Kamala Harris and Lloyd Austin portraits will spur change in the military and America

The White House recently unveiled the official portraits of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. As you read this, they have already been hung up for display in thousands of buildings on military installations around the world, in addition to just about every federal government building where appropriate.

With the sole exception of former President Barack Obama, our top civilian military leaders — president, vice president and secretary of Defense — had always been white males until January of this year. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is the first Black man (indeed, the first person of color) to serve in that role.

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And for the first time ever, our vice president is a Black and South Asian woman, the daughter of immigrants, seen by every member of the military and federal employee where they work.

After four years of Donald Trump’s racist vitriol and insistence on white men running the show, something as simple as an official portrait may go a long way toward getting our country back where it needs to be, and that starts with the culture of our armed forces.

Nothing to look at but portraits

Whatever movies you’ve seen, the reality of a young private’s introduction to the ways of the military is exceedingly boring: paperwork, housekeeping tasks and, most of all, standing in line for hours at a time in drab hallways.

Think of the most bored you’ve ever been in your life and multiply that by 10. There is no talking, reading, sleeping or doing anything other than quietly standing or sitting where you’re told to stand or sit.

And so your eyes, hungry for any kind of stimulus, will soak up the surroundings. I had recently turned 19, and I remember standing in a hallway at the in-processing building on Fort Benning, Georgia, and looking up at the official portraits of our training unit’s chain of command at the time. From President George W. Bush all the way down to our battalion commander, they were almost all white male faces.

When I reported to my unit after graduation, some of the faces on these walls had changed, but the gender and race were remarkably consistent. At some point, it occurred to me that every service member in every brick-and-mortar military building around the world was looking at the same faces in those top spots, and they, too, may have noticed that — with few exceptions — portraits of white men covered all those walls.

For a long time, people of color — particularly Black Americans — have served at higher rates in the military than their white counterparts, and yet, 73 years after the armed forces were integrated, nearly all the military’s top commanders are still white men. Simply put, despite our military being more diverse than ever in race and gender, the top leadership remains nearly homogenous.

At minimum, this doesn’t help the persistent infestation of white supremacy in our military. A long-delayed survey released by the Pentagon in January showed that over 12 months concluding in 2017, nearly a third of surveyed Black service members reported experiencing racist discrimination, as did 23% of AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) service members and 21% of Hispanic and Latinx service members.

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In a poll conducted by the Military Times in the mid of last summer’s protests, 57% of service members of color reported experiencing racist abuse during their time in service. And among troops of all races surveyed, white nationalism as a national security threat was considered nearly equal with the threats posed by al-Qaida and Islamic State terrorist groups.

Metrics on sexual violence in the ranks, which overwhelmingly affects women service members, haven’t improved much either. According to the Defense Department’s latest annual data collection, reports of sexual assaults have more than doubled in the past decade.

The killing of Army Spc. Vanessa Guillen at Fort Hood – and the subsequent investigation that led to the removal of more than a dozen Army officials on the base for a command climate “permissive of sexual harassment and sexual assault” – has given renewed energy to longstanding efforts by advocates to reform how sex crimes in the military are handled.

In a recent interview, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said she’s “very optimistic” about the prospects for a reform bill she has persistently championed over the past decade.

Cues from military diversity

Our national culture has so often been preceded in change by the culture of our nation’s military. President Harry Truman’s order to desegregate the armed forces came six years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954.

The 2010 repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” could be seen as paving the way for the Supreme Court rulings that legalized same-sex marriage and banned anti-LGBTQ employment discrimination. Women serving in uniform have helped changed minds in the national discourse on gender equality. The benefits to society of equality pioneered by the military have always helped change our country for the better.

Imagine now the tens of thousands of young recruits beginning their military training this spring, all being reminded by these portraits that a Black and South Asian woman born to immigrants is the second-highest ranking government official in the country and that, for the first time ever, the secretary of Defense is a Black man.

White service members, particularly men, are being reminded that they serve a country gloriously diverse, and that someone doesn’t need to look like them to lead our country and its military.

Make no mistake: These portraits are not solutions to systemic racism and misogyny. Only intentional leadership and policy changes will lead to systemic evolution. But they’re also not just portraits. They’re the start of cultural inoculation to the bigotries of our collective past. A leader like Vice President Harris – who is scheduled to speak at the Naval Academy graduation ceremony May 28 –will only accelerate that change in culture.

Charlotte Clymer is a writer, U.S. Army veteran and trans rights advocate. She is also a political partner at the Truman National Security Project. Follow her on Twitter: @cmclymer

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Harris and Austin will change racial attitudes in military and society