General draws line on racial slurs at academy
Superintendent tells 4,000 cadets, ‘You should be outraged.’
T h e h e a d o f t h e A i r Force Academy delivered a resounding message Thursday in response to racial slurs that were found on the academy’s campus, saying that if students could not treat their peers of different races with respect, “then you need to get out.”
In a five-minute address in front of the academy’s 4,000 cadets and 1,500 staff members, Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria affirmed the Air Force’s belief in “the power of diversity” and insisted that “small thinking and horrible ideas” had no place there.
He was re s p o n d i n g t o rac ial slurs found on the dormitory message boards of five black students at a preparatory school on the academy’s campus Monday, said the academy, which is investigating.
“If you’re out raged by those words, then you’re in the right place,” Silveria said. “You should be outraged not only as an airman, but as a human being.”
The e pi s o de a t t r a c t e d national attention when Tracye Whitfield, the mother of one of the students, posted a photo on Facebook of the message, which paired the words “go home” with a racial slur.
“It’s a nerve-racking feeling,” Whitfield told a local news station in Colorado Springs, near where the academy is located.
The preparatory school, usu a l ly c a l l e d t he “prep school,” prepares c andidates for admission to the academy proper. About 240 students, called “cadet candidates,” attend the school each year.
Although the slurs were found at the prep school, “it would be naïve” to think the episode did not reflect on the academy and the Air Force as a whole, Silveria said.
“Some of you may think that that happened down at the prep school and doesn’t a pply t o us , ” he s a i d. “I would b e na ïve , a nd we would all be naïve, to think that everything is perfect here.”
He then explicitly linked the discovery of the slurs to events like the demonstrations in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacists marched with torches in August, and Ferguson, Mo., where the fatal shooting of a black teenager by a police officer in 2014 set off protests across the country. He said that these events formed a backdrop that had to be addressed and that to think otherwise would be “tone deaf.”
After c al l i ng f or a c ivi l discourse, he spoke of the power of various forms of diversity, evoking “the power that we come from all walks of life, that we come from all parts of this country, that we come from all races, we come from all backgrounds, gender, all makeup, all upbringing.”
He added: “This is our institution, and no one can take away our values. No one can write on a board and question our values.”
Silveria grew up in an Air Force family and graduated from the academy in 1985. It was announced in May that he would return to become superintendent, and in his first address to cadets, in August, he said that his defin- ing values were “respect and dignity.”
Toward t he e nd of hi s remarks Thursday, he referenced those values again, exhorting cadets to take out their phones and record his words so that they could remember, share and discuss them.
“If you can’t treat someone from another gender with dignit y and respect, then you need to get out,” he said. “If you demean someone in any way, you need to get out. If you can’t treat someone from another race, or different color skin, with dignit y and respect, then you need to get out.”
The Air Force Academy has struggled to address different forms of discrimination in the past. In 2014, a Pentagon report found that sexual assault and harassment were widespread at the three military academies and that, of the 70 reported incidents in the 2012-13 school year, almost two-thirds took place at the Air Force Academy. There were 32 reports of sexual assault at the school in the 2015-16 school year, the Pentagon said.
The a c a de my ha s a l s o come under fire for religious intolerance and insensitivity. A 2005 Pentagon report found that there was a “perception of religious bias” on campus as well as improper proselytizing.
The Air Force Academy has struggled to address different forms of discrimination in the past.