What’s Ray Saying? “Black in the Military”

Ray looks back on his decision to join the army, unraveling a complicated history of Black military service and reflecting on the surprising changes the armed forces made in his life. This episode contains explicit language. Please take care while listening. This story comes to us from the incredible podcast, What’s Ray Saying? https://drraychristian.com/ In each episode, Ray Christian, the award-winning storyteller, combat veteran, historian, and devoted father of six, invites you to become part of his community, as he shares stories from the scenic mountains of Appalachia. Listen to What's Ray Saying? https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/whats-ray-saying/id1097310592 wherever you get your podcasts! To get all things Ray -- check out his website. https://drraychristian.com/ What's Ray Saying? is created, hosted, and written by Ray Christian. Mark Pagán is the senior producer. Jonathan Cabral is the associate producer. Story editing by Mark Pagán with development support from The Moth. Sound design by Rebecca Seidel. Original music comes from RJ Christian and Blue Dot Sessions. What's Ray Saying? is supported by its amazing listeners, PRX https://prx.org/, and The Moth https://themoth.org/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAzvC9BhADEiwAEhtlN2V2zt6p_ipqhuFj_UBoyIcfnfnbV_TtceyKlaAd0n10Fhid-741UhoCXgwQAvD_BwE. Season 16 - Episode 8 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:07Speaker 00

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• 0:38Speaker 01

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• 1:09Glynn Washington?

  Snappers. Snap's special correspondent of the surreal, Dr. Raymond Christian. You've heard him jump out of an airplane while on an acid trip. You've felt his elation stuck in Burning Man mud, and you've walked with Ray up creaky stairs in search of the unknown. But did you know the good doctor has his own podcast? It's called What's Ray Saying? Available on all podcast platforms and to close out Black History Month, we want to visit Ray and hear about one of the most pivotal decisions of his entire life: joining

• 1:48Glynn Washington?

  the military. Now, this story does contain explicit language. Sensitive listeners are advised. What's Ray Saying?

• 1:59Speaker 03

  I should have known better. I should have known better than to own a car meant for the autobahn in the damn mountains of western North Carolina.

• 2:06Speaker 04

  Alright, big dog. Big dog. Come on, how many rims have I broken? Big dog. Twice?

• 2:13Speaker 03

  I have no reason driving my BMW on the bumpy ass roads around my house. This was the third visit to my mechanic in eighteen months because of a rim repair.

• 2:23Speaker 04

  It looks like we may have repaired that one before? Is that the same one? Same way on this crap.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  The car was my wife's idea. She felt I deserved it, felt I should treat myself. But my mechanics have been doing their best to convince me to give up this money pit on four wheels.

• 2:41Speaker 04

  You need that SUV, my friend. Yeah, I do, but that's old shit, man. See, I want a car that I can get in, program the directions, and just take a nap.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  I've been driving for about forty years at this point, and I've driven just about every four wheeler, four runner, or four door you can think of. But the first vehicle I can remember driving, driving, was a Jeep. And not anywhere near these bumpy ass mountains of western North Carolina. No, this was a green four wheeler that I tore up on different patches of earth. The mud ditches, brush piles, and hills and slopes of Fort Dix. I was eighteen years old, and I was in basic training in the army. Owning or even driving a car is not something I had ever really imagined, let alone having someone else fix it. Getting anything fixed was an incredible luxury when I was younger.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  A value system that wasn't part of my world until I joined the army.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  I often find myself reflecting on the status symbols of life, both the practical and the purely symbolic. The army was a stepping stone that went on to become an island, like how many careers often start out. And at some point, it was my life and the method by which I was able to provide for my family. It makes me think of what I took away from reading Catcher in the Rye. You get older and you become pragmatic. A big question I still ask myself.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  What would you do to change your station in life? Well, I've got my own answers. And who is this voice from the rural autobahn?

