1108NathanielFrank

www.ambiente.us NOVEMBER | NOVIEMBRE 2008

OpEd | THAT’S NOT AMERICA
By Nathaniel Frank

                                             I was not the only one of my friends who fought back tears when I
                                              watched Colin Powell describe why he was endorsing Barack Obama
                                              for president. Here was a man who was born in Harlem to Jamaican
                                              immigrants, grew up in the Bronx, and knew a thing or two about both
                                              racism in America and the power of the American dream to transcend
                                              it. A direct beneficiary of the post World-War-II racial integration of
                                              the military, Powell became the first black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
                                              of Staff, the highest-ranking officer in the country. Once considered
                                              one of the most admired men in America for his military leadership
                                              during the first Gulf War, many thought he might become the first
                                              African American occupant of the White House

                                             He is also a Republican. But he crossed party lines to back Obama and spoke for
ten eloquent minutes without notes on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to explain why: He spoke of Obama and his
generation as “transformational,” “aspirational” and “inclusive,” and of McCain’s campaign as becoming
“narrower and narrower.” He said Obama is crossing ethnic, racial and generational lines to bring people
together. And in response to charges that Obama is a Muslim, Powel spoke out movingly not only against
this false charge, but against the implication that somehow being Muslim was the worst thing in the world:
“The really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The
answer's no, that's not America.” In that statement, delivered with a no-nonsense force and passion that has
made the General famous, Powell didn’t only defend Obama, he defended all of America, and what it stands
for.

It was refreshing to see such strong leadership displayed even in the few minutes of Powell’s interview. But
despite his reputation as a great leader, Powell has not always led. In 2003, he made a flawed case for the
U.S. invasion of Iraq. Since then, the nation has learned that he had grave misgivings about going along with
the invasion, yet he let himself serve as a chief spokesman for the Bush White House in making that case.
Speaking of the disastrous war in Iraq, former Secretary of State James Baker has said that Powell was “the
one guy who could have perhaps prevented this from happening.”

As I began researching my book on another drama in which Powell played a starring role—the 1993 battle
over lifting the ban on gays in the military—I looked into Powell’s past to understand what I could about his
personality, about what drove him and what shaped his approach to leadership. As with the case for the Iraq
War, Powell has been criticized for playing the lead role in sustaining a ban on gay and lesbian troops. While
advocates of equal rights compared the gay ban to racial segregation in the military, Powell forcefully rejected
the analogy, and his stature as a top African American general put the issue to rest. Rear Admiral John
Hutson, a high-ranking official who was part of the talks over whether to lift the gay ban, recalls in my book
that “Powell put a hole in the analogy to racial integration, not particularly logically, but just by force of his
personality and who he was.” Hutson said it allowed the rest of the military leadership to “hide” behind
Powell. It allowed other champions of anti-gay discrimination to say, “this isn’t the same as racial
integration. This is different, and General Powell says so.” Powell was probably the one guy who could have
prevented “don’t ask, don’t tell” from becoming law.

It is true that the issue of race and the issue of sexuality are very different in detail. What is eerily similar,
though, is the string of arguments that were used against both blacks and gays equal treatment in the
military. In the 1940s, America was told that whites would not respect or obey commands by an African
American; that integration would prompt violence against a despised minority and would lower public
acceptance of the military; that the military should not be used for “social experimentation”; that military
integration was being used to further a larger minority rights agenda, which would ultimately break the armed
forces; that God’s plan was to keep whites above blacks; that blacks had a higher incidence of disease; and
that forcing whites to share intimate quarters with blacks was an unacceptable invasion of white privacy.
Every last one of these arguments was used to oppose gay service in the 1990s. As Congressman Barney
Frank put it, “Saying we can’t have gay people in the military because heterosexuals won’t like them is like
saying we can’t have black people around because white people won’t like them. That was wrong, and this
is wrong.”

When I was researching my book, I set out to assess honestly whether the chief players in creating “don’t
ask, don’t tell” were motivated by genuine concern for the needs of the military or by hostility to gays and
lesbians. While Powell went out of his way to avoid insulting gay people, and indeed spoke of them as
“proud, brave, loyal, good Americans,” it is essential to compare his moral leadership on race with his role in
setting back the cause of equality for gays and lesbians.

Powell had written early in his career that the military “affords the opportunity for advancement that regrettably
is not in every part of our society,” but that he hoped would “spread to all parts of our society so that only
achievement and performance will be the basis for advancement.” He described his generation as one
“where almost all barriers have now been dropped.” It is fair to assume that his experience as an African
American made him a bit more mindful of the victimization of Muslim Americans. The experience of being
black and being Muslim in America are quite different, but as someone who has suffered from racial
discrimination, Powell was able to notice and oppose an ugly episode of discrimination against other victims
beyond his own group.

Not so gay Americans. By repeating ad nauseam that the service of open gays would harm “order and
discipline,” and would be “difficult to accommodate,” Powell legitimized prejudice in the ranks. Unlike his
moving comments about Muslim Americans, Powell said it was not for him to “make a moral judgment”
about whether being gay was “a correct lifestyle or not.” If he had made the comment as a precursor to
defending diversity and equal rights in America, that would have been one thing; but instead he made the
remarks to rationalize his own failure to support equal treatment. It was what Admiral Hutson called a “moral
passing of the buck.”

Now imagine what true moral leadership might have looked like from Powell on gay Americans. To the
question, is someone in the military gay, and is that okay? Powell might have answered this way: “The really
right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being gay in this country? The answer's no,
that's not America.” In that statement, which Powell has yet to make, he would have defended not just gay
Americans, but all of America, and what it stands for.

Nathaniel Frank, author of the forthcoming "Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and
Weakens America," is Senior Research Fellow at the Palm Center, University of California, Santa Barbara.
His website is www.NathanielFrank.com.

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