Veterans Day: Dreams Deferred for Black Soldiers.

HistoryBLMFighting Inequity
Written By Beloved Community

By: Alisha Keig

I know three things about my grandpa Joe: he was in the Navy, he was a chef, and he’s the reason I was born in San Diego instead of Mamou. He died when I was barely able to walk, but my mom has a black and white picture of him hanging above her fireplace. It’s strange having never seen him in color. Last year, my cousin submitted her DNA to an ancestry website to find out more about our family tree and she sent me a text containing a picture of my grandpa’s servicemen registration card.

A few things stood out to me immediately, namely, his height and weight, as I was glad to finally have that reference, and that he had a scar near his left eye (I have one too from when my brother threw a frisbee at my face). And of course, I couldn’t ignore the fact that his race was listed as “Negro”. The word was off putting because I read it in 2021, and although the word Black wasn’t widely accepted as a racial descriptor until the 1960s, it's strange to see it used to describe things like eye and hair color but not race. And it was particularly upsetting because I learned (no thanks to my K-12 education) that although there are many issues concerning the abject history of veteran treatement since the Korean war, historically, Black Veterans have experienced acute discrimination and oppression. The same soldiers who helped establish a country during the Revolutionary War, risked everything to back the union in the Civil War, who fought to save the world in segregated units during World War I (WWI) and World War II (WWII), were the same war heroes who were immediately enslaved, arrived home to lynchings and the terror of Jim Crow, and were denied the benefits given to their counterparts donning the same uniform. 

This Veterans Day I’d like to interrogate the historical hypocrisy that surrounds the holiday, and in particular the implementation of the first GI Bill, and shine a light on the present circumstances of America’s Black veteran and servicepeople population. 

The VA and First GI Bill 

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Day was officially created as a result of the conclusion of WWI. It was first declared as Armistice Day (a day essentially celebrating world peace) by President Wildrow Wilson in 1919, and a Congressional act in 1938 made November 11th a national holiday honoring veterans of WWI. Post World War II, however, the word Armistice was exchanged for veterans in order to celebrate and honor American veterans from all wars. 

The Department of Veterans Affairs boasts a longstanding history dating back to before the country’s violent establishment. The roots of the official department trace back to 1636 with regards to the war between the colonizers of Plymouth and the inidgenous Pequot Indians. From that point, veterans began receiving benefits meant to honor their sacrifice and service. These benefits include disability pay, pensions, medical and hospital care, and even expanded benefits to family members.

The introduction of the GI Bill in 1944 pumped funding into the Veterans Administration (VA) and helped the entity to “modernize” their benefits for the next generation of soldiers. Veterans who received the GI Bill were granted access to affordable housing, tuition for college and training programs, and unemployment benefits. Under Reagan, the Veterans Administration was officially elevated to a cabinet level department which houses the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), Veterans Benefit Administration (VBA), and National Cemetery Administration (NCA). 

Not Everyone Benefited  

Black servicemen were immediately given the short end of the stick. First, and unsurprisingly, Black veterans were less likely than their white counterparts to be honorably discharged which severely limited their access to the GI bill’s benefits. To add insult to injury, southern Congressmen lobbied for states, not the VA, to execute and implement the bill’s terms knowing that, in the time of separate but equal and Jim Crow, this would stifle any attempt at advancement for Black vets.

Mortgages and Homeownership: Home and land ownership are some of the greatest predictors for generational wealth in America. Decentralizing the VA in the rollout of the GI Bill virtually allowed financial institutions to refuse mortgages and loans to Black borrowers. This racist implementation coupled with New Deal era redlining (practices adopted by the VA) severely limited access to homeownership for Black veterans. The consequences of racism in housing persist today. In 2018, the gap between white homeowners and Black homeowners was approximately 31 percent. Even amongst veterans, the white-Black homeownership gap is 19 percent. It also exists in more insidious ways like labeling neighborhoods as “good” or “bad” based on demographics, in the way appraisers undercut the values of Black-owed homes, and in the way we attach school budgets to property taxes which consequently allows students in more affluent neighborhoods to have access to higher quality education.

Education and Training: Black veterans were also disenfranchised from the education aspect of the bill that provided tuition remission for higher education and technical training programs. Black veterans were more likely to be pushed into vocational training programs than to attend colleges and universities and some schools rejected their benefits outright. The experiences of Black servicemen who did attend colleges and universities varied by region. Those who attempted to attend institutions in the south were excluded from white only institutions and approximately 55 percent of applicants were turned away from historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) because of limited space. HBCUs (also known as Negro Colleges) that could accommodate the influx of applicants had additional issues like fewer opportunities for advanced degrees and lack of funding and institutional resources. Additionally, due to the lack of quality education available for Black folks living in poverty and living in the south, many Black servicemen had not attended school, and those who did, were not prepared for the demands of post secondary. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the trend of Black veterans not receiving education credits has persisted. In the 2015-16 school year, white undergraduate veterans were 3.7 times more likely to receive education benefits than Black counterparts. 

VA assistance via the GI Bill was a huge contributing factor to the solidification of the American middle class and one that opened doors for many white Americans. Unfortunately for Black servicemen, it did not function as an inroad to class mobility. The intentional exclusion of Black veterans resulted in immeasurable losses in two main categories: (1) monetary losses and the accumulation of generational wealth and (2) the loss of access to knowledge on how to navigate this county's systems.

Black Veterans and Servicepeople Today

Although the days of legal Jim Crow are over, we are far from a post-racial society and Black veterans and servicepeoplehave not fully escaped the breadth of discrimination. Similar to the way WWII veterans returned home to beatings, false arrests, and lynchings, Black servicemen today are still targets for violence by the police. Black veterans also experience higher rates of racial bias when receiving medical care. And, according to a 2018 report from the National Alliance to End Homelesnness, a third of veterans experiencing homelessness are African American. Even within the military itself, discrimination persists. Although no longer serving in segregated units, data from the Pentagon shows that Black servicepeople are less likely to be promoted into leadership positions and officer ranks despite increased enrollment in the military. The lack of representation in leadership also contributes to the fact that Black servicepeople fear reprucussions when reporting racial discrimination and, therefore, underreport incidents. Across all branches of the military, Black servicepeople are more likely than white counterparts to be referred to special or general court-martial or receive Non-Judicial Punishment. In addition to race, Black veterans and servicepeople with multiple marginalized identities, such as LGBTQ, disabled, and women, experience compounded and unique forms of oppression.   

The current state of life for Black veterans and servicepeople (really for all BIPOC military personnel) is just a microcosm of what happens in American society for racially marginalized people. The root cause of which was and is anti-Black racism, the delusion of white supremacy, and the struggle to keep power by stagnating progress for others. One of the reasons we, at Beloved Community, advocate for truth telling in schools is so students can think critically about the histories, voices and stories that are purposely omitted to preserve a national facade that favors whiteness. So this Veteran’s Day, and always, we encourage you to interrogate what you know, to ask the hard questions, and to support organizations who are uplifting the experiences of marginalized veterans and servicepeople. 

Further Reading and Actions 

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