Not Particularly Impressed with Tuskegee Airmen Propaganda.

"Greg Hennessy" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 8 Jul 2003 10:33:51 -0400, "Gooneybird"
wrote:

I'm always interested in what you might have to
say about the TA's flying abilities and/or accomplishments, but think that
what
you treated us to was something we all could have lived without.

With respect GB I suggest you acquaint yourself with the revisionist
national socialist rhetoric emmited by the poster I am referring to before
jumping down my throat.


I'll cut that odious piece of work no slack.

With all due respect, since you didn't seem to get the point, I was referring to
your gross commentary about his mother's sex life and his father's seminal
fluid. I'm far from a defender of Nazis of any ilk, but if he bothers you that
much, stick him in your kill file. You can't make him go away, but you sure as
hell don't have to read his crap. That's what I do with pieces of garbage that
offend me.....it keeps my blood pressure down and I don't inadvertently sink
into his slime pit with him. Try it....you'll like it.

George Z.




greg




--
$ReplyAddress =~ s#\@.*$##; # Delete everything after the '@'
Alley Gator. With those hypnotic big green eyes
Alley Gator. She'll make you 'fraid 'em
She'll chew you up, ain't no lie

"Lawrence Dillard" wrote in message ...
"The Enlightenment" wrote in message
om...
(ArtKramr) wrote in message
...
Subject: Not Particularly Impressed with Tuskegee Airmen Propaganda.
From: "The Enlightenment"
Date: 7/6/03 7:25 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:


I guess you are lucky if you are judged on merit.
.

Not particularly impressed with the Tuskeegee aimren? Be assured that
they are
not particularly impressed with you.


Not Particularly Impressed with Tuskegee Airmen Propaganda

Frankly, I wouldn't characterize the hubbub over the TA as "propaganda". It
is merely the accurate recounting of the hardships that a group of loyal
citizens had to endure in order to secure the privilege of serving their
nation in a time of war.

Now that there has been so much social change in the US, some youngsters
find it difficult to understand the situation of the TA, or the social
conditions extant in the US at the time. Times change, if there is
sufficient impetus to cause that to happen. The creation and success of the
Tuskegee Airmen was part of an impetus toward social change in the US.

By all accounts I have read, the men generally did well; they upheld the
best traditions of US fighting men once committed to action. That, in many
quarters, had not been expected.

According to a couple of sources I've read, the TA were prized because as an
article of faith, they provided close escort to the bomber formations to
which they were assigned, to the detriment of rolling up victory totals by
avidly pursuing enemy fighters which approached the bombers.

You may have read Mr Kramer's remarks on this ng as to how much the bomber
crewmen (who after all, were the only USAAF component which could actually
do significant harm to the enemy war effort) appreciated having close escort
support. The TA considered that their essential mission was to get the
bombers through to the target and away, without them having to suffer from
enemy fighter depredations. This they accomplished. Insofar as the bomber
crews whose missions they supported were concerned, their success in so
doing was all that mattered, and the color of their skin was irrelevant;
THAT in itself was a victory for the TA, because THAT was "being judged on
merit". That's what they were trying to demonstrate.


I regret the choice of words for the title of my post now becuase it
didn't reflect precisely what I wanted to say. Certainly people took
it two ways.

I also didn't want to detract from their record which is unique in
their singular effectiveness as bomber escorts as well as other areas.

The point I wanted to make was this: that people should be judged on
their merrits alone and if that is done they will perform well, their
achievements can then only be honoured without any justifiable
detraction or doubt.

This is exactly what the example of the tuskegee airmen shows: they
were selected on their merrits, they performed their job and exceded
it becuase they were selected on merrit.

In a historical context they proved spectacularly for one of the first
times that African-americans could do this, breaking preconceptions,
thus making their example available, made it unnecessary for others to
be thwarted by the same status quo resistence. They had the proof of
the pudding so to say and the Airmen say themselves that they were an
experiment or test.

The US military is unique in opperating free from affirmitive action
quotas.

The US military model and the example of the Tuskegee Airman and their
breakthrough example can not be used to "propagandise" for other
things: affirmitive action, explaining the black-white performance gap
on the basis of such double standard prejudices as 'white priveledge'
or racial pre-judgement or other such nefarious arguments. The logic
of the Tuskegee example does not support that.

The reason that I place quotes around "propagandise" is because it is
these things that I allege were being propagndised. It is not the
Airmens laudable achievments but these other things I meant.

