Found it. not my paper, which I wish I could find. but some fragments of my notes, which will work well enough. first off, the book I am referring to is called “Fighting Two Fronts,” by James Westheider, NYU press 1997. I used that as well as Appy’s “Working Class War” and Wallace Terry’s “Bloods” as my primary cites for the paper.
First, I’d like to reinforce that I don’t believe there was a conspiracy by the US government to kill black people/poor people. Instituitional and personal racism had to do with what I am going to spout out below. It happened that way, despite the absence of a large scale conspiracy theory (which many people often accuse me of believing in).
Anyways, to start with the institutional racism:
College was one of the most effective ways to dodge the draft through an educational exemption. Black people were far less likely to attend college than white people, partly because of the discrepancy in educational quality between largely white and largely black high schools. Partly because of economic level. Since the facts and figures come with the latter, lets go with that:
-In 1965 the median income for the average white family was $8, 274 per year. For the average black family, it was $5,141. Only 1 in 5 black families earned more than $10,000 a year. 1/3 of all blacks were on or below the poverty line (Westheider).
-And Appy noted that “youth from families earning $7,500 to $10,000 a year were two and a half times more likely to attend college than those from families earning under $5,000.”
Since students who had the educational level but not the money to attend college, going to school part-time and working was the most popular option. But the college exemption only applied to full time students.
Now lets go to the personal racism. Local draft boards were overwhelmingly white, conservative, and veteran (of WWII and Korea mostly).
In 1967 there were only 278 blacks sitting on local draft boards out of 17, 123 board members nationwide. In 7 southern states every local board was all white. While I had no idea that George Hamilton was as old as he was at the time, I did find the page number of the cite in Westheiders book: pg. 25. I’m sure you can find that easily if you care to dispute it. He was granted an economic hardship exemption despite the fact that him and his mother lived in a “modest mansion.” So what if he was an actor and had done several movies, the point is that economic exemptions are meant for people who are poor.
Furthermore, the draft was often used to pick out civil rights activists, especially in the south. (Westheider). In many states African Americans were required to rip off a corner of their draft form so that they could be more easily identified.
All in all, blacks had a 30% chance of being drafted and whites had an 18% chance of being drafted. 64% of eligible blacks (whose draft card came up) were drafted compared to 33% for whites. (p. 35 of Westheider’s book)
It didn’t end in the draft, either. Black soldiers were put into combat in higher proportions than white soldiers. Black soldiers comprised of 20% of combat infantry in 1968, and 31% in 1969. They had a very noticeable absence from the National Guard, which rarely saw combat.
Why? In part because of AFQ tests- or military intelligence tests. The tests classified recruits into 5 categories. The top 2 categories basically got to choose what field they entered into. The bottom category was relegated to combat and supply duties. In 1965-66, 40% of African Americans who took the AFQ tests fell into the lowest category. Again, this relates to their lack of educational opportunities and the fact that AFQ tests were culturally biased.
Project 100,000. Of the 247,000 men drafted in this program, 41% were black, 37% were in combat. Project 100,000 troops were 3x more likely to see combat and 2.5x more likely to die in combat than the Armed Forces as a whole.
As a whole blacks comprised 9.3% of active duty soldiers, but had 7, 241 casualties- roughly 12.6%. That is a 3% higher death rate than the overall death rate.
And, Westheider argues, this number is low because the military took painstaking measures to reduce the # of black casualties later in the war (1970-71). This was due to the high amount of criticism the army recieved by the black press and high profile leaders such as MLK (before he died).
If you go back to 1965, black soldiers comprised 25% of the combat deaths eventhough they were only 12% of the overall combat troops.
And it does not stop there. Black soldiers were also dishonorably discharged at much higher rates than white soldiers. In 1970 blacks recieved 18% of less-than-honorable discharges given that year, and 26% of dishonorable discharges. In the Navy it was even worse. Eventhough blacks only comprised of 6% of enlisted men, they recieved 17% of dishonorable discharges that year.
Read that book if you are interested in the subject. I only scratched the surface of facts and figures given in the book. At the very least you will have plenty of fodder to criticize if you have the opportunity. Hopefully, though, you will concede and admit that black soldiers died in disproportionate numbers, as well as the poor.
thanks for pressuring me into finding these notes
i will sleep well tonight.
colin
. Hardship exemptions my ass! I did a huge final essay as my senior seminar thesis on the racism inherent in the draft. I searched frantically for it, but it is lost in my tome of folders, notebooks, and papers.