Race in theVietnam War 
The Vietnam War didn’t start in the Gulf of Tonkin, or in the jungles of Vietnam; it started when this nation was created almost two hundred and thirty years ago. A racial ideology of white superiority was instilled into the people of this country from the founding of the nation. This ideology breeds racism. Racism changes throughout history, it is always present. The racism that exists today isn’t the same as it was in the middle 19th Century. Historically, we see racial ideology most prevalent in military. The military represents a place of honor and patriotism for white males. When the military became a place of racial equality in the 1950's under President Truman, supporters of this ideology see it as a direct threat to their racial superiority and began to focus their attacks on minorities via the economy. With the emergence of the war in Vietnam, the idea of racial superiority is stirred up again. Race becomes an explicit issue both in the military, as well as society.
The Vietnam War wasn’t isolated to just military conflicts in Vietnam and Cambodia; a war of racial identity in a economic sense was being waged against minorities as well. The U.S. found itself fighting a multi front war. On one side was the suppression of the Vietnamese as a culture by so-called American divine intervention, then there was the suppression of African Americans and the overwhelming burden they took on to fight the war, and the movements for peace and equality raging at home.
The military saw the Vietnamese as animals, and pounded this idea into the soldiers. The military used Vietnamese’s hit and run tactics to reinforce their claim. They made it appear that they weren’t men enough to fight the Americans face to face, and that they were weaker because they had to set booby traps instead of making head on charges into fortified lines. This allowed the soldiers to see the Vietnamese as less than human. “Assumptions about Asian inferiority fed America’s total race war.” The Vietnamese men were seen as cowards and the women were treated like animals because they would blow up soldiers given the slightest chance. To help cope with viewing humans as animals, soldiers began to use racial slangs like Gook. “This Mere Gook Rule allowed Americans to view Asians as less than human and therefore... legitimate targets to be mocked, exploited, and perhaps murdered.” The word “Gook” became the soldier’s way of dealing with their anger, and it enabled them to kill and rape women without a second thought. This word dehumanized the Vietnamese, not into a lower race, but a whole different species.
Soldiers of every color in the U.S. forces understood the threat of attacks from women and children, and this fed the ideology of the Vietnamese being a whole different species. In the U.S. during the Sixties, women weren’t expected to fight for their country, let alone be used as human booby traps. The U.S. soldiers couldn’t even begin to comprehend why the Vietnamese would allow their women, “the ones who needed the most protection,” to fight a war for them. This cultural difference is one of the major contributors to the U.S. soldiers viewing the Vietnamese as inferior to them. Many wars throughout history have been started for this very reason. What might seem completely backwards to one culture could be the everyday lifestyle of another. There is no denying that the Viet Cong used women and children to get the U.S. soldiers to let their guard down in order to launch an attack, but the people of Vietnam were defending their country by any means necessary. The Vietnamese were desperate to hold onto their country, and they used every resource available, including women, to achieve this.
The soldiers weren’t alone; even the president of the United States wasn’t without blame for fueling racism. Even though Lyndon Johnson had not sent the first troops to Vietnam, under his presidency, the amount of troops committed to Vietnam tumbled out of control. A New Deal Democrat back in the 30's and the main instrument in getting the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, Johnson’s main concern was dealing with the nations’ poor. Growing up in a poor family in Texas, Johnson could relate to the growing poor population in America. With ideas of the New Deal in his head, Johnson fought for desegregation in the place that it occurred the most, the urban black community. Johnson planned on government housing for the poor and equal education for African Americans as the basis of his fight for equality of not only African Americans, but the rest of the poor across the U.S. This idea became known as the “Great Society.” With an allegiance with the most powerful African American group in America, the NAACP, President Johnson went to work on his promise to fight poverty, and to gain equality for African Americans. However, with the war in Vietnam escalating, the money that was once promised to fight poverty, especially among minorities, was shifted to a region known as Southeast Asia. Johnson’s idea to attack racial superiority by Anglo-Saxons had fallen apart. Now the man that promised to close the gap between black and white was undoing his own stitch work by supporting a war in a part of the world where most Americans couldn’t even find on a map.
