This is a draft of Chapter 7 of a book I am writing about the formation of my privilege as a white man, and my later critique of that privilege and effort to lead a life that is intentionally anti-racist. Each chapter begins with a biographical essay of a Black historical figure. The subjects of these essays share a time, place, or other context with me, and following the telling of their story, I reflect on these connections from my perspective as a white man, identifying both my privilege and the institutional racism present in my life at the time.
Chapter 7: In the Navy
Commander Benjamin Cloud, 1972
CDR Benjamin Cloud stood in the aft mess deck of the USS Kitty Hawk, facing an angry group of young, Black sailors who just minutes before had unleashed their anger in a racially charged melee with white sailors and Marines. The deck was covered with broken glass, napkin dispensers, ketchup bottles, and anything else that had been close at hand when a heated exchange between a Black sailor and a white messman released months of pent-up frustration among Black crewmembers.
CDR Cloud had reported aboard the Kitty Hawk as its Executive Officer (XO), the second in command, just two months before, so had not yet built a reputation, good or bad, with Black crewmen. As one of the senior Black officers in the Navy, a decorated combat pilot and a paragon of a successful Navy “company man,” he was on a fast track to command a carrier and make Admiral.
He was about to find out what all his accomplishments were worth to these angry young men.
“All right, now listen to me. I’m here and I want to hear what you’re upset about. But we can’t have all this screaming and disorder. I want to hear what you’ve got to say.” He asked about their grievances and assured them that he would bring their concerns to the captain. He explained the various channels that were available to bring their complaints forward.
Many of the sailors were listening to him, but not all. Testing him, one shouted, “He’s lying to you, man. He’s just the white man’s boy. Don’t believe him just because he’s got brown skin. He’s just as white as any officer.”
In that moment, on the aft mess deck, sometime after 9 pm on October 11, 1972, Cloud acknowledged the limitations of the Navy way. For the first time in his life, Cloud recognized the need to respond, not just “by the book,” but by addressing concerns he knew to be legitimate, as a fellow Black man.
“Look, I’m not talking to you just as the XO now. I’m talking to you as an Executive Officer who has a greater understanding of your problems than probably any other Executive Officer in the U.S. Navy because the problem of being Black has been one that I have lived with all my life. I would hope that you all would understand that I don’t have to be told what it’s like to be a Black man. I’m an authentic Black man, just like you. There doesn’t have to be any compromise in terms of being an effective naval officer and being Black. The two can be very compatible.”
Unbeknownst to Cloud and the sailors, the CO, Captain Townsend, had entered the mess deck, just as Cloud said, “For the first time, you have brother who is the Executive Officer. My door is always open.” The captain would later say that he was shocked to hear Cloud use language that, in his mind, set himself and the Black sailors apart from the rest of the crew, and sought to appease these young men rather than hold them accountable for their behavior. He continued to watch the exchanges unfold, hearing some shout, “Right on!” and “We can trust this brother!”
Some of the men raised their fist in the Black power salute. Cloud had never given a Black power salute in his life, but the expectations of the men before him were obvious. Recognizing that he would lose all the credibility he had worked to achieve if he didn’t respond in kind, Cloud looked the sailors in the eyes and clenched his fist. And there, one hundred miles off the coast of Vietnam, as the supercarrier Kitty Hawk was preparing to resume its relentless bombing of North Vietnam, the XO raised his fist in a Black power salute.
Their anger appeased, at least for a moment, the men cheered Cloud as a brother and broke out in cries of “Black power!”
Flashback several decades and we might imagine the sounds of Beethoven’s Minuet in G coming from an open, bedroom window of the Cloud family’s comfortable, El Cajon ranch house as young Benjamin practiced his violin for an upcoming performance of the State of California Youth Symphony. In the 1940’s, this slight of build, asthmatic, Black-Native American, violin-playing, teenager might have seemed an unlikely candidate to rise to the top echelons of Navy, combat fighter pilots during the Vietnam War, and even more unlikely to emerge as the hero in ending a violent race riot aboard the USS Kitty Hawk.
Cloud was born in San Diego, California on November 6, 1931, as a point of reference, just a day after Ike Turner was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Geography matters. Though Cloud’s father, John, certainly experienced racism as San Diego County’s first minority police officer, young Benjamin was not impacted by racism in the same ways his contemporaries in the South and American urban centers were. John and Sarah moved their family from San Diego to a 25-acre ranch in nearby El Cajon when Benjamin and his brother Joel were young.
Their middle-class San Diego neighborhood has been made up of Black and Latino families, but they were one of the few Black families in El Cajon. Cloud was just one of three or four Black children in elementary school, and the only Black student in Grossmont High. It is said that Benjamin’s parents rarely discussed racism, believing that determination and hard work would overcome whatever inequities and injustices the boys would encounter. John would often tell them, “If you’re good enough to do something, you’re going to succeed no matter what color your skin is. You’re not only going to succeed, but other people are going to want to be a part of your life.”
This philosophy no doubt contributed to Cloud’s success in the Navy, but a time would come when just hard work was not enough, a time when he, as a Black man, could no longer remain silent about his race.
Cloud began college in San Diego, but when war broke out in Korea he decided to get ahead of the draft and joined the Naval Aviation Cadet program. A variation of an ROTC program, aviation cadets were only required to complete two years of college before being commissioned as an officer and trained as a naval aviator. Cloud would be introduced to more than flying in Pensacola, Florida; it was there that he experienced segregation and overt racism for the first time. He could not get his haircut at the Navy Exchange barbershop, and he had to sit in the back of the bus when travelling around the base.
After an initial assignment flying fighter jets out of San Diego, Cloud was able to take advantage of another Navy program to complete his bachelor’s degree in Chinese Language and Culture at the University of Maryland. Cloud returned to a fighter reconnaissance squadron where he deployed on the carrier Kitty Hawk, and flew combat missions over Laos in the early years of the Vietnam conflict.
Cloud was then assigned as an aide to President Lyndon Johnson. By living in Washington, D.C. and working in such a high-profile position, Cloud was introduced to top Navy brass and had opportunities to socialize with many Black leaders of the day, including Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Though Cloud admired King, he didn’t feel like it was his place to take a position on issues of race and racism. In particular, Cloud felt he could not openly support King’s use of civil disobedience as a method to attain his goals of equality under the law, saying, “I felt that if I am in the military then I am going to…work within the law, and of course King’s passive non-violence…were clearly outside the law.” Instead, Cloud traveled the country to serve as a role model to minority youth.
Following his White House assignment, Cloud would become one of the first Black officers to command a squadron. On a fast track to make flag officer, he jumped over more senior candidates to be assigned to the Kitty Hawk as its Executive Officer.
Throughout, Cloud was convinced that race had never been an issue, neither in aiding his advancement nor hindering it.
When Commander Cloud reported aboard the Kitty Hawk in August of 1972, the ship had already been at sea for six months, with no end to her deployment in sight. The Hawk and her crew had completed 164 days of combat ops on Yankee Station, about 90 miles off the coast of North Vietnam in the South China Sea. In what was known as the Linebacker I campaign, jets from the Kitty Hawk relentlessly dropped bombs on North Vietnamese targets, more than 27,000 tons in September alone. Policy makers believed that this campaign had been successful in forcing the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table, and that the pace of bombing must not let up until a peace agreement was reached.
