing the
Mexican Revolution, the religious wars, and others answering Amerca’s call for
migrant labor to work the fields, factories, and railroads, especially during
WWI.
Except for
small pockets of segregated communities in Venice and Santa Monica, there weren’t
many African Americans on the Westside. Those who did settle here migrated from
Louisiana and Texas. The larger black communities were on the Southside, out by
what we know today as Southcentral and Compton. One African American friend of
mine, a Vietnam veteran raised near
Central Avenue and 120th Street, told me he’d never been to the
Westside, until he was an adult.
I guess you
could say many of us out here, beach kids or suburban kids, were oblivious to
race. Oh, I knew I was Mexican, Stan was Japanese, and Dickie was “American,”
which meant “white,” but we didn’t think much of it. We played ball, joined
clubs, and attended school together.
During football and basketball season, the
Japanese kids, who attended a Japanese afterschool program, had their own team,
the Flying Lions. Mexicans and White kids played together on the Bulldogs. The
kids from Westwood, the wealthier kids, were in a day camp, Tacaloma, and had
their own team, and that was our league. Sports was the great equalizer. If you were good, you were good; sometimes we won, and other times they won.
I remember one
black kid in the neighborhood, James Walker. He lived on Cotner, something of a
Chicano slum, where most of us lived, at one time or another, and home to the
local “homies.” James Walker wore khakis and a white t-shirt, or Pendleton. That’s
how he saw himself, as a “homie.” I’d seen him hanging with the “guys” at the
neighborhood park, but nobody really knew him, not well, anyway, and he didn't really know them, other than as "homies," and the role they played in the circus.
The kids
from Santa Monica and Venice, where there was a more significant African
American community, had more exposure to black kids than those of us in West
L.A. Still, from what I’d been told, except for sports, as kids and in school, the black kids pretty
much stayed to themselves, many of the early black families educated and
members of the NAACP.
When I
entered the army, it was normal for guys to group up by ethnicity or hometown, like
city and state, “homies.” Chicanos from L.A. found each other and hung out
together, same with white guys, and black guys, like New Yorkers with New
Yorkers, guys from Philly with guys from Philly, etc., etc. It wasn’t like
anyone was avoiding anybody. It was natural, organic. There weren’t many
Asians, that I can remember, maybe one or two, usually Japanese, in each platoon. We couldn’t tell a Jewish kid from any other white kid. Native
Americans often hung out with Chicanos or with kids from their hometowns.
As we began
training, working together, and forming units, everybody started making new friends and
acquaintances, outside their social groups. It was strange. I realized I shared
more interests with a WASPY kid from San Francico or Pittsburg, or a black kid
from Chicago, than I did with a Mexican kid from San Angelo, Texas, let’s say.
Many Chicanos (a word I use here loosely) who spoke better Spanish than English
hung out with other Spanish speakers. Culturally, we were different in so many ways. They'd get down on us for mot speaking Spanish like them.
I remember
hearing urban black guys call rural black guys, good-naturedly, “Country”
because they considered them “backwards,” as in their accents and behavior, sometimes too submissive. Of
course, the country black guys thought the city black guys arrogant, loud, and
“bullshitters.” The country black guys often had more in common with country white
guys than with "city" blacks. Guys who read the bible started hanging out with
other guys who read the bible, regardless of color. Nerds found other nerds. Intellectuals found intellectuals. Musicians found musicians. Some Puerto Ricans spoke only
Spanish, sometimes, barely able to speak English. They stayed close together,
both black and white, New Yorkers and those from the Island.
Like a lot
of Chicanos from L.A., my extent of black culture were oldies and Motown, but music can be
a powerful connection. It exposes a people's soul, their vulnerabilities and their power. Once I was settled in the army, I bought a portable
record player. At the time, right after high school, I was really into everything
Motown. even more than I was into the emerging England invasion rock ‘n roll. Even the Chicano East L.A. sound was a derivative of Motown and "soul" music.
When I put
on the music, black guys would crowd around my bunk to see what music I had. We
got to know each other. They were the first group of guys I heard
“philosophize” about so many subjects, sometimes, about nothing at all, “street
existentialists.” They’d go on and on, like scholars, discussing, analyzing,
arguing, and ragging on each other.
After a
year, or so, I still had mostly Chicano friends, but it got to where I had
different friends for different occasions. I had hillbilly friends, Italian and
Irish Catholic friends, North and South black friends, and Indians from South
Dakota and Nebraska. Once in Vietnam, we had no choice but to depend on each
other, life and death, no joke. We knew which guys we could depend on and which
guys to avoid or keep a close watch over. I guess, we got caught up in the
collective “I,” one for all and all for one.
I don’t
think many of us really believed we were fighting for democracy and freedom, nor did our D.I.'s believe it We came to understand that was just government propaganda. We were fighting to keep each other
alive, to do our jobs, and to win. We were fighting for tradition, for those who came before us, for those who died on foreign battle fields, for our families, and because that’s what our government said we had to do,
that or go to jail.
Some of us
came home and served together stateside. We’d survived the “shit” together, so
we were tight. When D.C. blew up in riots after MLK was assassinated, we hit
Washington’s streets and brought a semblance of peace back to the residents. The
military was more like a job than an obligation, and, like in all jobs, some
guys worked harder than others. We also saw stereotypes breakdown. We knew “White”
guys weren’t always the heroes, like Hollywood had brainwashed us into
believing. They could be as cowardly, lazy, or courageous as anybody else. Sometimes, the
meekest guy might stand up and be the mightiest.
One night,
in downtown Fayetteville, North Carolina, we learned about “liberty and
equality for all,” the values and morals politicians wanted us to impose on the Vietnamese
people, except, it was a scam. A group of us went into a bar to drink and watch
near-naked dancing girls up on a stage. We got our beers, except for Simpson, a
black kid from L.A. The bartender said he couldn’t serve him. When we protested, the barkeep told Simpson
he could take his beer, but he had to drink it outside. I don’t know who started the brawl, but
the M.P.’s had to come in and stop it. If Simpson, who was by our side in
Vietnam, couldn’t drink then none of us would drink.
“Equality
for all!” Yeah, and how about the billboards, announcing, “Support Your Local
KKK.” We knew about white supremacy, and we learned about racism. How could our
country fight to export democracy and equality to other countries when we
didn’t even have it in our own country?
I thought, in the ‘70’s, it was getting
better, like character over race and reaching the top of the mountain and all
that. Then, I watched January 6, and the attack on the capitol, a lot of
military guys leading the charge. So much for “brothers in arms,” and all that.
I guess an integrated military didn’t do a lot, in the long run, for the
country, other than provide politicians more fodder to send to our enemies to
cut down, while the big boys rake in billions on Wall Street and Silicon Valley. What I did learn, though, was, at the core, the real human core, we all are pretty much the same, and skin color is just that -- a color.
