Note (Back) — CHAPTER 22

Several changes in American society were responsible for the changes. The need for more exact racial documentation overcame the argument for removing racial designations, for the civil rights experts both within and outside the department demanded more detailed racial statistics to protect and enlarge the equal opportunity gains of the sixties. The demand was also supported by representatives of the smaller racial minorities who, joining in the civil rights revolution, developed a self-awareness that made detailed racial and ethnic statistics mandatory. The shift was made possible to a great extent by the change in public opinion toward racial minorities. As one civil rights official later noted, the change in attitude had caused black servicemen to reconsider their belief that detrimental treatment necessarily followed racial identification.[22-67] Ironically, just a decade after the McNamara directive on equal opportunity, a departmental civil rights official, himself a Negro, was defending the use of photographs in the selection process on the grounds that such procedures were necessary in any large organization where individuals were relatively unknown to their superiors.[22-68] So strong had the services' need for black officers become, it could be argued, that a promotion board's knowledge of a candidate's race redounded to the advantage of the black applicants. For whatever reason, the pressure to eliminate racial indicators from personnel forms had largely disappeared at the end of the 1960's.