Almost a third of Black U.S. military servicemembers reported suffering racial discrimination and/or harassment during a 12-month period, according to results of a 2017 Defense Department survey, Reuters reported. Troops who suffered racial discrimination or harassment had high dissatisfaction with the complaint process and mostly did not report, according to the survey.
The Pentagon’s release of the data followed a Reuters article about how the Defense Department sat on survey data during former President Trump’s administration, Reuters reported.
“This just-released 2017 report shows that President Trump’s Department of Defense has deliberately concealed statistics exposing a racial justice crisis in the military,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a senior member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee.
“While Defense Department leadership paid lip service to equality, they withheld a report revealing that minority service members face rampant discrimination and harassment, and those that report it are nearly as likely to face punishment as the perpetrators.”
