Wellll.... in that case, I think demonizing the enemy based on racial stereotyping is a different thing than the infiltration or creation of subcultures inside the organization. If it was the KKK distributing the cartoons, maybe.
Actually, there has to be research on the KKK in the military. They were HUGE at the beginning of the last century (things I learned from Superman -- the radio show collaborated with a famous undercover investigator Stetson Kennendy to give away all their secret signs and code words as Supes battled the Klan in... must've been the 50s, I think.)
Lemme look....
Can't find much on Klan inside the Army, other than a few brief mentions. For the most part, they thought of the Army as the enemy, being good Confederates. And still do, like so....
Oh, there's this from an old Guardian article:
In the aftermath of Martin Luther King's assassination on April 4, 1968, black Americans rioted in more than 100 US cities. But in Vietnam many white soldiers flagrantly applauded his murder. At Cam Ranh Bay, a group of white men wore Ku Klux Klan robes and paraded around the military base. At another compound, the Confederate flag, so symbolic of racial persecution, was hoisted for three days....Other grisly practices, such as cross burnings, were uprooted from Alabama and Mississippi to the war theatre of Vietnam, and some commanders tolerated Ku Klux Klan "klaverns" on their bases.
It's about Vietnam as the first truly integrated war, and the whole thing's worth a read. In the South, some draft boards were run by the Klan.
Which led to the formation of opposing subcultures:
he black Americans who were drafted from 1967 to 1970 called themselves Bloods, and many were influenced by the teachings and politics of Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers and Malcolm X.
Terry explains: "They would wear black amulets, they would wear black beads, black gloves to show their identity and racial pride." Some wore "slave bracelets" made out of boot laces and walked with "Black Power canes", sticks with the nub carved into a clenched fist. To offset the oppressive ubiquity of the Confederate flag, these soldiers flew black flags from their patrol boats and Jeeps. Another group of black servicemen, who were followers of Ron Karenga's US (United Slaves), created a flag that asserted in Swahili "My fear is for you". The "dap", a complicated ritualised handshake that changed from unit to unit , was also common among black personnel in Vietnam....To increase their racial solidarity, some black troops also started semi-militant bodies. Blacks In Action, the Unsatisfied Black Soldier, the Ju Jus and the Mau Maus were just some of these groups that, as Terry explains, "supported each other and studied black history and talked about events in America and were willing to support each other in an enlisted club over black music. If they wanted something in the post exchange, they would collectively request it."
There's more interesting stuff later on, especially about how things changed closer to the front lines, and how this stuff paved the way for Colin Powell's career. |
