Army veteran and chair of the Black Veterans Empowerment Council Victor LaGroon, who is Black, says seeing the disparate treatment of a soldier of color early in his military career put him on guard, even in his own unit.
After basic training and advanced individual training, LaGroon was at Fort Polk in Vernon Parish, La. in 2004 when he witnessed a white superior discipline a Latino soldier for being late. A white soldier showed up even more tardy, and received no punishment. LaGroon says that after the incident, other soldiers discussed what they had witnessed and concluded that the junior white soldier was not disciplined because both he and their superior were white.
"Now, whether that's true or not, that's the perception and the perception is the reality," LaGroon says. "It's what I took from it. It's what others around me of different races took from it."
LaGroon says that early exposure to inequality left a lasting impact on his next two years in the Army before he medically retired in 2006. He says the initial incident made him cautious to avoid situations where he could be subjected to a superior's biased perception of him because it could have cost him his security clearance and his career. When working with a superior who has a reputation of applying unequal discipline, LaGroon says that soldiers are left to question, "How fair are you? How biased are you? How much can I trust you?"
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