Amigos, Brothers, Sisters & the Flag

BACK IN MY ARMY DAYS in 1973, I was selected to be a moderator for an "equal opportunity" initiative designed to help soldiers of different races work together.  They called me a Human Relations Instructor, sent me to Fort Benning in Georgia for training, and then to the Pentagon to moderate classes filled with mixed ranks and races -- privates, sergeants, captains and colonels.

Few wanted to be there.  All were forced to be there.  Training was mandatory if you wanted to stay in the US Army.  The Department of Defense ordered it, seeing no alternative in an environment of racial tensions that threatened missions.

President Truman had ordered the integration of the armed forces in 1948, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara issued the "equal opportunity" directive in 1963 opposing discriminatory practices. It took years to get off the ground, but became military law.

What I learned in classes surprised and heartened me.  Hardly anyone spoke much during the first sessions.  They listened, they stared, mostly at me.  Slowly many started to speak to each other during classes and breaks, first to those of equal or lower rank, and gradually to others ranked above them.  Even privates to officers.  Talk was about the training, their backgrounds, their views, the civil rights movement and its aftermath in their lives.

Sessions opened much hidden history -- internment camps out west for Japanese-Americans during the war, Indian reservations, the Trail of Tears and Wounded Knee, women in the armed forces but not really (WACs), Buffalo soldiers, Navajo code talkers, Tuskegee airmen, colored troops and Puerto Ricans trained and sent to war in segregated units.  Hardly the stuff of standard history books, it was news to me when I learned it and news to the soldiers in class when they heard it.

The sessions certainly didn't end discrimination in the military, racial or other.  Such training continues today because it is needed.  America's black and other citizens of color learn to live in two worlds, one of which mainly determines their opportunities and future.

Nearly 50 years ago, we were introduced to many new faces, facts, and an American flag of mixed heritage.  We met Grace Wisher, an indentured servant, and Ira Hayes. a Native American soldier.  Grace at age 13 helped Mary Young Pickersgill make the famous Star Spangled Banner that inspired our national anthem centuries ago, and Ira at age 22 became one of the six soldiers memorialized raising the Flag on Iwo Jima in 1945.

Belatedly we saluted them simply by recognizing who they were and acknowledging their contributions to their country.  A start.

Swimsuit Police: Nice Job If You Can Get It

BACK IN THE 1920s, beach police arrested women in America for wearing the wrong kind of swimsuits in public.  Showing too much leg.

Nearly a hundred years later, in France and other countries, police again are tasked to arrest women for wearing the wrong kind of swimming suits.  Showing too little leg, and too much of their Faith.

French courts intervened to stop the "burkini ban".  Their colorfully robed judges don't show leg either.

Neither do they seem to have clout in the frenzied political climate.  Police in Nice and elsewhere ignored the order, and kept chasing down covered women on the beach to enforce the ban.

Very silly situation that goes back more than a century.  If French Inspector Clouseau were around to uphold law and order, at least we would get some laughs watching him take down Cato in his karate robe.

As it is, we are left to ponder visions and voices of troubling times.

(Photo credits:  France 24, National Photo Co., http://jjmccullough.com)