Racism In The Military Essay

On a recent trip to Idyllwild, where I take veterans each fall as they leave the military for college, every climactic altercation ended with the same thing: Army Vet 1 - "You know it 's true." Marine Vet 1 - "Shut the fuck up unless you have a Combat Action Ribbon." Me - "Shut the fuck up unless you have 5 combat tours." Yes, that was me... and recently. One thing you have to know is that if we accept white / black / Mexican / Asian as "races" then the military itself is a microcosm of races; Marine, Soldier, Sailor, Airman, and Guardsman are races that always vying for the top rung on the ladder of the military. While in this microcosm there are still many of the same issues as the rest of the world such as theft, sexual assault, and suicide - racism is something that is very hard to find inside of the Marine Corps. Marines are taught from the time they are little recruits that you are not white/black/brown, you are green and so is everyone else. To a Marine, racism is a passing joke at the smoke pit while taking a break from work. Racism is something used as dumb humor because it is a ludicrous notion to them that …show more content…
For the purposes of this discussion, we will simply divide Marines in to Grunts and POGs. Grunts are those that have infantry or combat positions. These are your riflemen, mortarmen, assaultmen, etc; essentially, Grunts are those that carry weapons, go out, close width, and destroy the enemy. The word grunt presumably comes from the fact that they have been the ones to do the "grunt work," or labor intensive jobs. POGs (person other than grunt), are your check writers, logistics, truck drivers - basically non-combat jobs. The separation of these subcultures begins early on in training as we will see by tracing the path taken by both Grunts and