All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Integration the Army Way.

• Author: Peters, Ralph

THOSE AMERICANS WHO VALUE ideology over human beings will hate this book. Leftist overseers of vast social programs whose secret bias is that blacks cannot succeed on their own merits will reach to explain away the l; 35 black generals, 9,000 black officers, and 75,000 black noncommissioned officers (NCOs) currently on active duty with the U.S. Army. These men and women constitute the highest proportion of black executives and senior- and middle-level managers in any institution in this country. The stingy, insecure right will fear the message of the Army's social activism since the Truman era--annoying proof that relentless fairness, high standards, and carefully targeted remedial programs erase those comforting differentials in racial performance. But perhaps the most threatened Americans will be those black American leaders who profit from a culture of failure, who have done more than all but the most ruinous whites to convince their constituencies that they cannot achieve the American dream.

All of this makes Charles Moskos, a sociology professor at Northwestern University noted for his field research, a good candidate for lynching. Co-author John Sibley Butler, professor of sociology and management at the University of Texas, will likely get off with charges to the effect that he, a black American, has betrayed a trust by praising both the Army and the opportunities his country presents to all Americans. These two men have done something remarkable in the field of contemporary sociology--they have told the truth, as best they could discern it, about a subject as sensitive as it is unfashionable. Worse, they have written clearly and well.

If you want to see what black Americans have done for their country, look at their military record. We hear ceaselessly of the (remarkable and genuine) contributions of our nation's African heritage in the areas of music and other arts. But we are less likely to hear of the less glamorous, but arguably greater, contributions of black Americans in business, science, and education, and, above all, on the battlefield. Those Americans still suffering from a Great Society hangover are far more comfortable praising a saxophonist dead of a heroin overdose than a general with an iron moral center, a rich family life, and a capacity not only to gain this nation's highest office but also to set the standard for a new century's presidencies.

If you want examples of spectacular courage, of perseverance in the face of prejudice and...