Military Surveys on Troop Integration Should Have Stayed in the 1940s
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Military Surveys on Troop Integration Should Have Stayed in the 1940s
posted by: Steve Williams
It emerged last week that, prior to President Truman integrating the armed forces, the military did in fact engage in what the Department of Defense (DOD) has described as "moderately sized surveys" designed to gage how troops felt over "racial issues, integration and troop morale", this according to a DOD spokesman speaking to The Advocate.
Such an admission goes against the prevailing notion that the recent Pentagon survey was unprecedented, but it actually changes very little for critics of the current, widely condemned DOD survey, which cost an alarming $4.4 million and was heavily criticized for what LGBT rights advocates called leading and derogatory questions in sections where the survey asked about the open service ban on gay and lesbian personnel known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT). Why? Because President Truman signed an executive order in 1948 to integrate the militaryirrespective of the fact that soldiers surveyed at the time voiced significant opposition to the move. This, critics say, illustrates why, in a setting where democracy is counterintuitive, this kind of survey is redundant.
Such an admission goes against the prevailing notion that the recent Pentagon survey was unprecedented, but it actually changes very little for critics of the current, widely condemned DOD survey, which cost an alarming $4.4 million and was heavily criticized for what LGBT rights advocates called leading and derogatory questions in sections where the survey asked about the open service ban on gay and lesbian personnel known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT). Why? Because President Truman signed an executive order in 1948 to integrate the militaryirrespective of the fact that soldiers surveyed at the time voiced significant opposition to the move. This, critics say, illustrates why, in a setting where democracy is counterintuitive, this kind of survey is redundant.
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