This pace of operations was exhausting for the whole crew, some of whom were in an 8-hours on, 4-hours off, watch rotation, while others stood watch for six hours followed by 6 hours off. Actual days off were few and far between. Though sailors do establish a kind of rhythm in such rotations, and take a certain pride in meeting the demands of an important mission, sleep deprivation heightens the everyday conflicts that arise among 5,000 men living in close quarters. Add to this the pervasive racial tensions that ran throughout America at the time, and all the ingredients necessary for an eruption of violence were present on the Kitty Hawk.
Though he denied the influence of race upon his career, Cloud was well aware of the presence of racism in the Navy, and quickly identified the existence of racial tensions on board the Kitty Hawk when he reported for duty as her XO. There were three specific contributing factors and one precipitating incident to the racial violence that was to follow.
A unique recruiting environment in 1972 led to a large influx of young, Black sailors in the months preceding the outbreak of violence. Of the 297 Black enlisted men onboard (7.2 percent of the crew), 46 percent reported aboard after the Kitty Hawk set sail from San Diego, and one-third arrived within four months of the October violence. Two-thirds were non-rated, meaning that were not trained for a particular specialty, and two-thirds were “category III or lower” meaning their scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) were in the bottom 44 percent of all sailors. The reasons for this are beyond the scope of this essay, but it is fair to say that systemic racism contributed to these numbers.
All newly reported seamen and airmen spend their first 90 days working on the mess decks, working in the serving line, washing dishes, and mopping floors. Mess duty is said to be a great equalizer, ensuring that every junior sailor begins their tenure on the ship in the same way. But it is also a way of consistently filling one of the most unpleasant jobs on the ship. The recent influx of young, Black sailors made it seem like they were over represented on the mess decks, creating the appearance of low-skilled Black men serving more successful and privileged white sailors.
Another contributing factor to an eruption of racial violence was the perception (or reality) that Black sailors were being treated differently than their white counterparts at captain’s mast. Captain’s mast is a shipboard system for assigning “non-judicial punishment” for relatively minor misconduct. After taking statements from various parties, the captain convenes a captain’s mast where he assigns punishment to the alleged perpetrator.
Black sailors believed that they were receiving harsher punishments than white sailors for similar infractions. The captain explained this by saying he was taking into account previous infractions, not race, in his sentencing decisions, but it appears that this was not always the case. In an article two months before the October violence, an “underground newspaper” onboard, The Kitty Litter, laid out the sentencing disparities, and the captain’s defense of his decisions before writing, “This is the same quality of argument as ‘I like blacks okay, as long as they know their place.’ Racism, it appears, is all right if the racist is in a position of power.” (22, AAT)
Finally, in investigations following the night of violence, various manifestations of Black identity and unity, including self-segregating in berthing compartments and dapping, were named as contributing factors. This may be, but it is important not to blame Black sailors for affirming their connection with each other in these ways. Responding to an initial shipboard inquiry, Cloud stated:
I think we have to recognize that there is a great, great sense of unity, of camaraderie and companionship among the so called, black brothers, not only on the Kitty Hawk but throughout the nation. This sense of unity, of course, is very apparent even here on the Kitty Hawk. The black community here has devised their own private fraternal handshake (dapping)…This of course, pride of unity and loyalty, exists all the time, but at the same time we can recognize the same black men every day responding to their military responsibilities and assignments in a very loyal way. So it is, in my opinion no compromise one to the other. They are Navy men…who just happen to be black.
Rather than blame the violence on Black men for sharing signs of Black unity, it is fair to say that the white chain of command reacted with unnecessary suspicion and fear of such displays of Black brotherhood, and these white (over)reactions certainly contributed to hostility toward black sailors the night violence broke out.
On October 5th, the Kitty Hawk moored pier-side at the Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines, the largest Navy port in the Western Pacific, to provide some much-needed liberty to her exhausted crew. Just beyond the front gate of the base lay Olongapo City, offering every hedonistic delight a sailor could imagine, including countless bars, tattoo parlors, prostitutes, and a ready supply of drugs. At times, as many as thirty Naval vessels would be in port, bringing twenty thousand sailors into Olongapo ready to blow off some steam. Olongapo was divided into two sections, known as “the jungle” and “the strip,” appealing to Black and white sailors respectively. That said, white sailors would venture into “the jungle” because they preferred the clubs, the music, and the girls there, so bar fights between Black and white sailors were not uncommon.
On October 9th, a young Airman, Dwight Horton, was assaulted by two white sailors just outside the main gate of the Naval Base. Horton was returning to the Kitty Hawk, when the white sailors came up behind him, shouted the n-word, and threw him to the ground. Horton had one arm in a cast so couldn’t properly defend himself. The assault continued until the shore patrol happened along, bringing Horton to the base medical facility, and the assailants and two white witnesses to the base security office.
Though the assailants denied it, the two witnesses from another ship both said that Horton was the victim. Despite the witness statements, the base JAG investigator took no further action. But after the Hawk left port, Captain Townsend conducted his own investigation into the incident. Though Townsend acknowledged that with Horton’s right arm in a cast, it was “not unreasonable” to conclude that Horton was the victim, and despite the witness statements confirming this, the captain decided not to charge anyone, concluding that it was a “black word against white word” situation.
Including the attack on Horton, there had been four assaults on Black sailors by white sailors during the Kitty Hawk’s deployment, resulting in no meaningful punishment of the assailants.
The ship’s Black sailors thus came to believe that white sailors’ assaults on them would continue, especially since those assaults were not being prosecuted, regardless of circumstances or evidence. That merely reinforced their already low opinion of white man’s justice. Those feelings would not change in the coming days, and for good reason. (Truhe, 31)
At noon, on October 11th, the Kitty Hawk was underway, returning to Yankee Station to resume Linebacker I line operations for the seventh time in eight months, and the stage was set for one of the most significant outbreaks of racial violence in Navy history.
The first altercation happened over lunch on the aft mess deck. On Wednesday, October 11th, a white sailor clearing tables, picked up a glass where two Black sailors were sitting. One of the Black airmen snapped that he wasn’t finished and angrily told the messman to put the glass down. Further angry and threatening words were exchanged, and the airman took a swing at the messman, then tackled him, propelling both against a table and into a bulkhead. No serious injuries were reported, but tension filled the air.
The next day, when dinner was being served on the forward mess deck, a Black airman in the chow line asked the white mess cook for an extra sandwich. When the mess cook refused, the airman reached across to take a second sandwich anyway, but the cook pushed him away. The airman went after the cook, and only backed off when the cook grabbed a knife. As on the previous day, this aftershocks from this conflict rippled across the forward and aft mess decks, and spilled into nearby berthing compartments, prompting angry verbal exchanges and physical skirmishes between Black and white sailors.