• 4:28Speaker 03

  Well, I'm not defined with a singular salutation. Some might call me a ghetto kid, or a southern black gentleman, a retired army paratrooper, or a doctor of education, a teller of stories, a student of the past, or the source of all black knowledge, a voice ready to explore and talk with you about it. From PRX, I'm Ray Christian, and this is What's Ray Saying. In today's episode, from 20 years of military service to demanding good service, we take a look at this soldier's story.

• 5:22Speaker 03

  My time in the Army must have started with seeing those old pictures in the front room hanging on the walls, old pictures of people I knew in uniform. My father, uncle, and aunt served in World War II. Then came the younger guys who were recently home from training or Vietnam. Hearing these guys talk about their adventures, I remember wanting the same things they experienced, a life far away from Virginia. I wanted to get started. Started on what? I'm unsure. My only quest, searching for excitement or anything new. It was the same thing for John Good.

• 6:00Speaker 05

  Do people ever say to you, like, "You seem so nice," and I can't imagine you were ever in the military? Like, people are like, "I can't believe you were ever in the Marines." I'm like, "I can't believe it either."

• 6:12Speaker 03

  John is a writer, poet, fellow storyteller, and Richmond native. He's also a veteran. John's time in the service was spent as a Marine. I'm always curious to hear from fellow black veterans, especially folks from my hometown, whether our experiences align. And nine times out of 10, they do. Starting with the military legacy in my family, John also came from a line of black veterans.

• 6:38Speaker 05

  My brother went into the Army. Me and my oldest sister, they both went into the Army. And my dad was also in the Army. But I think they also thought the opportunity lay in the military.

• 6:50Speaker 03

  John's goal was college. Me? I didn't have a plan, but I was open. I just wanted to start something. And that's something people who haven't been in the military misunderstand about why guys like John and I joined.

• 7:07Speaker 05

  One of the first things I usually get is, "Did you kill anybody?" That's one of the first questions I get. "Oh, you in the Marine Corps, did you kill anybody?"

• 7:18Speaker 03

  I've gotten questions about if the military prevented me from a life of crime, or whether I joined because I wanted to get into the action or blow things up, to the common misunderstanding from more conservative voices about whether I was following a patriotic duty.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  Nope, none of the above. For me and many other black soldiers, we just wanted to get our lives started. For black Americans, the individual and community motivations for serving in the military are probably as similar as that of white soldiers, but have the extra burden of equal treatment and respect for honorable service. What do you think people misunderstand about black enlistment?

• 8:01Speaker 05

  People, when they think about black people joining the military, one of the things they think is that you are dumb because you're fighting for a country they will not fight for you. You are laying down your life for a country that if they could, they would just take your life. And so, it seems like a Faustian bargain that you've struck. But they don't know what your motivations are, what it is you need to achieve.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  When you look at it, the historical reasons black Americans have entered the military has always been a complicated thing. America loves black heroes.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  The General Service Engineer Regiment is composed of Negro enlisted men.

• 8:43Speaker 06

  He represents a new generation of black soldiers.

• 8:47Speaker 04

  It really should be a voluntary basis for a black man. If he's feeling up for himself and he should want to go fight for this country, he should be allowed to.

• 8:54Speaker 06

  His bag is black power, black pride, and black togetherness.

• 9:00Speaker 04

  I'm in the military as a black man. One other thing got freedom, ain't none of this got freedom. I carry myself as a black man, you know?

• 9:07Speaker 07

  America loves to have black heroes because it tells America that we're fair and that the doors are open.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  This complex relationship between black Americans and the military can be traced all the way back during the American Revolution. Some blacks and slaves were involuntarily put into service to help the colonies beat the British. Some were recruited. Others signed up. Why? The possibility of freedom for courageous service. At the same time, the British offered free blacks greater rights and protections and freedom. The American side convinced 5,000 blacks to serve. And how many signed up for the hated British? Tens of thousands. Freedom, not loyalty, was the goal.

