Note (Back) — CHAPTER 15

The considerable staff activity devoted to definitions of race between 1949 and 1951 added very little to racial harmony or the cause of integration. The simplified racial categories and the regulations determining their application continued to irritate members of America's several minority groups. The ink was hardly dry on the new regulation, for example, before the director of the NAACP's Washington bureau was complaining to Secretary of the Air Force Thomas K. Finletter that the department's five categories were comparatively meaningless and caused unnecessary humiliation for inductees. He wanted racial entries eliminated.[15-17] Finletter explained that racial designations were not used for assignment or administrative purposes but solely for evaluating the integration program and answering questions from the public. His explanation prompted much discussion within the services and correspondence between them and Clarence Mitchell and Walter White of the NAACP. It culminated in a meeting of the service secretaries with the Secretary of Defense on 16 January 1951 at which Finletter reaffirmed his position.[15-18]