Subject: Not Particularly Impressed with Tuskegee Airmen Propaganda.
From: (The Enlightenment)
Date: 7/8/03 10:16 PM Pacific

You may have read Mr Kramer's remarks on this ng as to how much the bomber
crewmen (who after all, were the only USAAF component which could actually
do significant harm to the enemy war effort) appreciated having close
escort
support. The TA considered th

Yes. And I always felt bit better about Spitfire top cover than P-51 top
cover. I wrote in my website in a story called "Fighter cover RAF style" about
the tactical difference between US and Brit air cover. I recently have gotten
correspondence from an RAF pilot on active duty about that difference,
Interesting stuff. Once you had top cover, you never forget your "little
friends".

Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

"The Enlightenment" wrote in message
om...
"Lawrence Dillard" wrote in message
...
"The Enlightenment" wrote in message
...
The Squadron was particularly effective at a time when being judged by
merit
was apparently not common and for this its men deserve great honor.


SNIP

That policy did change, however. Similarly, non-whites were
excluded from the US Navy's officer ranks for most of the war. Hence the
TA
might not have been judged on their merits, but discriminated against
despite their merits.

The fact that they had been discriminated against didn't effect their
abillity to fly and navigate an aircraft or to follow complicated
orders. That ability is based purely on ability. A dose of
discrimination (I have suffered some while in Asia and I am I am
white) even spurs one on in some circumstances.


Well, yes, their having been discriminated against DID affect both their
ability (or eligibility) to enter the USAAC, later affected whether they
would ever be committed and the timing of their commitment overseas, and
still later had an influence on whether they were to be employed along the
lines of a standard fighter unit. Perhaps you are justified in believing
that experiencing discrimination spurs one on. Nonetheless, a person or
group discriminated is still being victimized for no apparent good purpose.

However I now see you point.


However the reason the Trugegee Airmen worked, indeed the reason
integration has not degraded the effectiveness of the US
military is this: Selection on the basis of merit and IQ tests.

I can't agree with this. The effectivenes of the US military is based on a
combination of selection, instruction, training and leadership, as is
presumably the case with every industrialized nation. The US armed forces
(except for its navy) were in pitiful condition at the start of WWII. It had
to expand and had to locate competent instructors in every field of endeavor
undertaken by an army, navy or air force. Had they not done so, they
collectively would have failed in their task of producing competent armed
forces. Nonetheless, "selection" did not always correspond to "merit".


IQ tests have been under fire as a legitimate tool of selection for many
years.

IQ tests have been under fire but not for any good reason. They work
better than anything else at predicting the ability to acquire
training, they are not perfect but better than anything else short of
doing a 4 year university degree or a multi-million dollar pilot
training program.


Well, they certainly are cheaper than investing four years' time in each
applicant so as to discover whether s/he will make for a good soldier, or
putting someone into an expensive pilot-training program before assessing
their projected abilities, I guess.

IQ tests were enormously succesfull in determining whether an 18 year
old recruit would be suitable for pilot training or work as an
electronics technician or perhaps someting less challenging.


Or to put this another way, whether a candidate should simply be assigned to
a more dangerous specialty, such as the infantry. But no one has ever told
me that becoming an infantryman and staying alive in the process was in any
way less "challenging".

Sure, If you are looking to hire someone to do electrical engineering
for you and both candidates are 22 years old and have got degrees then
look at their college work not at the IQ. If they are 18 and haven't
gone to university yet and one has an IQ of 145 and the other 105
(borderline for being able to do that work) then going for the high IQ
candidate is a far better bet.


Agreed, to a point, but only because training in many specialties is
expensive, and in the wartime USA, time was of the essence. Candidates with
more formal education (and often, hence, better "IQ" scores) tended to
absorb information faster than those who had less opportunity to exercise
their intellectual muscles before being processed. That is not to say,
however, that those with lesser scores could not be trained to the necessary
level of performance, given enough time.

An IQ test is all but irrelevant in determining which persons will
have the hand-eye-leg coordination necessary for competent fighter
pilotage,


No. That is not a correct statement.

RT or "Reaction Time" tests measure decision making time by presenting
a pattern of lights to a subject who must make a decision and lift his
hand from a home button and press one of several buttons in correct
response to the pattern of lights. The speed of decision and the
number of errors correlates with the same repeatability with IQ as
meausured by normal "written" IQ tests.
(correlation copefficnt r = 0.68) The more complicated patterns
compensate somewhat for people with great muscles and short reactions
and you can see the timing gaps widen as the patterns become more
complicated.

