When we think of racism and history, images of slavery and lynchings come to mind. Stuff from “the past.” Well, it sure goes much deeper than that. It’s something that we even witnessed in our own lives, but were blind to see it.
Until this evening, I never thought much about race/color and foreign diplomacy. Wait, let me take that back. Truth is, I never thought about it at all. Not ever. Even when I worked inside the State Department, both overseas and in Washington, it wasn’t something I considered.
However, tonight on American Experience (a wonderful PBS series that has produced a treasure trove of historical retrospectives over the decades), three former service officers were profiled in the documentary. Their unique stories were told. All three were Black. This program really opened my eyes to something new that I did not know.
When President Truman signed an executive order in 1948 desegregating the American military and all federal civil service employment (which included the State Department), these three foreign service officers (FSOs, for short) were tested, hired, trained, and eventually assigned to diplomatic posts around the world. For all three, it was the start of an extraordinary journey. Their careers, however, were fraught with many obstacles and personal conflicts.
The State Department was known for being “pale, male, and yale.” That meant, virtually all diplomatic and leadership posts went to white males, who were mostly Ivy League-educated. Sec. of State under Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles, a deplorable racist, and bigot, might as well have been an enforcer of Jim Crow Laws. He didn’t even want women or Jews, or anyone other than WASPs representing the country abroad. However, Blacks who passed the FSO exam, by law, had to be accepted as employees in placed into the FSO system.
However, no Blacks up until the 1960s were assigned anywhere outside the so-called “Negro Zone.” That meant any Black FSO who made the grade was shipped off to a rotation of tiny African countries. They had no shot at more meaningful assignments, such as getting posted to other world capitals like Moscow, Paris, London, or Tokyo. Promotions were next to impossible. Even the training center (the Foreign Service Institute, which I attended years later) was segregated because it was located across the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia (which still had separate facilities for Blacks and Whites). Black FSOs could not even eat inside the FSI cafeteria.
Imagine the impact this had on those Black FSOs. They had “personal conflicts” because, on one hand, they were representatives of their nation, but they were also treated as second-class citizens. They even noted that within the countries where they were assigned, Blacks had far more freedoms and weren’t subject to the terrible discrimination in so many parts of America.
Many of us don’t think much about these things. We fail to empathize. It seems so long ago. But was it really that long ago?
Only a generation after the “pale, male, and yale” days at State, in the late 1980s I saw virtually zero Black FSOs. Not anywhere. I didn’t work with any Blacks in Romania. To my knowledge, there were none assigned anywhere in the nine diplomatic posts in Eastern Europe. Perhaps there were some, but I never came across even one. Note that some Blacks worked in tech-support and certainly the Marine Security Detail had Blacks. As I said earlier, I never really thought about this void until I saw the “American Experience” program last night. So, it’s pretty remarkable that a TV program 30 years later opened my eyes to my own *blindness.*
When we think of racism and history, images of slavery and lynchings come to mind. Stuff from “the past.” Well, it sure goes much deeper than that. It’s something that we even witnessed in our own lives, but were blind to see it. Even those of us who think of ourselves as “enlightened” or “progressive,” missed the subtle nuances of a discriminatory system.
There’s a heated debate happening now about something called “Critical Race Theory.” I supported teaching CRT before. After thinking more honestly and deeply about my own experience and blind spots, I now support CRT even more. It is essential. We must not fear looking into our past with curiosity as well as honesty. For it is there we will discover those things we did not know and then we shall reveal our true selves.