Some senior Black petty officers and representatives of the ship’s human resources council gathered some of the young Black sailors for an impromptu meeting to air grievances. The Black sailors vented frustration and anger at recent incidents of white assaults on Black sailors. They also protested experiences of being asked to disperse whenever they gathered in small groups, when even large groups of white sailors were left unmolested. Though this appeared to release some pressure among those gathered, the temperature around the ship continued to rise.
It was at this point, about 2115 (9:15 pm) on October 12th, a mess cook on the aft mess deck, alarmed by the violent rhetoric, ran to the Marine Detachment compartment shouting that all hell was breaking loose.
Aircraft carriers carry a detachment of Marines whose primary duty is to safeguard nuclear weapons, guard prisoners in the brig, and perform ceremonial duties. Though trained in riot control, only the captain has the authority to call out the Marines, but they instinctively responded to the panic in the messman’s voice and, armed with batons, double-timed to the aft mess deck. Despite the Marine’s expectations of a violent brawl, they instead found about twenty-five angry Black sailors, armed with chairs and ketchup bottles, swearing and shouting threats. Though underwhelmed by the danger, the Marines nonetheless responded as they had been trained, assuming a blocking formation, and with batons raised, began forcing the Black sailors back. Instead of restoring order, the presence of the Marines only enflamed and escalated the situation. Black sailors reacted defiantly, some with fists raised in Black power salutes, others throwing trash, salt shakers and metal trays.
At their best, sailors and Marines can enjoy a friendly rivalry, trading barbs about who exists to support whom. But there was a darker side to this relationship, especially when it came to the perception of Black sailors. Many Black sailors on the Kitty Hawk saw the Marines as the equivalent of the police back home, the violent arm of white power. Sailors, black and white, would taunt and harass Marines just on principle. Cloud himself would later acknowledge, “like the police establishment of a major metropolitan area…(t)hey were not looked upon with any respect at all.” (147, BSWN)
Commander Cloud was in the wardroom watching a movie when he heard the sound of Marine boots in the passageway outside, running toward the aft mess deck. Without knowing any details, he thought, “They’ll go crazy if the Marines go in with a show of force. I’ve got to get there fast and keep this thing from blowing up.” (115, TW) Cloud immediately assessed the situation on the mess deck, recognizing that one match tossed between white sailors, Black sailors, and Marines, could set them all ablaze. He quickly ordered the Marines and white sailors off the mess deck, but not before one Marine was seen reaching for his gun. Though a later assessment determined that he was probably just protecting his gun from being taken from him, the perception of the Black sailors was that an armed Marine was prepared to open fire on unarmed Black men, a scenario already implanted within each of them.
With the Marines and white sailors finally cleared from the space, Commander Cloud seized the moment, determined to convince these twenty-five young men that, as a Black man, he could identify with their frustration and anger, and that they could trust him enough to renounce violence against their white shipmates. Departing from every Navy protocol, Cloud trusted his instincts, raising his fist in a Black power salute as Captain Townsend looked on.
Cloud continued to provide reassurances that the sailors’ concerns would be addressed through proper channels, and the tension dissipated, at least for the moment. As the sailors prepared to disperse peacefully, they noticed Captain Townsend for the first time, and lingered to ask him questions as well. Like Cloud, specifically asking whether the Marines would give them any trouble. Townsend reassured them that the Marines had been ordered back to their quarters and would not bother the sailors.
But the captain made a promise he couldn’t keep; the conflict between Black sailors and the Marines was about to take a more dangerous turn. Before the CO dismissed Black sailors from the aft mess deck, he had directed the commander of the Marine detachment, Captain Carlucci, to protect the aircraft on the hangar deck from sabotage. Carlucci had implemented this order by directing his Marines to stand watch on the hangar deck with 3-man patrols, with orders to disperse sailors in groups of three or more. Incredibly, the order did not apply only to sailors creating instigating violence, but all sailors, including those just walking to a watch station with a shipmate.
Though the order did not specify race, the Marine patrols targeted only Black sailors, and instead of breaking up groups of three or more, they also broke up pairs of Black sailors as they crossed the hangar deck. The Marines were told to take those who refused to disperse into custody, to use force if necessary, and to call for backup if needed.
It is important to note that the Navy has security specialists called Master-at-Arms, tasked with providing security both on Navy bases and aboard ships. MAA are always called first in response to a conflict or disturbance, and it would have been very unusual for Marines to respond with such force to physical altercations between sailors. Captain Townsend had ordered Marines to the hangar deck only to ensure the safety of aircraft, not to single out Black sailors for persecution.
So, twenty-five Black sailors, feeling vindicated by their “victory” on the mess deck, and promised by the captain that they would be left alone by the Marines, happily set out across the hangar deck as directed, only to be confronted by Marines armed with night sticks.
For example, two sailors approaching from opposite directions, stopped to greet each other and dap. Marine squad approached and asked them to break it up. When one of the Black sailors cursed at the Marines, they blew their whistle to bring reinforcements. (AAT, 45)
In another encounter, Marines formed a line, forcing Black sailors back against an elevator shaft used to bring planes up to the flight deck. With nothing but a drop to the ocean behind the sailors, Marines told them they could sit down or jump over the side. Apparently, death was considered a fitting option for those who walked across the hangar bay in groups of three or more.
In what became a pattern, Black sailors ignored, swore at, raised fists, and walked away; and Marines escalated, beating and choking with batons, handcuffs, arm locks and neck holds, calling reinforcements, and apprehending sailors that talked back. In response, some Black sailors grabbed tiedown chains and brass fire-fighting nozzles to defend themselves.
After the confrontation on the aft mess deck, Commander Cloud had adjourned to his stateroom where he continued to meet peacefully with ten to fifteen Black sailors, listening to their concerns and answering their questions. That meeting ended abruptly when a young Black sailor burst through the door, bleeding profusely from a head wound, shouting, “Oh my God, Oh my God, they are at it again. They are going to kill us all!” (?) Cloud departed immediately for the hanger bay where he witnessed the violent standoff between Black sailors and Marines.
Three months after the racial violence, Commander Cloud would testify at the court martial of one of the Black sailors:
In the course of (the marines) executing their duties…they were directed by higher authority that they were to disperse groups of people, three or more…However, in the execution of this order it became apparent that the Marines, instead of executing it bilaterally, you might say, blacks and whites, allowed assembled groups of whites to mill around the hangar deck, but in the course of the evening, as groups of blacks started coming to the hangar deck, three or more, they were approached by the Marines and told to disperse or disband. And this, of course, started the altercation (emphasis added). From the course of my investigation, it became apparent that the blacks asked why; words were exchanged; more blacks came to the scene; more Marines came to the scene on being summoned by the Marines; and from here physical altercation took place. (AAT, 51)
As if the Marine’s decision to target only Black sailors wasn’t enough to fuel Black anger and violence, a group of white sailors had gathered on the mezzanine overlooking the hangar bay, and shouted slurs and obscenities at the Black sailors below. Cloud would testify, “the whites that were on the mezzanine were taunting (the Black sailors), and hurling verbal abuses, and egging the marines on in the altercation that was taking place.” In that same testimony, Cloud reports a conversation that he had with Captain Townsend in which the CO recalls “liberal use of (n-word) and mother (expletive)…by the people that were on the mezzanine which, as I learned, were all white.” Despite clear evidence that they were provoking the violence below, Marines made no attempt to disperse these white sailors.
