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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34937 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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I don't have first hand knowledge - I'm a fatass with over-protective PMC parents who wouldn't have dreamed of letting me join up - but I've never talked to an active duty military person or recent-vintage vet who made a big deal out of race issues. And I recall reading various pieces, books, etc. that claim that the military is good at turning racially- and culturally-disparate people all into good little green automata. But YMMV, and of course first-hand knowledge would be appreciated if anyone wants to chime in.

And I recall reading various pieces, books, etc. that claim that the military is good at turning racially- and culturally-disparate people all into good little green automata. But YMMV, and of course first-hand knowledge would be appreciated if anyone wants to chime in.

I admittedly bristle at being characterized as "good little green automata", but overall, I'd say this is accurate. The infamous line from Full Metal Jacket about how there is no bigotry in the Marine Corps because Marines treat everyone as being equally worthless, was pretty on point. For my part I used to tell my new recruits that "you're here because the US DoD considers you expendable". "Ethnic Tension" in the military happens more between branches and specialties than between races. Army vs Navy, Air Wingers vs Ops guys, Ops guys vs Grunts, and so on.

Though sadly, there seems to have been some efforts to change this in recent years all in the name of "reform" and increasing "inclusiveness". As someone who came up through and subsequently participated in the pipeline I find that latter bit rather galling. A major component of forging individuals into a unit, and breeding esprit de corps is fostering a sense of exclusiveness. You gotta earn those stripes.

No offense was intended, Hlynka -it was a poor choice of words. Thanks for your input.

It's all good. ;) It's not like I was particularly offended or anything.

Everyone I’ve talked to who was enlisted says the military was basically a continuation of high school with all the cliquishness, and although you’re right that racial tension is usually not part of the story there’s often an implication that the blacks mostly flock together, as they do in civilian life(and often other ethnically distinctive groups common in the military, like Puerto Ricans, Cajuns, etc), and that unit based loyalties are strongest for combat troops and usually don’t quite supplant ethnic or personal cliquishness outside of the infantry and special forces.

I served in a multi-ethnic non-US country as a reservist in the infantry. I can't remember any racial cliquishness either in boot camp or my unit. Basically everyone's race was 'green' and they were largely mission orientated.

Bootcamp at the time was identical for reservists and regulars, so when I went through we had mostly regulars with a minority of reservists. All of the infantry guys (before going through corps specific training) were switched on, but I remember a lot of the other enlisted guys being absolute idiots. I think they actually assigned people that tested higher to combat corps (with the exception of technical corps such as signals or intelligence).

Wouldn't surprise me if this had downstream impacts on interracial cohesion.

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