• 10:02Speaker 03

  And not surprisingly, the defeat of the British would result in the overall mistrust for blacks in military service and withdrawal of promises made. During the Civil War, the Union Army initially deemed blacks as unfit for military service and used that lack of military service to justify why blacks were not afforded all rights, claiming they did not have to put up and sacrifice as much as white people. But with the incredible number of casualties on the Union side and the absolute necessity for additional manpower, the Union Army decided to utilize black men in direct combat roles. For many black soldiers, it was challenging the beliefs about their capabilities and

• 10:45Speaker 03

  not patriotism that made more than 200,000 free black men and former slaves serve. By World War I, when white enlistment became low, the black community was heavily solicited by the government to join the fight. This time, promoting enlistment and contribution to the nation's fight would be an uplift for the entire black community. This, not patriotism, brought black enlistment to its highest numbers ever, closer to a half a million.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  You think I knew any of this when I joined the army way back in 1978? Nope. I just wanted to get started. I thought that's why anybody wanted to join the army. But regardless of what I thought, there were the preachers and black leaders throughout my childhood that were against the military.

• 11:39Speaker 08

  ...that will praise you when you say be nonviolent toward Jim Clark, but will curse and damn you when you say be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children. There's something wrong with that press. You won't even stand up for me in a huddle for my religious beliefs, and you want me to go somewhere and fight, but you won't even stand up for me here, no.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  Other middle-class blacks like our schoolteachers were strictly against the military and military service of any kind for blacks. They viewed voluntary service as opposed to being drafted as unintelligent, a last chance for social misfits and degenerates.

• 12:26Speaker 05

  I heard a lot of that. It felt like after I joined, I heard more of that, people being like, "You're joining the military? What are you, an idiot? What are you doing?"

• 12:35Speaker 03

  I took on the general attitude that most of my peers did. We all understood. This is how people with good education, money, and opportunities would always see the military. And they could, because they were speaking from a place with means. But as I came to find out, most of us poor grunts came to the army with the same idea in mind. I joined so I could get started.

• 13:02Speaker 05

  I know several people who'd absolutely, positively, they didn't want to go work in the factory. You know, they didn't want to go dig ditches. And they knew that this is a way to get out. This is a way to elevate myself to the point where I can actually come out of here and there is a chance I can do some of the things that I want to do. That's why some people strike the deal. And it's not all wrapped up in quite what they might imagine.

• 13:28Speaker 03

  Again, I can't exactly tell you what that was. How do you know what steps to take or what to learn when it wasn't modeled for you? During my first years in the Army, my values would start shifting. And it had more to do with what I was eating and how I was living than just patriotic duty and learning how to use a rifle. When I'm out and I can't get back home in time, my favorite place to eat lunch is at The Waffle House on Blowing Rock Road. Let me get the two egg breakfast. Let me get grits. I ordered the two egg breakfast with country ham, hash browns, smothered and covered with

• 14:10Speaker 03

  fried eggs, and a hard black coffee with splinter. I started regimented meals in the Army. During that initial training, meals were highly structured activities. We had to get in and out, three square meals a day from all the food groups. Some things in those groups I never saw before, but we ate it all up. John still remembers the first thing he ate when he left boot camp.

• 14:38Speaker 05

  I went to the local neighborhood burger shop and got like burgers and fries, like food that I wanted, that I ate on the schedule I wanted to eat them.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  In the Army, you get initial training in marching, physical fitness, cleaning, and marksmanship. But one of the biggest game changers in my life had nothing to do with any of those disciplines. It was lunch. When I was growing up, if you weren't in school, lunch was a luxury. And the first place I experienced this change was in the Army. I can almost taste my mess hall lunches when I think of it, mainly the potatoes and milk at every meal. And inadvertently, that's the first thing I learned about what the middle class entailed. You eat lunch. Middle-class people eat lunch.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  The next value shift I had in the Army, learning the power of having new sheets on your bed. I don't think I ever thought about that one before I ever joined. They forced that as a thing. And I thought, "That's what middle-class people do. They change their sheets." And if you saw me at the time, I was like a kid in the candy store of all these changes. One of the biggest moments happened when I was 20, standing in a long line near where I was stationed down in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

• 16:02Speaker 03

  I was nervous. There were lots of questions about credit references, something about having a blank check. And then it was done. I had a phone line. For the first time in my life, I had to pick out my phone and extra cords. I was living off-base and went home to show that I was calling from home. I could've just given everyone the damn phone number. Instead, I was dialing folks saying, "Guess where I'm calling you from."

