Racism in the US Military
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2026-01-25T03:17:50+00:00
In the first years following the American invasion of South Vietnam, Black soldiers were twice as likely to be killed in combat compared to whites. These shocking statistics led civil rights leaders to speak out publicly against the war.
In April, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. broke his silence on the war:“We have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit.”
Dr. King unapologetically criticized what he saw as the "giant triplets" of racism, militarism, and extreme materialism. Remembered today as one of the most influential civil rights icons in history, Dr. King's "poor people's campaign" and involvement in the antiwar movement have been largely forgotten in American public memory.1 But, during the war, King spoke out forcefully against a nation that asked poor Americans to kill poor Vietnamese farmers to "save them from Communism," while the struggle for civil rights, justice, and economic security continued in the US.
“A few years ago … there was a real promise of hope for the poor—both black and white—through the poverty program … Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war … I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”
In Vietnam, Black soldiers engaged in various forms of resistance against what many increasingly considered a "white man's war."2 As a consequence, Black soldiers were disproportionately punished, incarcerated in military jails and brigs, and often kicked out of the military without veterans' benefits. Military prisons became sites of racial conflict and rebellion. After King was murdered in 1968, rebellions engulfed the streets of America, and racial violence erupted in Vietnam.3 By 1971, the Army reported that it was in a state of "near collapse."4 Soldiers were openly refusing orders, going AWOL, and even threatening or killing commanding officers. The Army issued a disproportionate number of punitive discharges to Black soldiers, denying them a lifetime of veterans benefits.5 Under the Nixon administration, less than honorable discharges increased from a couple hundred per year to more than 25,000 by 1972.6
Arguably, the GI resistance movement, combined with the antiwar and civil rights movement pressured the Nixon administration and the Army to end the draft while still at war in Vietnam.7 The widespread unpopularity of the war compelled the administration to withdraw US troops from Vietnam.8 But the lasting consequences of a discriminatory military justice system caused unforeseen problems for many Vietnam veterans, leading to disproportionate unemployment, readjustment difficulties, and incarceration rates, particularly among Black Vietnam veterans.9