Like Cloud, the CO went personally to the hangar bay in response to reports of Marine violence toward Black sailors. When he arrived, he witnessed Marines with batons raised, advancing in formation, on Black sailors. In his testimony to Congress, Townsend reported that he stood between the two groups, ordering the Marines to stand down, putting an end to this chapter of the Kitty Hawk “race riot.”
Both Townsend and Cloud, and even the Marine detachment commander, Carlucci, would identify multiple mistakes in the deployment of Marines to the mess decks and the hanger bay, and their aggressive and unilateral enforcement of the dispersal order. Clouds testimony in particular led to a banner headline in the New York Times, “Kitty Hawk Officer Traces Riot to Marine Dispersal of Blacks.”
While the CO’s order quickly put an end to Marine violence against Black sailors on the hangar deck, the scene and actors in the racially charged drama would merely shift to the ship’s passage ways and berthing areas, as some Black sailors released their frustration and anger on white sailors, sometimes in retribution and others times in random acts of violence.
Chaos and confusion reigned from late Thursday night to early Friday morning, and rumors drove decision making and fueled further fear, anger, and violence. Some were saying that Black sailors were attempting to take over the ship, and one panicked sailor ran down a passageway toward the XO shouting that the captain had been killed! Though he was unable to verify that report, Cloud had seen enough to believe it, and quickly made a ship wide announcement on the 1MC (speaker system) directing all Black sailors to the mess decks and all Marines to the forecastle.
Two things about the XO’s decision were problematic. First, Captain Townsend was still very much alive and heard the XO’s announcement effectively assuming command of the ship. And second, though the conflict between Black sailors, white sailors, and Marines seemed all consuming in places, the majority of the ship’s 5,000 sailors had no idea that anything was out of the ordinary. For all these sailors, sleeping or standing watch, the XO’s announcement must have been incomprehensible and scary.
Around midnight, Captain Townsend quickly made a 1MC announcement of his own, countermanding Cloud’s order, telling everyone to go about their business and return to their assigned spaces. He reiterated that the Marines would not use weapons against crewmembers, the offered to meet with anyone with grievances on the forecastle.
Though many of the rumors circulating proved to be unfounded, the reality was bad enough. Over several hours, small groups of Black sailors roamed passageways and entered berthing compartments, and in more than thirteen random attacks, dragged white sailors out of bed or the shower, pulled them down ladders, and beat them, either with their fists or improvised weapons of tie-down chains, fire-fighting nozzles, and pipes. Most of these assaults left the white sailors with cuts and bruises that were treated in the ship’s sick bay, but some injuries were more serious. A few required that sailors be transported off the ship for treatment at the Navy hospital at Subic Bay. Regardless of the severity of the physical injuries, white sailors described being terrorized and traumatized by the largely random acts of violence.
While the captain stayed in sickbay to help keep the peace there, Cloud headed to the forecastle where some 150 Black sailors, about half of those onboard, had gathered. There he confronted a situation that he would describe as “very, very incendiary, very touch and go.” Many of the sailors were armed with chains, pipes, and nunchucks, and upon seeing the XO, shouted, “Kill, kill, kill the motherfucker. Let’s tear the ship apart. There’s the son-of-a bitch. We ought to throw him over the side.” Instigators in the crowd encouraged their shipmates to ignore Cloud as just another representative of the white system that had violently oppressed them through the deployment of the Marines.
The XO again offered a black power salute, but the crowd continued to shout him down, until one of the Black leaders stood on an anchor chain to get everyone’s attention and said, “Listen to him, listen to what the man has to say. The least you can do is listen to what he has to say.”
The crowd quieted just enough for Cloud to be heard, and the man who years earlier had felt it wasn’t his role as a naval officer to speak to the beliefs of Martin Luther King, now invoked King’s name. In a speech worthy of the Reverend himself, Cloud challenged the men before him to embrace King’s nonviolent approach in confronting racist systems in the Navy.
“If you follow the practices of a Gandhi and of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” he argued, “you can live tomorrow and the next day in pride and respect, but if you continue to use the tactics that you are using here tonight, the only thing you can guarantee is your death, and the further worsening of the situation that you are trying to correct.”
In an inspired move that marked the turning point in the escalating racial violence, Cloud grabbed a two-foot piece of pipe from one of the sailors, took off his shirt and said, “If anyone in this crowd does not believe my sincerity, I hold this weapon and I bare my back for you to take this weapon and beat me into submission right here.”
The stunned sailors were silent for a breathless moment, before erupting in a chorus of shouts, “He is a brother! Let’s do it your way. We are with you all the way.”
Once more, Cloud responded with the Black power salute.
The aggression of the Black sailors immediately began to dissipate. Cloud reported that, “Weapons by the hundreds went over the side of the ship. Weapons by the dozen were laid at my feet, and I ordered them thrown over the side.” And, the sailors began to disperse in relaxed conversation. Townsend and Cloud continued talking with groups of Black sailors on the mess decks and the forecastle until, by five in the morning, the threat of Black violence against white sailors seemed minimal. But the penchant for race driven anger and violence had not yet exhausted itself.
A white first-class boatswain’s mate approached the XO on the forecastle with news that one hundred fifty white sailors were gathered in a berthing compartment, organizing to strike back against Black sailors. Once again, Cloud found himself confronting a large, volatile group of sailors on the verge of violence. The sailors in the overcrowded berthing compartment began to hurl slurs at the XO, shouting that he was, “nothing but an (n-word), just like the rest of them…”
Again, Cloud kept his cool, but this time took an entirely different approach to stilling the storm. His voice level, but forceful, he asserted his authority, “…by higher authority I was appointed as executive officer of this ship, and as such, you men, as part of the Kitty Hawk, along with the blacks, are crewmembers of one ship. You will obey the orders and edicts of the commanding officer.” He reminded them that there were proper channels through which to address their complaints, and any sailors who responded with violence would be prosecuted and punished. Once again, Cloud met the moment, his instincts restoring enough peace to carry on with ship’s operations.
By the time the sun rose over the South China Sea on October 13th, the racial violence onboard the Kitty Hawk had ended, and the Linebacker I campaign resumed without interruption.
Though largely beyond the scope of this reflection on the role of Commander Benjamin Cloud in responding to the racial and racist violence onboard the Kitty Hawk, this story of systemic racism does not end here. That racism continued to manifest itself, both in the prosecution of Black sailors, and in the proceedings of a congressional Special Subcommittee on Disciplinary Problems in the US Navy, formed to examine the causes of the violence on the Kitty Hawk, and another contemporaneous mass act of civil disobedience by Black sailors on the aircraft carrier, the Constellation.
The courts-martial included a racist judge who ignored clear exculpating evidence proving the defendant’s innocence. That conviction was overturned on appeal, rejecting the judge’s decision as without merit. A white sailor who was a witness against multiple Black defendants was proved to have perjured himself. An informant, hired to go undercover and befriend this witness, made secret recordings demonstrating the white sailor’s racist motivation for falsely testifying against Black sailors. NAACP attorneys revealed this evidence of perjury at a press conference in Washington, D.C., leading to the dismissal of charges against a number of defendants.
