The African American Experience in Vietnam: Brothers in Arms (review)

Though the Vietnam War ended more than 30 years ago, many scholars continue to illuminate our understanding of how the conflict marked a pivotal point in our nation’s history. To date, numerous stories have appeared of how America’s longest war became a working-class conflict that succeeded in channeling poor whites and minorities to Southeast Asia and for the very first time bring them together in intimate and personal ways. What is also significant is that arguably the Vietnam era reflects the most turbulent period in United States and African American social history. Beginning in the 1950s, the civil rights movement, the federal government’s war on poverty, the antiwar movement, the black power movement, and the rise of social conservatism in the early 1970s greatly influenced U.S. military policy and the experience of African American soldiers.

Although Westheider’s study traces this broad topic over several decades, the result is a surprisingly small monograph of only six chapters. The first chapter highlights the history of the African American military tradition from the Revolutionary period to the Korean War. Though the chapter is only fifteen pages long, Westheider successfully pulls together a long and complex history in succint fashion. Chapter Two, “American Involvement in Vietnam and the Draft”, highlights the origins of U.S. Cold War policy and discusses how inequities in the selective service system of the 1960s led to a disproportionate casualty rate among African Americans in Vietnam and became a point of contention among Black Nationalist leaders and young African Americans.

Chapters three through six focus on facets of the Black military experience that include personal racism, institutional discrimination, racial violence within the ranks, and military reform measures. In “Vietnamization and Going Home”, the final chapter of the book, Westheider concludes with a brief discussion of developments during the post-Vietnam war years. He argues that “by the mid-1980s, the armed forces had again become an attractive career path for many minorities, and the number of African Americans in the military remained high” (p. 111).

Unfortunately, Brothers in Arms falls a bit short when discussing the antiwar movement at Historically Black Colleges and Universities which reflected student dissatisfaction with university policy rather than U.S. foreign policy. Westheider also reflects an inability to accurately describe or understand elements of the civil rights movement and how the struggle for civil rights and social equality were also central to the black power movement when he makes statements such as “leaders of the civil rights movement all lived and preached a doctrine of nonviolence” (p. 24) and “in June 1966 [Stokely Carmichael] publicly broke with the civil rights movement” (p. 25).

To Westheider’s credit, the addition of a chronology of events and an appendix of commissioned officers, enlisted ranks, service statistics, and historic documents relating to African American military history in the twentieth century strengthen a well written book. The African American Experience in Vietnam: Brothers in Arms is an excellent monograph for college students and Vietnam War enthusiasts interested in the African American experience in one of America’s most controversial military conflicts.