• 16:32Speaker 03

  It seems so silly now, but you can't imagine how excited and proud I was. Even in the later years, when I became a Staff Sergeant, I can remember giving some of my soldiers time off whenever they got a phone installed. I saw it as an important rite of passage. Now, you introduced these small damn changes into a life like mine, and there was no going back. I hadn't even experienced life abroad yet. I was still only a few hundred miles from where I grew up.

• 17:03Speaker 03

  And it's the experience of going abroad that really changed things for black soldiers like me, whether I knew it or not.

• 17:13Speaker 03

  There's a song that became a bit of a standard around the First World War. It very simply points to the cultural sea-change that was happening to many soldiers regardless of race after returning home from the war.

• 17:27Speaker 04

  How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm? After they've seen Paris?

• 17:33Speaker 03

  How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm? After they've seen Paris?

• 17:44Speaker 03

  Before World War I and World War II, the majority of black soldiers spent their enlisted time in North America. All of a sudden, a generation of black men went to Europe and got to sit at tables with white people, drink with white people, have relationships with white people, be awarded by white people, to be hugged, loved, admired.

• 18:08Speaker 09

  First American troops to receive the Parter Gare, the 369th. And for action above and beyond the call of duty, many received honored medals. When they cleaned up in France, the boys came marching home.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  And when they returned home, to paraphrase the words of Gil Scott-Heron, "Home was where the hatred was."

• 18:38Speaker 03

  These soldiers wanted more. And how dare they? How dare these grandchildren of slaves come back with some attitude, ambition, and agency? Some soldiers were doing some things they weren't supposed to do. They fought back. Not only that, they passed these stories and experiences down to the younger generations. When some black soldiers decided to fight against the harassment and segregation they faced before they left, many were court martialed, many sentenced to death. It wouldn't be until the 1980s and 90s that a majority of these soldiers had their records corrected and the charges erased. But the genie was out of the bottle. To some,

• 19:22Speaker 03

  enlistment promised a social mobility unheard of for most blacks in the United States. And then came something called the GI Bill.

• 19:34Speaker 09

  And it's here the ex-soldier goes if he wants to continue his education under the GI Bill of Rights.

• 19:39Speaker 03

  For some, this was the golden ticket into the middle class. Offering free college tuition for the first time, even though black soldiers were discouraged to sign up or take advantage. But those that did from World War II to Vietnam to beyond had their lives turned around.

• 19:58Speaker 09

  Trade school? College?

• 20:02Speaker 03

  They got the education, they got the loans for housing. Black veterans could move into the suburbs.

• 20:09Speaker 10

  Homes for those who want something better. New homes, which we can expect to be the best products of the new scientific age, and at the lowest possible cost.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  All of this because of the GI Bill. Even to this day, the promise of it brings in new recruits. John Good again.

• 20:30Speaker 05

  The thing for me was, how am I going to pay for college? Because my parents, you know, they work these jobs, but still, they don't have money or generational wealth in such a way that they can pay for you to go to college. As you full well know, you know, the military recruiters, they sing that song, you know, they be like, "Hey, you want to go to college? There's this thing called the GI Bill, it's to get to college. All you gotta do is, you know, join up and give so many years and maybe die, you don't know, and then, yeah, we'll put you through college."