Twenty-seven Black sailors, less than ten percent of Black enlisted men on board, would ultimately face charges in what was identified by the Navy as a “race riot.” Despite this designation, only four sailors were found guilty of rioting, a charge which requires evidence of concerted, unified, action; two of these four plead guilty in exchange for reduced sentences. Four sailors were acquitted on all counts, and all charges were dropped against another five. Charges against others were reduced, and none received a bad conduct discharge, the harshest penalty faced.
As for the Hicks subcommittee, it was clear from the start that the subcommittee was less a fact-finding body, and more a coordinated effort to show that “permissiveness” of leadership, from the Chief of Naval Operations on down, had led to a failure of good order and discipline in the ranks. The subcommittee used “permissiveness” as code to critique the Navy’s equal opportunity programs. While there were some unintended consequences of these efforts, such as the disproportionate number of young, low-skilled, unrated, Black sailors who reported aboard the Kitty Hawk just as it deployed, these efforts toward integration were ultimately successful in many ways. But every effort to raise systemic racism as a cause of racial unrest in the Navy was quickly discredited and dismissed by the subcommittee.
Instead of confronting the systemic racism named by witnesses, from the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Zumwalt, to Commander Cloud, the committee used racially charged language to blame disturbances on the Kitty Hawk and Constellation on a small number of “thugs” with “below average mental capacity.” Their final report concluded that, “…we found no substantial evidence of racial discrimination upon which we could place true responsibility for causation of these serious disturbances.” Instead, the report argued, Navy recruiters failed to screen out, “agitators, trouble makers, and those who otherwise fail to meet acceptable levels of performance.”
Though they were not officially reprimanded, the racial violence on the Kitty Hawk effectively ended the careers of Townsend and Cloud. Townsend was on track to make Admiral, and Cloud would have almost surely become the first Black commanding officer of a carrier. From the Kitty Hawk, Townsend would go to a dead-end job and retire. Cloud served in a series of responsible positions, including Commanding Officer of Naval Support Activity in Naples, Italy, but far short of the ultimate prize that had been within his reach, command at sea.
Cloud was at once acknowledged for successfully ending the violence on the Kitty Hawk, while roundly criticized by the white, Navy establishment for his non-traditional approach, specifically, for embracing and drawing upon his identity as a Black man. To most white officers up the chain of command, this was seen as “divisive.” Of course, this perspective fails to recognize the pervasive systemic racism that already erected barriers between white and Black sailors, and their respective opportunities.
Cloud, like Martin Luther King whom he invoked, was both singled out as exceptional, while also blamed for claiming his Black identity. Identifying Cloud as an exception enabled the captain and the Hicks subcommittee to scapegoat other Black sailors. This is what makes Clouds choice to identify with the young Black crewmen so powerful. Publicly proclaiming, I am them, challenges the scapegoating narrative. Instead of just a peacemaking strategy, Cloud’s raised fist confronts the entire racist, white system.
Like Du Boise, Cloud recognized and drew upon his double consciousness as a Black man and a naval officer functioning at a high level in a white system. He maneuvered within these aspects of his identity without compromising his integrity, claiming solidarity with young, Black sailors, and asserting his authority as XO to white sailors set on revenge.
Though the racial incidents on the Kitty Hawk and Constellation received the most national attention, hundreds of Navy ships experienced racial unrest from 1972 to 1975.
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My Story, 1984-1988
“This is Lieutenant Harris, I have the deck and the conn.” And so, I assume the midwatch as Officer of the Deck on the USS Ouellet. For the next four hours, I am the direct representative of the commanding officer, responsible for the safe navigation and operation of this Knox class frigate, FF-1077. I have already stopped by Combat Information Center, a deck below me, to familiarize myself with any planned operations, and other ships in the area. Once on the bridge I visit the quartermaster of the watch to review the chart and the ship’s track. I call down to engineering to make sure I know which boiler is operating, and any equipment out of service, and I scan the horizon and check the bridge radar. I greet the helmsman and the lee helmsman, and confirm that their understanding of the ship’s course and speed agrees with my own. Then, having assumed the watch, I prepare for what I hope will be an uneventful four hours. While keeping an eye out for other ships or navigation hazards, and making adjustments to our course and speed to stay on track, a typical watch offers opportunities for quiet conversations, and alone time on the bridge wing to appreciate the vastness of sky and sea.
It is (month and year), and I knew nothing of the so-called race riot that took place on the Kitty Hawk thirteen years earlier. We are steaming home from a deployment to the Western Pacific, with just over a week from concluding a six-month cruise that included port calls to Subic Bay, Philippines, Singapore, Phuket, Thailand, Diego Garcia, The Seychelles, and La Reunion. We spent months in the North Arabian Sea supporting Operation Earnest Will, escorting U.S. flagged, Kuwaiti tankers exiting the Persian Gulf with oil bound for American markets. We are still over a thousand miles from Pearl Harbor, and hundreds of miles from the nearest landmass.
On the bridge with me are the helmsman, Seaman Butler, a young, Black man with a quick smile, and easy way about him. He refuses to let the hardships of a long WESTPAC get to him. Seaman Bonds, a round, young, white man known as Bondo, stands at the lee helm, a lever that he moves upon my command to communicate changes in the ship’s speed to the engine room. Unlike Seaman Butler, Bondo is never happy and doesn’t care who knows it. He is what is known as a short-timer, meaning he will be discharged shortly after the Ouellet returns to port. Not only is Bondo fed up with shipboard life, he’s no great fan of Oahu. “I can’t wait to get off that rock,” he says. Bondo is a farm boy through and through, “I just want to get back home to Iowa. I miss being able to just get in a car and drive.” I laugh to myself. This young man, stationed in “Paradise,” and having just visited places that his high school classmates only dream of, wants only to be back in his childhood bedroom and to drive through the endless cornfields of Iowa. Seaman Butler pipes in with his trademark smile and bravado, reminiscing about the night clubs he frequented in his hometown of Detroit, and the beautiful women who were waiting for him to return.
Quiet descends back upon the darkened bridge, until Bondo, again with his trademark lament, “Hap (their Deck Division Boatswain Mate Chief) is going to kick our ass in the morning. Chipping and painting. Chipping and painting. He says everything needs to be ship shape by the time we pull into Pearl.” Bondo isn’t wrong, bosuns do hard, physical, dirty, often tedious labor, an endless cycle of chipping old paint off and applying a fresh coat. Bondo’s tone disguises the loyalty and respect deck division, indeed the whole crew, has for their chief. And I as well. Senior Chief Harris is a legend, and one of my first Black role models.
This is the way the midwatch passes, memories of home, telling stories of girls left behind in ports across the Pacific, complaining about the food, and the work days. Living with 226 other men on a 438 foot “tin can” for six months, while performing intensive operations 24/7 can certainly breed contempt, but it also builds a unique comradery, comradery like that on display between Butler and Bondo at 0230 on the bridge of the USS Ouellet. I have a vague sense that this easy exchange between the white, Iowa farm boy and Black kid from Detroit wouldn’t happen just anywhere.
