Deep-rooted racism, discrimination permeate US military seattlepi.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from seattlepi.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
By KAT STAFFORD, JAMES LAPORTA, AARON MORRISON and HELEN WIEFFERING Updated: May 27, 2021 01:20 AM Created: May 27, 2021 12:57 AM
For Stephanie Davis, who grew up with little, the military was a path to the American dream, a realm where everyone would receive equal treatment. She joined the service in 1988 after finishing high school in Thomasville, Georgia, a small town said to be named for a soldier who fought in the War of 1812.
Over the course of decades, she steadily advanced, becoming a flight surgeon, commander of flight medicine at Fairchild Air Force Base and, eventually, a lieutenant colonel.
But many of her service colleagues, Davis says, saw her only as a Black woman. Or for the white resident colleagues who gave her the call sign of ABW â?? it was a joke, they insisted â?? an angry black woman, a classic racist trope.
In the fiscal year 2020 alone, the Army, Air Force and Navy received 900 civilian complaints of racial discrimination and over 350 complaints of discrimination by skin color.