What Are Students Reading for Election Day in “Race and Immigration”? You Might Be Surprised

It will interesting to hold class today with undergrads who are 18-20 years old. One of our readings is John W. Bodnar, “How Long Does It Take to Change a Culture?” Armed Forces & Society (1999). Captain Bodnar published this study while teaching in the Naval Academy.

He describes four stages, occurring from 1943-1969, where conservative Navy leaders who were accustomed to total racial segregation gave way to a more diverse—and also a more inclusive— generation.

This study might hold clues of our nation’s electorate, which features a generational difference in matters such as race, culture, and political correctness.

Navy leaders either opposed FDR and Truman’s racial integration orders or sought to slow-walk them. One of their main concerns was bunking white and black men together.

Navy Secretary Frank Knox objected to a plan to billet 5,000 blacks with whites. He wrote: “Men on board a ship live in particularly close association; in their messes one man sits beside another…. How many white men would choose their closest associates in sleeping quarters, in mess be of another race?”

FDR overrode Secretary Knox’s racist view.

For the next 30 years, the Navy slowly purged racial slurs from manuals, magazines, and conversations.

Reef Points (a Navy magazine) frequently published slurs— “moke” and “chico”— referring to blacks and Filipinos. “Dago” was occasionally used. Over time, these words were purged.

Captain Bodnar concludes: “I suggest that we can use integration at the U.S. Naval Academy as a model system to examine the tortuous path of social change…. We can estimate how long it takes from the day a president orders a new social policy to the day when a policy is an integral part of military culture.”

Our class will contemplate whether our current president is having a reverse effect—or, to put it differently, whether the current generation of senior military leaders, who were brought up in a culture of social equality, will preserve this approach or bend to their Commander in Chief.

We will also consider how older and younger voters today with different views on social equality compete for—or cooperate with each other— to influence change.