In ways I wouldn’t be able to put words to for several years, I was observing how differences in experiences shape perspectives, and how these experiences and perspectives often have a color. In time, I would learn that such differences in experiences and perspectives are not neutral, but are weighted and writ large in systems that privilege white over Black. This simple, quiet sharing between white and Black shipmates prompted the faintest glimmer of an awareness that would one day enable my recognition of systemic racism.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. By the time we cast off from the Pearl Harbor pier, and set a course for the Western Pacific, I had been commissioned for three years.
After graduation and commissioning, I spent the summer in New Orleans awaiting orders to flight school in Pensacola, Florida, the same base where Commander Cloud was required to ride in the back of the bus. Though I had joined the navy with thoughts of ships and the sea, all the “cool kids” wanted to be Navy pilots. Though the thought of flying jets off aircraft carriers (the coolest of the cool kids) terrified me, I had flown in helicopters during midshipman training one summer, and liked it. In fact, some of my friends that summer, jokingly called me “Whirlybird.” But sadly, when I got to Pensacola and took my flight physical, my depth perception was not what it needed to be to be a navy pilot. This makes sense. If you are landing a helicopter on a pitching and rolling, postage stamp size flight deck in a storm, you should be able to discern exactly how close it is.
So, I, along with a couple other Ensigns who had washed out of flight school, were “stashed” on a sailboat used to teach Aviation Officer Candidate School Midshipmen basic seamanship. I was a glorified deck hand, which was alright by me, as I awaited orders to Surface Warfare Officer’s School (SWOS) in Coronado, California.
Though a god-awful student at Tulane, I found SWOS to be a cinch, learning everything from navigation, to boiler chemistry, to firefighting, to the Collection, Holding, and Transfer System (CHT). Yes, that’s the onboard sewage system, and the acronym is not an accident. But more important than learning about all this navy CHT, this was the time that I completed my education as an upper-caste, white man of privilege.
During the six-months of SWOS, I lived in an apartment, right on the ocean, in Imperial Beach, near the Mexican border. I woke up one morning to see several brown-skinned people running north on the beach, followed a few minutes later by Border Patrol agents. My roommate, John, was a salty graduate of Maine Maritime Academy, who intended to gain some experience at sea as a naval officer before joining the merchant marine. Referring to the Keystone Kops scene unfolding below us, John invoked crude stereotypes to disparage Mexicans as lazy, seeking to get on “the dole,” etc. I left Tulane vaguely liberal, by which I mean I supported liberal causes, was against racism and for public assistance for the poor, but without the critical chops to defend these views. John responded to my feeble protest against his racist language by asking if I had ever read Ayn Rand. Seeing the blank look in my eyes, he disappeared into his room and returned with a dog-eared paperback, Rand’s opus, Atlas Shrugged.
I was never much of an athlete, and team sports in particular left me feeling inadequate and embarrassed; imagine the kid way, way out in the outfield when the ball rolls through his legs and rolls all the way to the fence. That was me. Well, Atlas Shrugged, and subsequently Rand’s “objectivist” philosophy, made me feel like what it must feel like to hit a game-winning, walk-off homerun in the championship game of life. Rand made me feel strong, made adrenaline, or was it testosterone, surge through my body. Where I had always pooh-poohed, and laughed off the random trappings of my privilege, Rand constructed a whole narrative to justify such benefit. Not only did I deserve my place in society, but, she says, that place is necessary and heroic.
Rand’s philosophy exalts reason and self-interest above all else, the power and glory of the individual as the driver of production and creator of good. The villains, in Rand’s view, are those who seek to appropriate the production and value of the individual for the needs of the many. Rand illustrates her philosophy with larger than life, stereo-typed, largely, white, male heroes, think rippling muscles, square jaws, and piercing blue eyes. The villains are just as starkly and absurdly drawn as sniveling, groveling, mediocre whiners.
An uncritical embrace of Rand’s construct propelled me into three years of Libertarianism, the contemporary political expression of Rand’s objectivism. I read about Adam Smith’s invisible hand. I subscribed to Reason magazine. And in 1988, I would enroll in the master’s program in political science at the University of Hawaii to further explore the implications of my budding Libertarian beliefs.
But I was missing something in my reading of Rand. I wasn’t the least bit heroic. In fact, I exhibited more of the indolent, careless, mediocrity of the villains in Rand’s novels, coming to expect rewards without doing the work. For those who have read Atlas Shrugged, I was more James Taggart than Hank Reardon. I had always been the kid with two A’s, two B’s, two C’s wh0m my teachers said had great potential if only I would apply myself.
I have already confessed to my abysmal grades in college. I reported aboard the USS Ouellet around the same time as two other junior officers, in 1985, and with them, stood for my Surface Warfare Officer (SWO) qualification. This involved a lot of memorizing things, like what to do when there is a steam leak in a boiler, and the range of Russian surface-to-surface missiles. I didn’t do the work, assuming that I just naturally had what it took to excel. My friends passed, and I did not. Unwilling to expose me as a fraud, the captain delayed awarding the golden SWO pins to all three of us until I could go back and properly prepare for a re-examination.
Despite my shiftlessness, and aided by my privilege, I did learn to be an effective leader, mostly by not micromanaging and by respecting the authority of my Division Chief Petty Officer. These senior enlisted men are extraordinarily skilled and experienced, and as long as you back them up, they will support you. And I genuinely cared for my men, took an interest in them, advocated for them to advance, and defended them when they got in trouble. And, though I could not bother myself with the hard work of a Randian hero, I did enough to be respected up and down my chain of command.
It’s not that Rand’s philosophy had an obvious impact on my personality or behavior. I didn’t go around the ship striking heroic poses, or saying things like, “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” Who was John Galt? Not me. But in hindsight, I am clear that Rand provided a coherent narrative to make sense of and justify my quarter-century of accumulating privilege.
Some will protest that there is nothing inherently or overtly racist about Rand’s objectivism, but when wielded by the likes of me, it explained and supported my privileged place in a racially unequal society. Without recognizing or critiquing systems that enforced and sustained inequality, Rand’s objectivist assumptions presume that those on the bottom of the socio-economic ladder deserve to be there as a result of their sense of entitlement and sloth.
I read that men’s brains finish growing at age twenty-five. On that WESTPAC cruise aboard the USS Ouellet, my psyche had been under construction for twenty-five years, each story of my ancestors, each experience, each cultural reference, erecting a column that supported and strengthened the structure of my white, male identity. By this understanding, Atlas Shrugged functioned as a capstone.
Architecturally, a stone is placed at the top of a structure to mark its completion and protect the walls below. Resting atop the last column supporting the roof, the capstone provides an additional load-bearing surface over and above those provided by the other columns, and terminates the column space, helping to define the whole building. Atlas Shrugged sealed and secured my self in a way that was seen by the world as strong, and beautiful, and good.
Isabel Wilkerson compares the functioning of caste in America to a long-running play.
