By
Michelle McCollum
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Military officers from Tucson and Phoenix said last week that while minority stereotypes run rampant on the civilian streets of America, they are relentlessly stamped out in the military.
"We have trashed all the myths," said Julius Parker Jr., a retired two-star Army general. "(In the military) it is not so much who you are, it is what you have to offer."
Parker, who is now UA's associate vice president of business affairs, was the introductory speaker for last week's "Minorities in the Military" presentation and discussion panel. Parker retired from the military in 1989 as the highest ranking African-American intelligence officer.
Parker used Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, U.S. Chief of Staff, as an example of the gains minorities can make in the military.
Shinseki is Asian-American, and also the highest ranked military officer in the country.
"Of course you're going to find racism and prejudice anywhere," said Maj. Salvador Cepeda, officer selection officer for the Marine Corps in Phoenix. "But we lead the country in opportunities, and avenues to correct prejudice."
Representatives from the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines presented the histories of various minorities in the American military.
One such minority is American Indians, who represent 190,000 veterans over a 200-year history.
Navajo code talkers during World War II made it impossible for Japanese intelligence to decipher American communication, said Sgt. Michael Charles, an emergency medical technician at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
Only a handful of people worldwide knew the Navajo language fluently, and none of them were Japanese.
But even though many Navajo soldiers were killed or wounded after being mistaken for Japanese, they never turned against America, Charles said.
"The U.S. is the envy of all the other countries in the world," Parker said. "And as minorities we have contributed more than our share of what this country has become."
Sofia Ramos, program coordinator at the Chicano/Hispano Student Affairs office, planned and organized the event as part of the Martin Luther King Celebration Committee's semester-long attempt at unifying the diverse UA campus.
The committee's purpose is to give UA's students a deeper understanding of themselves as part of a multi-cultural campus.
"We want to empower the students. They are so powerful and full of potential that whatever they want to do they can accomplish. A lot of them don't know that," Ramos said.
The students in attendance who were not military-affiliated also wanted to hear about the opportunities the military presented.
"I wanted to get a better idea of what the Marines were all about," said Francesca Felix, a Mexican-American studies sophomore. "But when you see the different minorities, it shows you it doesn't matter who you are or what your skin color is."
About 60 people attended the event. Ramos said she was expecting 100 people to come.
"Last year only 10 people came to our seven-person panel," Ramos said. "It's still new and catching on, and as people begin to hear about it, it will get bigger."
A larger audience will arrive once students realize that minorities aren't the only ones who need the empowerment, Parker said.
"I think they feel it doesn't apply to them," he said. "The real tragedy is that the minorities know it does and the majorities refuse to see it."