• 21:03Speaker 03

  This isn't to say that it was a universal experience. For most black soldiers, they didn't get these benefits because the Veterans Administration wouldn't let them, or they didn't know they had advantages available to them. Could be that some veterans were barely literate, or they didn't understand, you know, the big words of the bureaucratic process. And you can imagine how the VA Administration, located in any of the southern states, were responding to black veterans coming back during the Jim Crow era, wearing a uniform and trying to act like a white man. Soldiers would routinely have their applications rejected. And while there was a big policy initiative that required these organizations, the duty

• 21:44Speaker 03

  to assist these soldiers in their queries, many black veterans left the military and came back to where they were from.

• 21:51Speaker 11

  A study by Brandeis University projects, based on limited available data from the VA, that descendants of World War II veterans lost $80,000 in economic opportunity.

• 22:02Speaker 12

  In practice, African-Americans had very, very little opportunity to use the GI benefits that the GI Bill provided throughout the South.

• 22:13Speaker 03

  And that was enough for me growing up. Seeing these veterans come back from World War II, from Vietnam, and what? You coming back here after everything you experienced? Uh-uh. That wasn't gonna happen to me.

• 22:37Speaker 03

  In the first years, yeah, I ate a lot of lunches. I learned to change my sheets. But I also bought my first car. A Country Squire station wagon with that damn wood paneling on the side of it. The guy I bought it from said he wanted $300. Then he said, "Uh, man, uh, give me 200." I should've known better. But I didn't know how to ask for good service yet. What a piece of shit that car was.

• 23:06Speaker 03

  But it was a car. The first of many. Then I went on to have an apartment on base, to have an apartment off base. Having a home on base, learning to mow the lawn because the army requires that shit. There were moves from Washington State to Korea, North Carolina, to Germany, Egypt for six months, Panama, places unknown in Central and South America. Lots of places to call temporary homes until I came back to Fayetteville, North Carolina, and bought my first house. A first not just for me, but for the Christian family. And that was a brag fest. I had my sisters in them coming and telling everyone about it.

• 23:50Speaker 03

  I had people sleeping all over the damn place. Took everyone around in my car. But to have my mama come see me in my own damn house? If it was all for one person, it was for my mama. I would do anything to show her that side of life. To show her it wasn't just out there, but she too could ask for it.

• 24:13Speaker 03

  And maybe the biggest sign that my values had shifted was during a visit from my mama and stepdad. I took them out to eat at a restaurant. My mama ordered fried rice, and when they brought her order, it was regular rice. And I said, Mama, I thought you wanted fried rice. And she said, Don't say nothing. It's fine. It's fine. Even my stepdaddy said, No, don't make no big deal out of that. I said, That's not what you ordered. When she comes back, I'm gonna tell her to exchange it for you. And mama was panicky. When the waitress came back and I said, My mama wanted fried rice. And the lady was like, Oh, I'm sorry, and exchanged it.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  It looked like my mama thought she would die, thinking I was stepping out of my social status and they were gonna throw us out.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  Even before this happened, I had already been noticing some distance from my previous life in Richmond with my old friends and family. It wasn't just the lifestyle changes. You could throw out the three meals a day and car ownership.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  It was my awareness that really caused the distance. It was a requirement of the military to focus on current events, to consume a lot of news. My awareness of stuff became bigger than the people I was talking to. I'd say, There's been an uprising in Germany, or what do you think about the hostages that got kidnapped in Iran? Where'd you get that? I'd say, It's on the news. It's not a secret. None of my friends and family were interested in that. I began thinking, If I'm having conversations, it's gonna be with my peers. I eventually landed in the mountains of North Carolina. John Good made his way to Atlanta.

