Military History and Race

George Armstrong Custer
Lest We Forget

History teaches us that all races have fought in wars and that all have won and lost wars at various times.  The lie of White (or European) supremacy was thoroughly discredited at the battles of Little Big Horn (1876),  Adwa (1896), Tsushima Strait (1905), Pearl Harbor (1941) and, finally, on 9/11 (2001).

Crazy Horse
Victor at Little Big Horn

At Little Big Horn in eastern Montana Custer's 7th Cavalry was destroyed by a Sioux Army led by Crazy Horse that outnumbered his by about three to one.  Custer, who had graduated at the bottom of his class from West Point, had declined to bring a gatling gun as it would only slow him down.

In 1896 the forces of Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II decisively defeated Italian Colonial forces at the Battle of Adwa.  Ethiopian independence was preserved.  Adwa inspired many subsequent African anti-colonial struggles but it also inspired a thirst for vengeance with Mussolini who brutally invaded Ethiopia in 1936 and erected a statue of himself on the Adwa battlefield.

At Tsushima Strait in 1905 a Japanese fleet annihilated a Russian fleet that had sailed halfway around the world from Europe to Asia in order to confront the Japanese.  Two thirds of the Russian ships were sunk.  A peace, brokered by Teddy Roosevelt, ended the Russo-Japanese war shortly afterwards.  TR became the first American President to win a Nobel Peace prize.

At Pearl Harbor in December 1941 the Imperial Japanese navy achieved strategic surprise catching the US fleet while it was anchored at Battleship Row in Hawaii.  Over 2,400 Americans were killed that day.  There were initial, and entirely false, reports that German pilots were flying planes marked with the Rising Sun that day.

On 9/11 nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists from the Middle East managed to hijack four domestic US airliners and crash them into the Twin towers and the Pentagon.  All four commercial planes were fueled for cross country flights making them hugely dangerous missiles.  The hijackers used knives and box cutters to terrorize the crew and capture the cockpits within a narrow time window that morning.  Commercial airline cockpits were, at the time, lightly secured and airline crews were trained to accede to hijacker demands in hopes of getting the planes safely back to an airport.  Nearly three thousand were killed on that day of horror.

Here Crispus Attucks fell
March 5, 1770

Today the United States has, without question, the strongest military in the world.  Ethnic diversity has been a key ingredient for American military success from the very founding of our nation.  Crispus Attucks, of African and Wampanoag heritage, has been hailed as the first casualty of the American Revolution when he was killed by British troops in the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770.  Nearly five percent of the Continental Army were black.  Hundreds of thousands of blacks would serve in the Union Army during the Civil War.  More would serve as Buffalo soldiers in the Indian Wars on the western frontier.  Even in the segregated Army of World War II blacks distinguished themselves in units such as the Tuskegee airmen and the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion ("Triple Nickels").

Robert Gould Shaw
Boston Common

Over and over again minorities that have faced discrimination and persecution in the United States have proven themselves on the battlefield by fighting valiantly for a country that sometimes despised them.  In the 19th century Irish immigrants to the US faced a strong nativist backlash epitomized by "No Irishmen need apply" and the Know Nothing movement.  They responded by forming the Irish Brigade ("Fighting 69th"), led by General Thomas Meagher, that won battle honors at Antietam and Gettysburg.

Faced with actual imprisonment after Pearl Harbor, around 14,000 Japanese-Americans would form the 442nd Infantry Regiment which earned nearly 9,500 Purple hearts fighting mainly in the Italian campaign.  The most decorated unit in the US Army in World War II had a simple motto: "Go For Broke".

Native Americans have been fighting alongside and in the US Armed forces since the Oneida and Tuscarora joined the Patriot cause during the American Revolution.  Today a disproportionate number of Native Americans serve in the US Armed forces.

President George W. Bush recently said that "bigotry and white supremacy, in any form, is blasphemy against the American creed".  Bigotry and white supremacy, aside from being terrible policy, are also symptoms of historical ignorance.


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