All that We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way

Citation

Cheng, C. (1999), "All that We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 69-72. https://doi.org/10.1108/jocm.1999.12.1.69.2

Affirmative action politics has a new spin on the old controversy that the US Army is the most equal opportunity employer of African‐Americans. Military sociologists Charlie Moskos and John S. Butler have written a book not only to support this contention but also to argue that the Army’s “successful racial integration” program ought to be adopted by civilian organizations. In postmodern organizational theory terms, Moskos and Butler are proposing that, in the late‐modern organizational era, which features an operating environment with a multicultural workforce, civilian organizations should adopt the early‐modern management practice of homogenizing assimilation.

For the sake of brevity, I shall focus on reviewing the part of All that We Can Be that is central to organizational change. The authors make an argument for “supply side affirmative action” ‐ that is, let’s benchmark the next lower rank so that the same percentage of African‐Americans is promoted to the next higher rank (pp. 66‐70, 138‐9). Elsewhere, I have deconstructed this argument and found the authors have failed to explain why the Army has distributive inconsistencies in the percentage of African‐Americans from rank to rank (Cheng, 1998). The authors give a number of military organizational change prescriptions entitled “Army lessons for American society” (pp. 131‐42). I shall analyze the seven main ones:

1. 1

   “Focus on black opportunity to prohibit racist expression” (pp. 132‐3). Opportunity and preventing racist expression are not mutually exclusive. Opportunities for a subordinate group do not change the dominant group’s racist attitudes and behaviors toward a lower power group. To create a balanced change in a system, multiple parts of that system must be changed so as to prevent systematic imbalance.

2. 2

   “Be ruthless against discrimination” (p. 133). As is typical in early‐modern organizations, such as military ones, this prescription emphasizes punishment for violation of the status quo rules instead of changing systemic causes of undesirable behavior and creating a positive organizational culture.

3. 3

   “Create conditions so that white and black youth can serve on an equal basis to improve their social and civic opportunities” (pp. 133‐5). The authors cite Allport’s (1954, p. 263) “contact hypothesis” that “prejudice ... may be reduced by equal status contact between majority and minority groups in the pursuit of common goals” as justification. But the contact hypothesis has been found to lack empirical support since 1954 (for the latest study see Labianca et al., 1998). The authors think that national service ought to be selfless but also emphasize the benefits to its participants (p. 168). Inconsistent as these ideas are, the authors have not addressed how US society can be changed from individualism, the individual placing him/herself before the group, to collectivism, placing the group before the individual. National service would likely be shunned by youths with higher opportunities. It would draw dead‐end youths, and turn out to be “make‐work” ‐ not much more than just another mismanaged and inefficient federal bureaucracy. The Army recognizes individualism in its advertisements by offering educational inducements, not selfless service to the country. Contradicting their support of the “contact hypothesis,” the authors want to build a “critical mass” of African‐Americans leaders ‐ by concentrating them as students and faculty in historically black colleges instead of making them minority group members at ≈lite, predominantly European‐American universities (pp. 124‐7, 133‐6, 165). This proposal re‐segregates higher education and avoids intergroup contact.

4. 4

   “Install qualified black leaders as soon as possible” (pp. 135‐6). Changing from Euro‐American to African‐American officers without changing the culture, performance appraisal, reward system and career ladders to support diverse thinking and leadership and interpersonal styles is mere essentialism, based on biological race rather than diverse world views, thinking and behavior. It is a skin‐deep change. It places a black face on a status quo organizational discourse. Of course, if the organization did not in the first place select people who are diverse beyond their biological attributes, the selected employees will not manage in diverse ways. Furthermore, the authors argue, African‐Americans are not stigmatized by affirmative action, but offer no research to support this notion (p. 69). Later the authors state that “Such debates (about diversity) in civilian society inevitably stigmatize applicants by raising doubts about their true qualifications” (p. 93). The argument that affirmative action and diversity management may lead to stigmatization of its beneficiaries is not an adequate justification for repealing affirmative action and not managing the fact that the workforce, both civilian and military, is diverse. If the authors want civilian organizations to adopt the Army’s “supply side affirmative action program,” then they need to tell readers how this major problem is overcome, if at all, in the Army.

5. 5

   “Affirmative action should be focussed on Afro‐Americans” (pp. 139‐40). The authors, in effect, if not by intent, play the divisive politics of “Oppression Olympics” by favoring African‐Americans as the only identity group that has been oppressed by the dominant group (pp. xix, 129, 139‐40). Denial of the oppression of historically subordinated and silenced groups other than African‐Americans only favors and strengthens the dominant group.

6. 6

   “Recognize Afro‐Anglo culture as the core of American culture” (pp. 140‐41). The authors use the term “Afro‐Anglo Culture” to describe “the Army’s multiracial uniculture” (pp. 128‐30). The authors do not mean multiculturalism for they earlier stated “Multiculturalism and ethnic diversity are subordinated to the Army’s overriding goal of combat readiness” (p. 71). The authors really mean assimilation but disguise it by an attempt to argue that the Army is heavily influenced by African‐American culture, e.g. African‐American music, literature and art. They are unable to prove this point beyond off‐handed anecdotes. What is more important than the fashions of music is the question “What Army beliefs, values, attitudes, language, and world views can be traced back to ’Afro‐Anglo Culture’?”. If there were such a social phenomenon as “Afro‐Anglo Culture,” then there would be no need to discuss racism in the Army, and no need for this book.

7. 7

   “Enhancing black participation is good for organizational effectiveness” (pp. 141‐2). The authors and the Army want assimilated African‐Americans to participate in the Army. Assimilation is by definition a loss of group identity. What is desired is the essentialistic appearance of non‐discrimination by the employment of individuals who racially are African‐Americans but who have had their culture assimilated out of them so that they do not think or behave differently than the dominant group members.

The authors’ understanding of organizational change is naive. They naively think that if enough African‐Americans (we are not told how many) join the Army at the entry level, the dominant group, which also dominates the top ranks in a highly authoritarian organization, will somehow accept African‐American culture (pp. 13‐14). They seek to make African‐Americans the change target, while leaving the dominant group alone (pp. 13‐14). Enforcing “uncompromising standards of performance ... (and) education, training, and mentoring” (p. 13) does not eliminate racism. It creates homogenization through essentialism. Standards may have to be changed, not necessarily “lowered”, but made different to value and capitalize on the unique contributions of African‐Americans.

In Rokeach’s belief structure theory (1970, pp. 8‐9), racism is a kind of belief that is not socially reinforced. It is impervious to persuasion or argument by others. “Education, training, and mentoring” alone will not decrease racism. As hooks (1995) writes, the rage of racism must be surfaced before prosocial change can occur. Rage is an appropriate response to injustice but must be processed so that it turns constructive (hooks, 1995, p. 26). No matter how ugly the facts of history are, no matter what unpleasant emotions are stirred up, intellectual integrity and emotional honesty are needed to confront and work through the dissonance of overcoming oppressiveness of the homogenized mind and its oppressive institutionalization in modernistic organizations to build communities and organizations that respect diversity.