Racism at War Theme Analysis

Although the U.S. Army no longer practices overt segregation in 1969, and although America is ostensibly fighting to protect the South Vietnamese people from communism, O’Brien recognizes that his experiences during the Vietnam War are all framed by racial hostility. Old and new racial prejudices impact who occupies what role, how much empathy soldiers show to civilians, and how everyone involved in the war perceives the people around them, as well as those they fight against. O’Brien’s account of the Vietnam War suggests that racism plays an outsized role in the conduct of the war, and that racial prejudice often has lethal consequences for the people who suffer it.

By O’Brien’s account, nearly all American soldiers harbor some level of animosity toward Vietnamese people, which thus minimizes their view of Vietnamese civilian suffering. In basic training, all of O’Brien’s superiors refer to Vietnamese people as “dinks” (a racial slur against Southeast Asian people) and “Charlie Cong” and they encourage new recruits to do the same, indicating that the army encourages its soldiers to dehumanize the people they fight against. A lieutenant about to ship off to Vietnam tells O’Brien he is eager to test his mettle and the skills that he’s learned. He says, “I think I’m better than those dinks,” suggesting that his denigrating view of Vietnamese people causes him to see himself as superior. This low view of Vietnamese people causes American soldiers to minimize war crimes against Vietnamese civilians as well. When international reporters arrive in Vietnam to investigate the My Lai Massacre, where American soldiers mass-murdered an entire village of unarmed civilians, Major Callicles claims, “they're dumb and they die; they're smart, they run, they hide, then they live,” implying that the Vietnamese villagers brought their doom on themselves. It seems highly unlikely that Major Callicles would respond that way to white Americans’ deaths, which suggests that he sees Vietnamese people as fundamentally different and inferior. O’Brien, who is self-described as “liberal” by nature, tries to resist this racial animosity, especially against civilians. However, after Alpha Company takes exceptionally heavy losses in Pinkville, O’Brien discovers that as frustration and anger festers, so does racial hate. He states, “one Oriental face began to look like any other, hostile and black, and Alpha Company was boiling with hate when it was pulled out of Pinkville,” suggesting that the fear, stress, and pain of war exacerbates racial animosity between groups.

Even within the U.S. Army, O’Brien sees racism targeted at black soldiers, suggesting that racial animosity even infects and segregates people within the same military. O’Brien notes that the military hierarchy is segregated along racial lines: “the officer corps is dominated by white men; the corps of foot soldiers, common grunts, is disproportionately black.” White officers are the ones who reassign foot soldiers to coveted positions in the rear (away from the fighting front), doing clerical or technical work, where life is calmer and much safer. As a result of “old elements of racial tension—fears, hates, suspicions,” most white officers assign privileged non-combat jobs to “white grunts.” O’Brien states that black soldiers react to this discrimination as anyone would: by being angry, insolent, disruptive, and cynical. This sadly justifies white officers’ inclinations to not give the good jobs to black soldiers, since their behavior seems “insubordinate.” Racial tension and prejudice thus become self-reciprocating problems within the U.S. Army, playing a significant role in its structure and order.

O’Brien observes that because of the high stakes of war, racial discrimination against black people and Vietnamese people has dramatic life-or-death consequences. American prejudice toward the Vietnamese endangers civilians, since American soldiers are much less empathetic toward them. O’Brien implies that Alpha Company’s built-up hatred and racial animosity from Pinkville leads his company to later commit war crimes like burning villages, torturing civilians, and calling airstrikes on locations where they know there are women and children. Similarly, white officers’ prejudice toward black soldiers leads to these black soldiers doing the worst, most dangerous jobs. The infantry, which is “disproportionately black,” takes the heaviest losses by far, which means that black men die at much higher rates in the Vietnam War than white men do. A black man entering the war is most likely to be assigned an infantry role based on his race, putting him at far greater risk and lessening his chances of surviving the war at all, purely based on white officers’ racial prejudice.

By O’Brien’s account, racial prejudice influences all aspects of the Vietnam War. Although the Vietnamese people and black American soldiers likely harbor some of their own racial animus, as a white man, O’Brien is only positioned to describe how his own ethnic group asserts its racism onto the world around them.