The actors wear the costumes of their predecessors and inhabit the roles assigned to them. The people in these roles are not the characters they play, but they have played the roles long enough to incorporate the roles into their very being, to merge the assignment with their inner selves and how they are seen in the world…Stay in the roles long enough, and everyone begins to believe that the roles are preordained, that each cast member is best suited by talent and temperament for their assigned role, and maybe for only that role, that they belong there and were meant to be cast as they are currently seen.
The curtain goes up, and with a golden SWO pin affixed to my chest, I declare, “This is Lieutenant Harris, I have the deck and the conn.”
I carried this naively and fraudulently confident self into the most integrated environment that I had ever lived and worked in.
Here is an estimate of the percentage of enlisted men, chief petty officers, and officers on the USS Ouellet who are white, “of color,” and Black, at the time of our WESTPAC.
Number % White % of Color % Black
Enlisted 220 76 24 10
Chiefs 25 64 36 8
Officers 21 90 10 0
Total 266 75 15 10
I remember that there was a junior officer who had an Anglo name, and though he had brown skin, the only indication that he did not share the same cultural experiences as me was revealed at a wardroom potluck one day. We teased him because he brought a can of Carnation condensed milk. He placed the can in boiling water until it made a delicious leche flan. We teased him about his offering, and he said that he had learned this from his grandmother. It would be some years before it dawned on me that he was Hispanic.
And our Navigator was “local” from Hawaii, and what was referred to there as hapa, Hawaiian for “part,” meaning mixed race, likely Chinese and/or Japanese and white. Slipping in and out of pidgin at will, Sonny’s identity simply made him cool.
That said, more often than not, I “didn’t see color.”
One sometimes hears white people say that they “don’t see color” as a way of explaining that they are not racist. There was a time that such a perspective was widely affirmed, but being “color blind” is now understood to communicate that white people do not see all those aspects of identity, culture, and struggle, that make people of color unique. Not seeing color meant that I assumed that everyone was like me, white. Being colorblind makes whiteness normative. By not recognizing my fellow officer as Hispanic, or wondering about Sonny’s immigrant roots, I failed to see and know them.
In this way, despite living in the most diverse state in the union, and working onboard a ship that was one quarter non-white, I still lived in a white bubble.
I was ignorant of the Kitty Hawk race riot that transpired just eight years before I entered the NROTC (we were never taught about it in our leadership classes), and thirteen years before I reported to the Ouellet. That timeline meant that Chiefs aboard the Ouellet had lived through these times, but I never heard or saw any evidence of this.
That said, simply living in community with Black men for the first time in my life, I couldn’t help but to notice difference. My experience on the bridge with Seamen Bonds and Butler is a simple example of this, though I brought no critical perspective to such interactions.
But the most memorable of these shipboard experiences was with Senior Chief Boatswain Mate (BMCS) Robert “Hap” Harris. Spoken of with both admiration and dread by Butler and Bondo as they passed the time on their midwatch, Senior Chief Harris was a living legend. Admirals throughout the fleet knew and respected Hap, his petty officers were fiercely loyal, and newly reported deck seamen feared him. The broad strokes of Hap’s story were well known. He had served on river patrol boats in Vietnam, where he earned two Purple Hearts for wounds received in armed combat. These injuries left Hap with a limp, but nothing slowed him down.
Here are some remembrances of Hap from the Ouellet Facebook page:
Chris P: A favorite Hap story of mine: I took over SUPPO (Supply Officer) duties a couple months before we deployed in October 83. I knew OF Hap but didn’t know he was pretty much a kama’aina (local) and could get about anything done in Pearl without paperwork given his buddies and cumshaw (off the record bargaining) expertise. While topside, I noticed helo blades being loaded on the ship with a crane and knew I had not signed an 1149 to make that happen. I go down to the pier, introduce myself as the SUPPO, and to see what’s happening. I offered to get the paperwork squared away and Hap said “Thanks but we got it covered, sir.” About a minute later, I’m standing to Hap’s right and make the offer again. At that point, I received the back of Hap’s right hand in my chest and lost my breath …and he told me again that he didn’t need my “help”! Despite losing my breath, I was somehow able to say “OK Chief” and retreated to the ship!
Lance M: I think Hap was the most legendary sailor ever to serve on the Ouellet we absolutely adored him. he had been a senior chief for some time before I came on board in 89. He actually had two purple hearts I think. he had been a brown water sailor in Vietnam
One day a first class in G division went to Hap related to him how a third class told a seaman to do something but he refused, then a 2nd class told him to do it but he refused, and then he the first class told this guy to do something he refused. Hap immediately asked “which one?!” and next thing I knew he threw that guy up against the wall and the guy decided very quickly that he was in fact going to do as he was told!! Lol. He did not write him up, he just did it the old-fashioned way. Lol!
Marty W: I got my share of the old-fashioned way…
The only other man I had more respect for was my Dad. I loved Hap and served with him 4 years. He kept me out of so much trouble and had a way of getting my attention like nobody else..lol When I checked on board, I could have striked for any rate (entered any specialty) I wanted with my college and I didn’t really know at the time what I wanted to do. Guess what…I became a ‘Boats’ and there’s only one reason. I wanted to be a real sailor and I owe that to Hap. RIP Hap….you’ll always be my Chief.
James L: I remember when I was a driver for a Japanese Admiral during a RimPac (International naval exercise) I had to go to CINCPAC (headquarters) for a briefing and got stopped by an Admiral who saw the Ouellette rocker (patch) on my whites and he had to ask how Hap was doing.
Paul M: Hap was an awesome leader, it was a great pleasure to work for him. He always took care of his Boats and had so much respect and what honor to serve with him.
Tim D: Hap was like a father to me as some remember I got into trouble here and there. He got so I could stay in (not get thrown out of the Navy) thank God, he was a boxer in Philly , 2 Purples. I believe he had a daughter in Hawaii. His favorite quote he told me once it’s from I don’t know but it was, “no man was put on this world to take anyone’s shit”, he was the fairest and proudest man I believe I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. He was a true hero by a long shot. Love all and miss all everyday god bless
Other than sharing a name, Senior Chief Harris and I were not uniquely close. That said, the respect between officer and chief always felt mutual and genuine. My division chiefs respected me for supporting them up the chain of command and not micromanaging, and I assume that my reputation as a competent officer was communicated to Hap in the chiefs’ mess. There is no doubt that Hap made an impression on me. More than any character in Rand’s novels, Hap had earned his heroic reputation.
At the time of the Kitty Hawk race riot in 1972, Hap had been in the Navy for eight years, was a Petty Officer Third Class, just completing his tour on river patrol boats on the Mekong Delta, and transferring to a minesweeper. Hap died of complications from diabetes after he retired in 1994, but one wonders what Hap experienced as young Black sailors were rioting and Commander Cloud was raising his fist in solidarity. It is worth noting that the testimonies above all come from white sailors, which doesn’t suggest for a moment that Hap was immune to the harsh indignities of racism throughout his career, only that by the time a Black sailor made chief, he had learned to successfully navigate a white world and the Navy’s systemic racism.
My shipboard experience in the Navy was not all that was happening in my life during my first formative years in Hawaii.