So does that mean that the "pinball wizards" who spend hours per week on PC
games will outscore anybody else in such testing?

In other words an RT test can be used to estimate IQ fairly
accurately. Though it is possbile that you might be a genious at
poetry but mundane at visual tasks the talents tend to aligne.

A friend of mine was able to solve a Rubkicks cube in about 40 seconds
after she 'took' one I was playing with away form me having never seen
it before. She is a CEO now and earned high distinctions throughout
her university degree.


Is she a pilot? If so, how much of her ability to fathom certain
relationships reads over to her abilities with a stick?

The ability to think or visualise several moves ahead seems to be as
important than 'hand eye co-ordination'. I certainly recall several
air combat stories and reactions are clearly important but just as
often the pilot is executing a complicated strategy and anticipating
that of his opponent.

Does that mean that Bobby Fischer (sp?) could wax my tail in a practice
dogfight?

A full blown IQ test is actully the weighted average of 6 seperate
tested categories of cognitive ability. Broadly 3 of them in the
visuo-spatial ability and 3 in the linguistc logical area. Two people
with the same IQ say 130 would likely have a different balance. The
balance varies consistantly with race. EG east asisn children adopted
to european familes in Germany or Belgium show a consistent bias to
visuo-spatial ability.


or for determining which persons will demonstrate the skills requisite
to
managing a transport or a bomber a/c. Any human-resources person in the
civilian sector can probably tell you, (if so inclined) how easy it is
to
"get around" even stringent selection rules.

You are saying people sometimes manage to cheat? It seems an
irrelevant point. The majority of people don't cheat.

Disagree. While I will deny, without fear of possible contradiction that I
have ever had reason to cheat or have ever taken advantage of an opportunity
to do so even if doing so were to advance my chances of getting something I
want (heh, heh, heh), I can assure you that an overwhelming majority of
people, not just a majority, will "cheat" to one degree or another, 'cause
this ain't a perfect world with "perfect" competition. Even in the military,
such occurs. A favorite example, to me, is how negative evaluation reports
(at times, a single such report can fatally damage a career) are sometimes
"disappeared" (as in "made to disappear") from the permanent files.

In other words, neither native
intelligence (IQ?) nor acquired skills (merit) necessarily determined
how
society or a military organization treated you.

They don't necessarily determin them they just mostly determin them.

I'm not so sure of that as you appear to be.

IQ determines to a great extent ones abillity to acquire skills and
knowledge.

Other factors such as motivation and environment also have an effect
but not as much as people like to think.

outcome = intelligence x motivation x opportunity


outcome = who you are + who you know, probably just as often.

The Tuskeegee Airmen were a part of the US "underclass" who were attempting
to obtain better treatment. To some extent they got their opportunity
because of the Roosevelt family, who put their considerable weight behind
them. Had it not been for their impetus, the TA might never have had their
opportunity.

You seem to fail to recognize that officially-sanctioned racism was more
or
less the norm in the US of those days. The TA experiment succeeded only
because the necessary impetus was available to force it through against
several levels and forms of opposition: F Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Otherwise, the TA probably would have been excluded.

It proved that merritorious Blacks can perform as well as
merriotorious whites. People must be judged on merrits. There just
aren't quite as many blacks as whites with certain natural talents. I
say this as someone who has looked at the matter quite extensvely.

I dunno. In the US, at least, the majority population is white, with about
10 per cent Hispanic and 10 per cent African-American. Take 1,000 US
citizens, and you will find 800 whites, which is a larger pool than 100
Hispanics and 100 African-Americans. I would be surprised if fewer whites
were found with "certrain natural talents" in such circumstances. Yes,
people are judged on merits, but there are many ways of determining merits.

I as a white have to accept that their are ethnic groups who have IQ
and real world success substantialy exceding ours as well.

No argument here.

It was not a question of whether the TA were "qualified"; instead it was
a
question of whether they should be included or could be excluded. To
ensure
exclusion, certain roadblocks were placed in their way. That was the
reality, virtually all across the board.


Yes, thinking about it more I agree. The point I was trying to make
was that the case of the Tusgegee airman proved that Blacks judged on
merrit will perform as well (in some cases better, the Tusgegee airman
had excellent disciplin ) as whites judged on merrit.

The cases of the Tusgegee airmen is to my mind extended to mean other
things.

I think I was trying to make the point about merrit.

Right. The example of the TA was used to rebut arguments about irredeemable
inferiority in many other fields of endeavor. Piloting an aircraft was a
vocation which placed one in an elite. So, if the TA demonstrated that
non-whites could sustain an elite occupation, then why not other, more
mundane vocations as well?

