Military leaders open up about race

the nation's military took a huge step forward toward racial equality this past week a step that david martin tells us underscores just how difficult life for black military leaders has been many of you may be wondering what i'm thinking about the current events surrounding the tragic death of george floyd here's what i'm thinking about and with that air force general charles q brown began an emotional social media soliloquy on the racial bias he has dealt with all his life i'm thinking about my air force career where i was often the only african-american in my squadron or as a senior officer the only african-american in the room we first met general brown on a 60-minute story five years ago when he was the commander of the air war against isis directing strikes in iraq and syria the amount of secondaries that are going off there gives you a good indication or some level of explosives inside those buildings his low-key demeanor then was entirely different from that of the man who could remain silent no longer i'm thinking about wearing the same flight suit with the same wings on my chest as my peers and they mean questioned by another military member are you a pilot part of what makes this so powerful is that brown who goes by the initial cq is about to become the next chief of staff of the air force general charles q brown jr as the united states air force chief of staff is confirmed the first african-american to head one of the armed services what is the importance of general brown becoming the chief of staff of the air force it's historic but part of me also says you know why didn't it happen before sergeant major of the army michael grinston the top enlisted soldier in uniform took to social media to talk about his own battle against racism here's part of my story i was born in 1968 my father was black my mother was white did you feel racism as a child i i didn't just feel it i saw it i saw the kkk march down my street when i was a child grinston enlisted in the army in 1987. you must have had to check a box on race when you enlisted i struggled with what to check on that block so at the time my driver's license said caucasian so i checked caucasian several years later he had to choose again which block to check so i checked black and i handed it to this lady and she looks at me and goes well that's not funny you're right it's not funny but that's who i am grinston obviously succeeded in the army and says his race never held him back but it's always there from the day i joined until the last time i got the question was in 2014-15 where you got the what are you it's like the worst thing you could ever ask me and what would you say a human being being caught between two worlds can reveal some ugly truths i was surprised with what people would say when they thought you were white and it was just blatant racist how did you usually handle it a very ambiguous answer instead of that's wrong and don't ever say that again and you probably shouldn't be in the army that's how i wish i would have said that after grinston unburdened himself on social media he heard back from other african-american soldiers the most powerful one is that when he took off his uniform and he walked to his house the police came and arrested him for breaking and entering i just can't get that image out of my head his video has been viewed more than a quarter million times what kind of conversation were you trying to start open up and actually talk about our struggles like mine it's hard for everyone to understand if you don't hear the story even success stories like grinston's or cq browns are stories of racial inequality i'm thinking about the pressure i felt to perform error-free especially for supervisors i perceive had expected less for me as an african-american i think about having to represent by working twice as hard to prove their expectations and perceptions of african-americans were invalid our strategy to go after this army is very very simple it's been three decades since colin powell became chairman of the joint chiefs since then it's been nothing but white males cq brown will break the chain but not erase the long shadow of slavery i can't fix centuries of racism in our country nor can i fix decades discrimination may have impacted members of our air force but the soon-to-be chief of staff of the air force and the sergeant-major of the army have started talking about it in a way military leaders never have before the blinders and the shields are off and now we're having those tough conversations that we didn't have 20 years ago

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 101,380

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news

Id: uRID9w_V88U

Length: 5min 22sec (322 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 14 2020