Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Thanks so much, Linda. I got a little knocked off my game when the
laid-off Starbucks barista emerged from beneath Colbert's desk. (No,
they didn't warn me about that gag.) Good to hear that I managed to
recover somewhat.
  

    
Just a side note--disillusionment with the army in WWII because of racism
would be a very interesting topic--has anyone done any sort of general
treatment of the subject?  My Mexican grandfather had a rough time and it
affected him and his family (my grandmother and father) profoundly.  He
never went into much detail with me, but my sense is that it was pretty
brutal.
  

    
One interesting thing to think about is how WW II in song and story
(and especially in movies) was used to celebrate the unity of America
to the point where the ethnically mixed platoon became a cliche (the
wise-cracking kid from Brooklyn, the hayseed from Nebraska, etc.).  But
the unity they were celebrating was between old white stock and the
white immigrants of 1850-1920.  Latinos, Native Americans, Blacks, and
Asians were conspicuously absent.  Only in the 1960s in films like "The
Dirty Dozen" does the myth of ethnic unity in WW II get
(ahistorically) extended to non-whites.
  

    
That's a good point, Mark. 

Yet enough Black American soldiers who served in the European theater
were sufficiently affected by their equal treatment by Europeans, the
French especially, to come home not incapacitated by brutal treatment
and bitterness but angry enough to begin asking questions. The civil
rights movement, including Jackie Robinson's breaking of baseball's
color line, could not have got off the ground, I think, without those
soldiers coming home with stories of a western culture that seemed
color-blind *and* the fact that enough of them came home in good enough
shape to begin doing something about it. 
  

    
Thanks for the posts today, folks, and apologies for the radio
silence. I was out and about with the family today, and just arrived
back from Brooklyn--subway woes made for a long hike back home.

I'll post something more in-depth in the a.m. tomorrow. But a quick
book recommendation to My free and simple etc.: Evelio Grillo's "Black
Cuban, Black American":

http://www.arte.uh.edu/view_book.aspx?isbn=155885293X

More tomorrow, especially on the issue of Jackie Robinson.
  

    
Geoff Dyer wrote a book "But Beautiful," in which he profiles Lester
Young's court-martial. The book is a series of vignettes of several
musicians in which he tries to evoke their tragic lives.  He draws on
photos, anecdotes, the music, and, in Lester Young's case, the records
of his court-martial.  It is a little pretentious and a bit too
imaginative for my taste, but he does capture some of the tortured
artist aspect of their lives.

He lists as sources: 

Transcripts from court-martial
John McDonough, "The Court-Martial of Lester Young," Downbeat, 1/81
Robert Reisner article in Downbeat, 30 April, 1959
Dennis Stock's photograph of Lester in the Alvin Hotel
  

    
If the proceedings were anything like what was portrayed in the
book,then it is a very instructive demonstration of the parallel
universes that black soldiers and white officers lived in.  
  

    
Huh, I'll have to check that out.
  

    
David, thanks a million for the info on Dyer's book. If a transcript
of the Young court-martial exists, I'm guessing it was a general
court-martial--that is, one reserved for rather serious crimes. The
Army did not retain the records for so-called special court-martials,
which were usually used to adjudicate matters involving minor
insubordination. I tried to get the records for Herman Perry's first
court-martial, when he was sentenced to three months hard labor for
talking back to a lieutenant. But the Army's Clerk of Court told me
that those documents were either never archived or destroyed long
ago--a real blow to historians.

Jackie Robinson was court-martialed for insubordination--among the
charges was that he gave his commanders several sloppy salutes. He was
one of the few defendants to be found not guilty, however--most likely
because he was already something of a celebrity, owing to his athletic
exploits at UCLA.

Mark, you bring up a fascinating point that I wish I could've
discussed more in the book. Last night, I recommended Evelio Grillio's
"Black Cuban, Black American," the autobiography of a Florida-born man
of Cuban descent who served as an engineer (i.e. manual laborer) along
the Ledo Road. The book points out that most of Grillo's fellow
Cuban-Americans were assigned to "regular" Army units during World War
II. But because his skin was darker than his ethnic peers, Grillo was
assigned to a black unit.

That story always stuck with me, because it so neatly encapsulates the
tragic folly of the Army's racial policies during World War II. The
main justification for segregation was science--the (obviously
nonsensical) notion that blacks didn't possess the biological knack for
combat. But at the same time, the Army was using the "eyeball test" to
segregate. There's a real logical inconsistency to that, and I'm
stunned and saddened that no one at the time--at least outside the
black press--could figure it out.

