The Gesell Committee had repeatedly asserted that discrimination existed only in areas near American bases, and its most serious manifestations were "largely inspired by the attitude of a minority of white servicemen" who exerted social pressure on local businessmen. It was, therefore, a problem for American forces, and not primarily one for its allies. The civil rights office, however, preferred to consider the continuing discrimination as an anti-American phenomenon rather than a racial problem.[22-74] Fitt and his successor seemed convinced that such discrimination was isolated and its solution complex because of the difficulty in drawing a line between the attitudes of host nations and American GI's. Consequently, the problem continued throughout the next decade, always low key, never widespread, a problem of black morale inadequately treated by the department.
The failure to solve the problem of racial discrimination overseas and, indeed, the inability to liquidate all remaining vestiges of discrimination within the military establishment, constituted the major shortfall of McNamara's equal opportunity policy. With no attempt to shift responsibility to his subordinates,[22-75] McNamara later reflected with some heat on the failure of his directive to improve treatment and opportunities for black servicemen substantially and expeditiously: "I was naive enough in those days to think that all I had to do was show my people that a problem existed, tell them to work on it, and that they would then attack the problem. It turned out of course that not a goddamn thing happened."[22-76]
Although critical of his department's performance, McNamara would probably admit that more than simple recalcitrance was involved. For example, the services' traditional opposition to outside interference with the development of their personnel policies led naturally to their opposition to any defense programs setting exact command responsibilities or dictating strict monitoring of their racial progress. Defense officials, respecting service attitudes, failed to demand an exact accounting. Again, the services' natural reluctance to court congressional criticism, a reluctance shared by McNamara and his defense colleagues, led them all to avoid unpopular programs such as creating ombudsmen at bases to channel black servicemen's complaints. As one manpower official pointed out, all commanders professed their intolerance of discrimination in their commands, yet the prospect of any effective communication between these commanders and their subordinates suffering such discrimination remained unlikely.[22-77] Again defense officials, restrained by the White House from antagonizing Congress, failed to insist upon change.
Finally, while it was true that the services had not responded any better to McNamara's directive than to any of several earlier and less noteworthy calls for racial equality within the military community, it was not true that the reason for the lack of progress lay exclusively with the service. Against the background of the integration achievements of the previous decade, a feeling existed among defense officials that such on-base discrimination as remained was largely a matter of detail. Even Fitt shared the prevailing view. "In three years of close attention to such matters, I have observed [no] ... great gains in on-base equality," because, he explained to his superior, "the basic gains were made in the 1948-1953 period."[22-78] It must be remembered that discrimination operating within the armed forces was less tractable and more difficult to solve than the patterns of segregation that had confronted the services of old or the off-base problems confronting them in the early 1960's. The services had reached what must have seemed to many a point of diminishing returns in the battle against on-base discrimination, a point at which each successive increment of effort yielded a smaller result than its predecessor.
No one—not the Civil Rights Commission, the Gesell Committee, the civil rights organizations, and, judging from the volume of complaints, not even black servicemen themselves—seriously tried to disabuse these officials of their satisfaction with the pace of reform. Certainly no one equated the importance of on-base discrimination with the blatant off-base discrimination that had captured everyone's attention. In fact, problems as potentially explosive as the discrimination in the administration of military justice were all but ignored during the 1960's.[22-79]
USAF Ground Crew, Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Vietnam,
relaxes over cards in the alert tent.
The sense of satisfaction that pervaded Fitt's comment, however understandable, was lamentable because it helped insure that certain inequities in the military community would linger. The failure of Negroes to win skilled job assignments and promotions, for example, would remain to fester and contribute significantly to the bitterness visited upon a surprised Department of Defense in later years. In brief, because the services had become a model of racial equality when judged by contemporary standards, the impulse of almost all concerned was to play down the reforms still needed on base and turn instead to the pressing and spectacular challenges that lay in wait outside the gates.