First and foremost, I lived in Hawaii, baby! A…LOOO…HA! Like the vast majority of white visitors, I brought little critical perspective with me to the islands. That said, I did read James Michener’s historical novel, Hawaii, which though it provides the broad strokes of Hawaiian history, is now critiqued for its stereotypes and “soft” racism. So, though I had some sense of the awful toll European diseases and American missionaries had taken on the native people of Hawaii, and knew some of the immigration patterns driven by colonialism, I was all about beaches and babes, satisfied with the exoticized vision of Hawaii marketed to tourists. I lived with a roommate in a small duplex just off the beach in the tony neighborhood of Kahala, and drove a 1972 VW bus. Though military personnel have a fraught history on Oahu, I was largely oblivious to this and was livin’ the life!
I had only lived in Hawaii for about a year when I met Mary, the women who would become my first wife. We met in a bar near the University of Hawaii called Anna Banana’s, dancing to a popular world music band, the Pagan Babies. I didn’t have a lot of experience dating, and still felt self-conscious and awkward talking to most women (flashback to the Merion Cricket Club), but fueled by a few beers, I found Mary easy to talk to. Ours was an easy relationship grounded in friendship, that seemed to move effortlessly into marriage.
Mary was eleven years older than me. Her high school boyfriend had gone to Vietnam and came back broken and abusive, ending their relationship. She had worked as a travel agent, which is what brought her to Hawaii. In our early years we travelled the islands, staying in one resort after another, sipping Mai Tais at sunset, going to lesser-known beaches (somewhere, there is a naked picture of me, looking fine, on a deserted beach in Moloka’i), and local coffee shops for banana macadamia nut pancakes.
Mary was working on a master of social work degree at the University of Hawaii, and let me know early on that she suffered from chronic depression. Though she affirmed my “sunny disposition” she made it clear that my role was not to cheer her up. But I was young and naïve about such things, and realized years later, too late, that I had appointed myself to be her white knight, her hero. In response to one bout of depression, I remember saying to her, with all earnestness, “Mary, life is good!” as if the power of my words were enough to cure her. I have come to understand that early experiences with my father’s alcoholism led to codependent behavior, my sense of self coming from an exaggerated need to care for, or more properly, “fix” people, but I was ignorant of this at the time. These same tendencies would also inform my early response to racism, entering in with a naïve desire to “help” poor Black and brown people.
Sadly, as years passed and it became clear that I could not cure Mary’s depression by simply modeling happiness, I came to inwardly blame her for her illness, and began to spend more and more time with friends while she stayed home. I wonder too, if the fact that our relationship was grounded in companionship, minus an impassioned romance, meant that there wasn’t the necessary glue to keep us together. As easily as we drifted into our marriage, we drifted back out to divorce.
In addition to learning a hard lesson about finding healthier outlets for my tendencies to help, Mary taught me other valuable lessons. She was a smart, educated, liberal woman. I began to deepen a critique of my white world (somehow, without jettisoning my libertarian leanings), and also became more open to perspectives other than my own. And thank goodness, I also got over my anxiety about talking to women, learning that being curious and listening was so much easier and more enjoyable than trying to think of clever things to say.
Though my formation as an upper-caste, privileged white man was largely complete, maintenance was necessary to reenforce and sustain my role. Here, the Navy provided the perfect tools by delineating and requiring clear boundaries between officers and enlisted men. Close relationships between officer and enlisted, whether business relationships, romances, or friendships are called fraternization, and are prohibited and punishable under article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). There are thoughtful reasons for this prohibition as it avoids favoritism that could impact an officer’s decision to put a sailor into harm’s way, and could impact that enlisted man’s decision to promptly obey that order.
In addition to the prohibition of relationships, there are customs and courtesies that reenforce the distinction between officers and enlisted. Enlisted sailors initiate a salute when approaching an officer, and address the officer, not by his or her first name, but with their rank, Lieutenant, Lieutenant Harris, or simply ma’am or sir. Though failure to do so is rarely formally punished, an officer will typically correct a sailor that fails to render the expected sign of respect. Even the most senior enlisted man, a Senior Chief Harris, is expected to extend these courtesies to the most junior officer, an Ensign Harris.
Again, there are reasonable, mission-related reasons for the existence of such laws and customs, and they were not created to be deliberately racist of classist. However, when the officer corps is whiter, more educated, and makes significantly more money than enlisted sailors, the institution has created a de facto system in which a disproportionate number of less-educated, poorer, sailors of color are asked to salute, say yes sir, and act on orders from white, upper caste officers. These are roles officers and enlisted play, but as Wilkerson points out, the roles become us. The system helped prop up, my white supremacist identity.
Some officers, especially junior officers, would flaunt these conventions – I would sometimes hear, “Mr. Kelly lets us call him Greg.” And as a Midshipman, I sometimes rolled my eyes in response to such requirements, as if to say, “can you believe we have to do this?” But by the time I reported aboard the Ouellet, I fully embraced my role, and became Lieutenant Harris.
Once you know where to look for it, evidence of upper caste, white supremacist constructs is everywhere. In my family, we were taught that it is not polite to talk about money, how much you make, how much a home or car cost. I didn’t recognize that this is a white, middle-class “rule.” It makes sense. Open conversations about how much the idle rich are worth, or how much white-collar people make when compared to blue collar or working poor, reveal the gross injustice of a system that demands back-breaking labor in return for little pay while compensating CEOs of big corporations with millions of dollars plus stock options. My wife, Lourdes, who grew up poor, has no such compunction about money talk, quite the opposite. For her, knowing how much someone makes is a way to assess whether she is getting what she deserves. And if we aren’t, she’ll have something to say about it. Silence perpetuates the status quo. Knowledge promotes justice.
This chapter has continued to emphasize that white supremacy and racism have intersecting personal and systemic aspects, supporting and reenforcing each other. Yet there are ways that the personal is too often deployed to minimize or deny the presence of larger systemic issues. Examples of personal racism are used to suggest that these are isolated cases, while examples of Black excellence, like that of Commander Cloud and Senior Chief Harris, can be used to suggest that the system is a “color blind” meritocracy.
This is why Commander Cloud’s response to the race riot on the Kitty Hawk is so exceptional. I served with two white XOs on the Ouellet, both represented and enforced strict observance of all Navy laws, customs and conventions, preserving the status quo. As a white man, steeped in the Navy culture, when I read Commander Cloud’s story for the first time, I uttered aloud to no one, “Ho-ly-Shit!”
Cloud’s raised fist, and his later speech to a crowd of angry Black sailors on the Kitty Hawk foc’sle, taking his shirt off and daring them to beat him if they didn’t believe that he was one of them, a Black man who understood their plight, reveals the violent clash of the Black double consciousness named by DuBois.
In addition to this story of myself, there are infinite other narratives I could weave that would be as almost true as this critique of my privilege and white supremacy. I could tell you what a great guy I am (because, I am) but that is not necessary, because you already know that story; our dominant white culture already tells that story for me, over and over again. It is the critical perspective that is too often left out in the telling of white lives.
As this chapter of my book and my life came to a close, the foundation, columns, capstone and maintenance plan of my life were about to be shaken, their structural integrity undermined, through critical processes of deconstruction and re-formation toward an antiracist identity.
Pastor Pondering 