SNIP

Yes, repeatedly we have the white populations mean IQ comming out at
a 100 and African-American populations mean IQ at 85 even today. A
black completing college in those days would have been a partiularly
exceptional individual.


Typically, blacks who attended college in those days attended segregated
institutions (separate but equal). There were exceptions, however. In any
event, the propotion of blacks who achieved even a secondary level of
education in those days was not impressive.

However this again does not justify exclusion or segregation.

Agreed.

If affirmitve action methods were used today in the military
effectveness would suffer; quite a lot.

How so?

If Affirmitve Action had of been used to 'equalise' the disadvantages
suffered to get much larger numbers of Black Airman then Tuegegee
arimen would be famous for proving that blacks make poorer fighter
pilots on average.

I don't believe so. "Affirmative Action" actually is not well-understood;
but it makes ofr a powerful political arguing point. In the civilian job
marketplace, it actually has a very restricted connotation. According to my
human resources sources, in the Old Days, any firm could, with or without a
rationale, simply deny any candidate it chose, oddly enough including women,
the right to complete a job application. That has changed.

In other areas, the content of AA is clouded by controversy, probably
because selection into an elite of some sort or another is involved, which
feature "affirmative" steps to be taken by an institution to process
minorities into one elite or another. People, in general, (no matter of what
race) are very touchy when it comes to their son or daughter being
de-selected for entry into certain elite institutions in favor of a
minority or other "special" candidate. Just how far ought any institution go
in its effort to recruit minorities (and nowadays, to a somewhat lesser
extent, women) into a given elite (the military, college, veterinary school,
law school, medical college, etc)? And if allowed to do so, is this done
only at the risk of injuring deserving whites? Is AA a form of "reverse
discrimination"?

It was
unnecessary for either Yeager or Johnson to have been part of an "elite"
in
order to become a part of the air corps, but I'm glad both of them were
available and that the USAAF sent them where they could do some good
work.

If you tested Yeaker or Johnsons IQ I'm sure it would be fairly high.
(military results migh still be available) IQ test can find potential
talent even when they haveing had extensive tertiary education.

(I meant to have written "...part of an "IQ" elite...." Simply being
selected for aviation training placed them into an elite.)


I wasn't aware of that (that is, of the talent-spotting potential of such
tests). Instead, I was given to understand that "IQ" tests tend to favor
those with more formal education, or those at least with certain tools
provided with having been exposed to formal education.


Methods both made
illegal under affirmative action in the civilian world in a Landmark
case
involving the Duke Power Company who wanted to eliminate the
possibility
of
racial discrimination by using written tests and IQ tests devoid of
bias
as
much as possible.

I may be a bit parochial, but I don't believe I've ever encountered a
test
which can be termed "devoid of bias", probably because no one who
composes
tests based principally on IQ is without biases (I admit to reaching
this
conclusion only after discussions with psychology majors while in
college).
A built-in bias of any such test is that it assumes that the testees
have
had solid educations, and rewards those who have.

IQ tests are set up to test reasoning ability as much as possible not
prior learning. The bias is pretty small and effort is put inot
avoiding it. Culuraly fiar tests devoid of verbal content alos exist.

In the case of the TA, there was never any question of "IQ", as such. The
results of their individual testing demonstrated that. The issue was whether
they could be or should be included in or excluded from aviation within the
USAAF on the basis of their ethnic origin. In other words, it was not a
question of whether their ostensible merit or "intelligence" scores fitted
them to the position; It came down to a societal decision whether blacks
were to remain forever a sort of "invisible" subculture or to be allowed to
assert the same privileges and immuninties (especially freedom from
discrimination) as any "typical" white person.

That's the sub text of what I think when I here someone lauding the
Tusgegee
Airmen. They are lauding and proving the effectveness of IQ and 100%
merit
based tests.

Not really. You don't seem to understand that there were societal and
(within the USAAF) systemic biases at work against the TA even coming
into
existence. A phrase I used to hear quite often (but less so nowadays)
was
that "A Negro (that wasn't what was actually uttered) can't become a
(fill
in the blank), they're not smart enough".

OK I concede that there was discriminatiuon that denied opportunity
and I would agree with this.

I regret phrasing the header to my post as it was.


The Tusgee airman proved was that blacks, when selected on merrit,
would perform as well if not better than whites. (A no brainer
really)

"A Negro is less likely to have the abillity to become a (fill
in the blank), becuase there are somewhat less of them with higher
ability"

Dunno about that one. Fewer in terms of gross numbers? Fewer
proportionatley?

