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Perception vs. Reality: Upon the release several months ago of a Congressionally mandated, nearly 300-page survey of men and women in the military, the Associated Press reported that "as many as 75 percent of blacks and other ethnic minorities" told of "experiencing racially offensive behavior" while in the service. Needless to say, Defense Secretary William Cohen immediately announced that there was "no place for racism in our society," and that there was "certainly no place for it in the military.'' As also to be expected, he ordered a military-wide review of conduct. To the credit of those commenting on the survey at the time, there were frequent references to how -- compared to the rest of the country, at least -- race relations in the armed forces were pretty good. Still, the statistic that jumped out about the study, which was actually conducted in 1996-97, was the one at the top; about how upwards of three out of every four men and women of color reported being subjected to racially offensive behavior. What to make of such disheartening numbers? If a great many respondents (and there were almost 45,000 of them overall) felt they had been victimized, at least on occasion, because of their race or ethnicity, I'm in no position to argue that they didn't, in fact, feel that way. But at the same time, it's important to assert the very basic point just begged: Media coverage of exercises like these generally pay little attention to the not inconsequential distinction between acutely personal perceptions and hard, dispassionate facts. Given my anger 20 years ago when I was finishing graduate school, it would have been easy, perhaps even soothing, to assume that anti-Semitism had something to do with my difficulty in finding a job. It would have been easy to attribute suspect motives to all the rejections and slights slung my way, be the latter real or simply the product of a long-running sour mood. But that's not to say I had tangible evidence that bigotry, or even "insensitivity," contributed to my frustrations. What other cautions does the "Armed Forces Equal Opportunity Survey" invite? Unsurprisingly, even when the news in the poll was good, soldiers and sailors of color were consistently more likely than their white counterparts to respond negatively. So, for instance, while strong majorities of all groups said their supervisor made "honest and reasonable efforts" to stop "racial/ethnic harassment and discrimination," blacks were least likely, while whites were most likely to say so. (Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, and Alaska Natives fell in between.) Nevertheless, one must not assume that all such incidents of "harassment and discrimination" -- again, be they real or merely sensed -- were heavy-duty in their severity. The report talks specifically about how "large percentages" of each group said they had experienced "offensive encounters." What might such events look like? The example used in the executive summary is telling: Has someone made "unwelcome attempts to draw you into an offensive discussion of racial/ethnic matters?" Getting personal again, almost on the very day that I read these data, I had lunch with a very good friend who asked why American Jews are disproportionately liberal. It was not a rude question by any means, as it was directly related to the subject at hand. Yet I must admit that my first reaction was to recoil, as I wasn't enthused about opening that loaded and messy can of beans at the moment. But more to the point, there's a historically rooted, permanent part of me which is not confident that such curiosity is always pure in spirit. The pertinence of all this? By the standards of the survey, I would have been perfectly justified in declaring that I had been the victim of an "offensive encounter." But who would have been the culprit? My friend, who's a gem of a guy? Or the gyrations of my own mind and soul? Then there are several interesting findings that turn facile notions about things like integration and fear upside down. Respondents, for example, were asked: "Have you felt pressure from Service members who are of your race/ethnicity not to socialize with members of other racial/ethnic groups?" Encouragingly, 88 percent of whites answered "not at all." Among blacks, however, only 75 percent did so. Percentages ranged from 80 to 83 percent for the other groups. Or take fears of actual violence. A smaller percentage of whites than men and women of color did, indeed, report having experienced "threat" or "harm" in situations involving other personnel in the Department of Defense. But when a similar question was asked about whether they or their families had experienced threats or fear of harm (e.g., "I was afraid for me or my family to go off the installation because of gang activity"), the results were almost reversed. Here, whites reported more incidents than any other group except Native Americans and Alaskan Natives, though the numbers in all instances were small. None of this is to make light of persisting bigotries. It is to suggest that popular reporting about studies like this generally ranges from inescapably incomplete to irresponsibly misleading. It's also to suggest that when it comes to race, our nation's glass is fuller -- I daresay even sweeter -- than we usually have the sureness or faith to acknowledge. --Mitchell B. Pearlstein is president of Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis. |