What Color Are Drill Sergeants In Fort Benning Sexual Harassment Scandal? The DAILY BEAST Thinks They're White, But That's Not What History Says
08/23/2017
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This Daily Beast story of sexual harassment in the Army is illustrated, as seen in the screenshot above, with a picture of white males. [Fort Benning Drill Sergeants Suspended for Alleged Sexual Misconduct, August 23, 2017]

When we turn to the underlying NBCstory the Beast is ripping off for clickbait, we see that the actual Army has not specified the race or even the sex of the erring NCOs. See Fort Benning Drill Sergeants Suspended for Alleged Sexual Misconduct, by Courtney Kube and Tracy Connor, August 23, 2017.

Quote from that story:

Retired Air Force Col. Don Christensen, president of the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders, said the announcement was no surprise in light of previous cases: a dozen drill instructors charged with sex crimes at Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1996 and 17 instructors accused of offenses at Lackland Air Force Base in 2011.

Aberdeen Proving Ground was the first thing I thought of when  I was asked if the photo above.  It's something I've used to to illustrate the principle that offenders won't be reported by the MSM as black until there's a complaint of racism, writing that that's how we usually find out these things. In the 1990s, there was a sex scandal at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, in which senior NCOs were accused of sexually harassing or sexually abusing enlisted women. It wasn't until the NAACP showed up to complain that the public learned that the senior NCOs were all black. [2 more Aberdeen sergeants charged NAACP says cases against black soldiers involve prejudice, By Scott Wilson, Baltimore Sun, March 26, 1997]

Here's a contemporary report from Time Magazine (subscriber link) via one of John Derbyshire's correspondents:

The charges became public Nov. 7, after the Army’s top leaders decided the best way to handle such a public relations nightmare was to be up front about it—before the seamy details surfaced in the press or congressional-hearing room. The Army now appears to be responding forcefully, giving rape-prevention classes to new trainees and putting the remaining drill sergeants through additional sexual harassment training. But questions remain about why it took so long for the allegations to come to the public’s attention. Army officials say they wanted to complete their investigations before publicity jeopardized the case. They also moved cautiously, an officer working on the case told Time, “because about 80% of the victims are white and 80% of those charged are black.” But no evidence of discrimination was found, he said, and so the cases were allowed to proceed. Tracking down all the alleged victims has also proved difficult: Army officials say some went AWOL because of their treatment.[Emphasis added]
Scandal In The Military, By Elizabeth Gleick, November 25, 1996

So until we know different, we can assume that the Daily Beast's use of white men in their photo constitutes the usual macroaggression. By the way, it's not always the case the that the offenders are black—in the Lackland Air Force Base case the harassing NCOs included a guy whose last name is Maldonado, and another whose first name is Luis.

Final question: what happens when there are "out and proud" gay male drill sergeants supervising 18 year old enlistees? That's going to take a lot of hushing up.

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