Steve, you're right about how European attitudes toward race affected
African-American soldiers. Time and again during my research, I read
first-person accounts from black GIs who were pleasantly taken aback at
how they were treated overseas. (And keep in mind that the Harlem
Hellfighters were national heroes to the French during World War I.)
But I have to admit, there's something a little cognitively jarring
about reading those accounts, then flipping open the paper to read
about racial tensions in contemporary France--though those tensions
might be described as religious more than racial. Thoughts? Were
African-Americans given a warm welcome merely because they were serving
a useful purpose (i.e. liberating a nation)? Or has there been some
shift in the French attitude toward race over the past six decades?
(Again, I realize that the issue here might simply be French hostility
toward Islam, but I thought it was nevertheless an interesting question
to ask.)
  

    
>...blacks didn't possess the biological knack for combat.

Irony abounds in this whole area of thought.  Rudyard Kipling, not
exactly the most politically correct observer, certainly reached
exactly the opposite conclusion about the black ability for combat.

<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/%22Fuzzy-Wuzzy%22>
  

    
Racial tensions in France aren't racial because of skin color
primarily, although that factor does eventually enter in. It's more
about culture (Muslim vs. Catholic) and economics. A lot of those
discriminated against don't want to integrate into French society --
the headscarf brouhaha, for instance, or the animal sacrifices around
holidays -- and thus are at odds with the majority culture. It's just
incidental to the central conflict that they're pretty easily spotted
by their skin color. 
  

    
In France bigotry takes the form of chauvanism rather than race-based
hatred.  <captward> is right about it being about culture.  The more
you speak, eat, pray, and have families like the French, the more you
are accepted.  The one exception, I would say, is the Arabs.  Man do
the French hate the Algerians. They call them "rats" among other
colorful terms. When I lived there, when an Algerian woman was walking
on the street in traditional dress, you could see the disgust on
people's faces.  When a Vietnamese or Cambodian woman in traditional
dress, was walking down the street, she would get looks of
appreciation.

Like most things French and American, they don't like to admit that
they are like us and vice-versa.  In the US we had our "peculiar
institution" and thus our trouble dealing with blacks.  France's
adventure in Algeria, while way different than our slavery, did imprint
them in a similar "peculiar" way.

  
  

    
Mark, Kipling certainly wasn't the only unlikely candidate to hold a
sharply different opinion than the leaders of the Jim Crow Army. I was
really surprised by the plaudits that Gen. Pershing offered black
members of the American Expeditionary Force after World War I. True,
Pershing was still a segregationist, but he didn't buy into the racial
science hooey that led to the "SOSing" of so many African-Americans
during World War II. (SOSing refers to the practice of relegating black
troops to Services of Supply units--that is, battalions and regiments
charged with behind-the-frontlines chores like road maintenance.)

I've often wondered how the carnage of WWI affected intellectual
attitudes in the 20s and 30s. People were obviously stunned at how
technology had enabled such mass slaughter, on a previously unimagined
scale. But wasn't there also an optimism that, having been through that
horrendous experience, mankind's penchant for reason (and, by
extension, science) would save us from another such cataclysm? I think
that may be why racial science enjoyed such a vogue during that
error--it enabled bigots to couch their fears in "scientific" terms
(e.g. all the nonsense about cranial capacities and heel lengths).
Because science would supposedly save us from giving into our basest,
most violent instincts.

As a result, the Army became very systematic in its efforts to
racially cleanse its ranks. One of the most depressing stats in my book
is about the racial makeup of the Army in the late 1930s--it was just
1.5 percent black, and there were only four black officers (and three
of them were chaplains). It's crazy to think how many willing Army
lifers were turned away simply because they were black.
  

    
We're turning our Inkwell spotlight to a new conversation, and
I'd like to thank Brendan and Cynthia for leading a fascinating
discussion these last two weeks. 

Just because we're focused on a different conversation doesn't mean
this one has to end, though.  You're welcome to stick around and chat
as long as you like.
  

    
Thanks a million for having me, Dana. Really enjoyed this, as
evidenced by the fact that I checked the conversation for updates about
50 times per day!

Thanks, too, to everyone who participated, and to Cynthia for
moderating. I'll keep checking back if any of y'all want to keep the
dialogue going.

In the meantime, I hope newcomers and casual perusers will pay a visit
to the "Now the Hell Will Start" website:

http://www.nowthehellwillstart.com/

And if anyone ever wants to drop me a line, I'm eminently reachable at
brendan AT youthrobber DOT com. Cheers to all.
  

    
Brendan, thank you for giving us your time and knowledge. I
appreciated your thoughtful, thorough responses to all of our questions
very much. 
  

    
Brendan you are one of the most gracious guests to appear here. 
Please check back and don't go away.
  

    
Yes, it was really a pleasure!
  

    
Brendan, it's been a pleasure! Thanks so much for sharing so much
interesting info, and for undertaking the NtHWS in the first place.
I'll keep checking in too, and your book is at the top of my gift list
for a couple of (OK racist) history buffs in my fam.