Facing economic suppression at home, African Americans saw the military as an opportunity to rise from poverty. With a large percentage of African Americans living in poverty, many men joined the military to better themselves. This had a direct effect on the amount of African Americans serving in, not only the military, but in combat units as well. The amount of African Americans serving in combat unites compared to whites, were staggering. “By 1980 new recruits were 26 percent black-37 percent black in the army-compared to a civilian youth population of about 13 percent.” With prominent white families, and college students, who tended to be white being excluded from the draft, African Americans took the brunt of the combat casualties merely by having larger enrollment numbers due to their economic status. “In 1969, education deferments were abolished, and a national lottery was adopted in its place. The shift to a volunteer force would be even less representative with regard to race and socioeconomic status, since there would be less incentive for the more affluent segments in society (who are disproportionably white) to enlist.” Civil Rights activists like Reverend James Bevel of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference called the Vietnam War another way to continue the suppression of African Americans. “On several occasions Bevel went so far as to characterized United States involvement in the war as a policy of “genocide” against people of color.” Bevel helped bring to light that the war was another avenue for African Americans to be suppressed. Facing an economic suppression, and taking the brunt of combat casualties, African Americans began to realize that Vietnam was an extension of the racism that they and their families had endured throughout American history.
Throughout the streets of the U.S., African Americans along with many different ethnic groups decided they needed to do something to counter the attacks made on them by this racial ideology. Many tactics were peaceful in their manner. Protests like the Alabama Bus boycott, the Freedom Riders, and the protests at Berkeley, were typical of the early civil rights and war protest years. Deemed by many to be ineffective, more violent techniques for equality were sought. The creation of the Black Panther Party, and the Watt Riots became the basis for the civil rights and peace acts in the later years of the Vietnam War. The violent tactics of the Black Panthers led to many other organizations throughout the U.S. and the world. “The Brown Berets, the white patriot Party, the Red Guard, and the Young Lords were all minority groups that were influenced by the Black Panthers.” With groups like the Black Panther Party gaining support through violence, and Bevel making allegations of racial genocide against blacks, tensions grew to the boiling point. Black groups like the NAACP decided they needed to speak out in order to maintain any progress made in regard to racial equality. “Bevel’s antiwar statements falsely interjected race into the war issue, and represented an abandonment of the cause of racial equality for an irresponsible foray into foreign affairs.” The NAACP had to speak against Bevel’s allegations against the war, because they had formed a partnership with President Johnson. If they were to join voices with Bevel and the SCLC, they would lose precise monies that would go to programs to fight against poverty in their constituent’s neighborhoods. It wasn’t until the last years of the war, that the NAACP realized that James Bevel was right. The war was sucking away precise funds that would have gone to programs to help minorities in society. Now that money was being spent on weapons like Agent Orange, a devastating herbicide that still wreaks havoc on the Vietnam economy to this day.
How does America differ from any other culture throughout history that has used racial superiority to inspire their troops? America’s history is full of racial wars, whether it was against the Native Americans or the Mexicans in the War of Aggression; the idea of racial superiority has been an issue in the U.S. when it is conducting a war. Air Force General Curtis LeMay admitted that “we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals after the fire bombings of Tokyo had we lost.” Why hasn’t America been convicted of war crimes? What makes a difference if America wins or loses the war? They are still creating racial genocide against another race. “What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win.” Defects from the use of Agent Orange are still seen among the Vietnamese today. Cancer and lack of sufficient, and safe soil have led to an economic crisis in Vietnam. Also, the lack of a safe water supply has been linked to the use of this devastating herbicide. Soldiers of all colors and backgrounds, who had left to fight Communism, came back with images of young children and women dying at the hands of their own soldiers. Their idea of America, like so many American citizens at home had changed forever. America was no longer viewed as the messenger for freedom. Vietnam and the military’s conduct had tainted the idea of American freedom. Despite the thousands of Americans and Vietnamese dead as a result of the war in Vietnam, major progress was made toward racial equality. The many protests by whites and African Americans alike, challenged many of Americas values, but also opened the door towards equality, both economically as well as socially, for African Americans and other minorities across the U.S.
Created by Kol Zuppan