Brown: People have a perception that African Americans can't be in- in key positions just because you're African American. Somebody would come out to meet the- meet the general, and I wasn't the guy that they walked up to. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin: I would go someplace with my staff, and we were wearing civilian clothes. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin: It absolutely was a conscious bias.īias didn't end even when he was a four-star general. There's not a day in my life, David, when I didn't wake up and think about the fact that I was a Black man. And I'm sure that the other officers that you talked to would probably say the same thing. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin: There's probably not a job that I had since I was a lieutenant colonel where some people didn't question whether or not I was qualified to- to take that job.
Lloyd Austin climbed every rung in the Army, starting at West Point - and rising all the way to four-star general - many times breaking barriers as the first African American ever to hold the job. There are always gonna be people, because of what you look like, that will question your qualifications. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin: It doesn't change- as you climb the ladder. The military has made attempts to deal with inequality before but this time it's happening under the eye of Lloyd Austin, this country's first African American secretary of defense, a former soldier who experienced discrimination first-hand. As we first reported earlier this year, even the most successful Black officers routinely feel the sting of racial bias while large segments of the rank and file believe the system is stacked against them. military that African Americans are more likely to be disciplined and less likely to be promoted than Whites. More than 70 years after the armed services were integrated, it is still a fact of life in the U.S.
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