• 26:02Speaker 05

  Friends of mine deliver Richmond, they'll be like, Man, you really did it, man. You moved down to Atlanta. I'm like, You don't need a passport. You don't need a visa. Eighty-five runs south all day and night. They don't let anybody in. They're like, You can move to Atlanta. You could do it. You don't understand, Richmond. You're not a tree. You're not rooted to the ground.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  But the biggest marker of change wasn't the homeownership. It was that moment in the restaurant. Somebody brought this up to me once, that you've arrived in the middle class if you demand and expect good service. And I couldn't go back, not to Richmond, not to walking everywhere, not to keep quiet when something needs to be fixed. I suppose this could come off the way other things are misinterpreted from a veteran's experience. Well, look at Ray Christian. He joined the military and look at everything it gave him. Yeah, I'm grateful and thankful, but that doesn't mean I'm not aware of the ripple effects of my 20-year career. I was expected to work sick and beat up,

• 27:03Speaker 03

  regardless of what was happening in my life. Not once, but every day for decades, let alone the emotional and physical damage of being a combat veteran. That's the consequences that I don't think people see. The military comes with a price to pay. To survive, you need to thrive. John remembers the first time this happened for him as a recruit.

• 27:28Speaker 05

  I was in this thing called a combat replacement platoon. And I asked the instructor there, I said, "Well, what is a combat replacement platoon?" He says, "What it is, son, is that someone got their, their brains blown out. And then someone wiped their brains out the seat and they sat down until someone blew their brains out. And then what you're gonna do is you're gonna wipe their brains out the seat and sit down until someone blows your brains out. And then someone's gonna wipe your brains out the seat and then they're gonna sit down." And so I was like, "Oh, we're here to die. Okay, I get it." So I just remember, for the first time in my life, I used to sit on like grassy hills and just look at the trees and the clouds and like appreciate kinda nature and life in a way that I had never done it before.

• 28:13Speaker 05

  And it was clear to me that really having to stare down your mortality in the military helps you really, really grasp and appreciate life.

• 28:31Speaker 03

  All this to say that there was pain and sadness with disconnecting from home. I miss the lack of formality that came from being a Richmond kid. I miss not having to be 100% right. I miss being loose and flexible about how I respond to things and not being rigid. I mean, maybe that's just part of being an adult when you're feeling bad and things aren't going right that you want to drive to go home, be around the familiar. But I never did.

• 29:01Speaker 05

  You know, the old phrase, "You can never go home again." The thing is, is that once you leave, you're changing and the community is changing. The thing that you're coming back to doesn't actually exist in the way that you knew it. So it's always going to feel different, and it should be. It shouldn't be the same.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  I spent 20 years in the Army, and I've heard every soldier's story. The most common reason? I just wanted to get started. I did too. And starting this podcast is also part of that decision.

• 29:54Speaker 13

  You have just finished another episode of What's Ray Saying. This podcast was created, hosted, and written by Ray Christian and was recorded in the great state of North Carolina. Mark Pagan is the senior producer. Jonathan Cabral is the associate producer. Story editing by Mark Pagan with development support from The Moth. Sound design by Rebecca Seidel. Photos for the show come from Samantha J. Massey. Original music comes from our son, RJ Christian, with additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. What's Ray Saying is derived from Ray's personal life, thoughts, and research. His views, opinions, and perceptions of the world and history are completely his own.

• 30:39Speaker 13

  But hey, get in touch if you want to debate. To find out more about What's Ray Saying, head to Facebook and Twitter at What's Ray Saying or our website, what'sraysaying.com.

• 30:51Speaker 13

  Ray builds this podcast with mountain spring water, deep fried fat back, sunshine and cracklin' bread. In turn, he enjoys the love and appreciation you give in the form of comments and five star reviews in Apple Podcasts and Spotify. To find out more about What's Ray Saying, head to Facebook and Twitter at What's Ray Saying, or our website, what'sraysaying.com. This series is supported by PRX, The Moth, and listeners just like you. If you would like to translate your enjoyment and support into dollars, go to what'sraysaying.com and click on Donate. I'm Tiffany Christian, the woman who had his babies and finds his keys,

• 31:33Speaker 13

  saying goodbye to you from our magical home in Boone, North Carolina. Y'all take care, and we'll be saying hey again soon in the next episode of What's Ray Saying.

• 32:02Glynn Washington?

  Stories from the life of Dr. Raymond Christian, What's Ray Saying, on podcast platforms everywhere.