Would have to be a correct statement if based on decades of SATs, IQ
tests, indices of performance in reading, arithmatic etc. (SAT gaps
have widened agin I beleive)

Well, for about fifty or so years, numbers of firms in the US have made
money by offering preparation testing/training for persons planning on
undertaking SATS, officer candidate school tests, etc. Apparently, they have
proved generally successful in preparing their clients to perform well on
such tests. The overwhelming majority of such clients has always been white,
probably a function of the ethnic makeup of the nation.
SNIP

One of the problems that a talented black will face is that his
educational merrits will always be judged on the basis of 'affirmitve
action' unless it is known that he/she attended universiies that do
not practice this. Justifiably so since people judge and discriminate
to asses someones potential to impact on them not to make them feel
bad or good.

One of the problems whites are now facing is that they are squeezed
between Affirmitive Avtion granted to Blacks (I can accept that) and
Hispanics (Unacceptable) and groups which test higher in congnitve
ability. Whites are not judged on merrit in cvilian life. The
concept of 'white priveledge' being the latest invention used to
justify discrimination aginst whites as a group.

Well, no. In the US, for most of its history, only a fraction of the
population (mostly white and mostly male) enjoyed the full benefits of
citizenship, in terms of voting, alienation of property, etc. As time
passed, more groups (especially in this century, women) have to a
significant extent made their way into the benefits of full citizenship, and
in reading womens' histories, it was an uphill climb all the way.

blacks have suffered a similar fate; despite affirmitive action
starting in 1964 their unemployment rate is far worse now. Their
traditional jobs in the building industry being taken up by Hispanics
who have a high workforce participation rate.

Remember that the overwhelming majority of blacks in this nation come from
families of former slaves. As such, they were not human beings in the Us
system, but a form of personal property. There is a big gap between being
"personal property" and being a citizen with all the benefits that accrue
therefrom. I know of no one who claims that the US has ever been a "perfect"
society. But to my mind, major steps have been taken to include former
underclasses such as women and blacks and Hispanics from the status of
property or something not quite full citizens, to something better.

If there was a justification for exclusion, segregation, appartheid it
is this: the black crime rate is about 8 times the white rate in the
US today and there is bit of a mess in Sth Africa, Zimbabwe and the UK
like that. Anyone sane would I feel go out of the way to avoid
proximity to that for them and their family. It's a practical
necessity. However denying opportunities on the pretense that there
are no blacks of merrit is a fiction that was I feel maintained to
help justify exclusion for other reasons. I was a follish fiction
becaue it was easy to discredit.

I am Australian, not in the US. Afro-Blacks in Australia have a crime
rate 1/4th that of whites. (That I fear will change becuase we are
now accepting large numbers of refugees from Africa; 3rd world refgees
tend to have higher than average crime rates). The blacks here are
still a select group in small numbers but generally all business
proffesionals, entertainers, sports figures spouses etc.


AFAIK tell the only institution in the US which automatically confers
justified prestige on a black or white equaly for having been a member
is the US military.

I wish that you could become better acquainted with the US; and I want to
know more about Australia, likewise. Thanks for your post. I hope I have not
inspired any hard feelings with my comments. I've been an informal student
of US history since I attended college. I realize that I nonetheless have
much to learn.

"Lawrence Dillard" wrote in message
...



I dunno. In the US, at least, the majority population is white, with about
10 per cent Hispanic and 10 per cent African-American. Take 1,000 US
citizens, and you will find 800 whites, which is a larger pool than 100
Hispanics and 100 African-Americans. I would be surprised if fewer whites
were found with "certrain natural talents" in such circumstances. Yes,
people are judged on merits, but there are many ways of determining
merits.


Nitpick In 2000 the actual figures were

72% White, 12% African American, 11% Latina, 4% Asian,
0.7% Native American , 0.3% Everything else

Keith

"The Enlightenment" wrote in message
...
The Squadron was particularly effective at a time when being judged by
merit
was apparently not common and for this its men deserve great honor.

[snipped as truth degrades here on in.]

Well said that man!

Have you noticed that in almost every avenue, the "hungry" fight best
whether that's in business, sport or war ?

If you're at the top of some pile then you get fat and lazy like those pervy
Nazis who based their on the Homo-erotic Greek activities. Were Hitler's
henchmen practising Amun-Ra's activities for lengthening life and getting
back ache ?


Richard.