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but it was a part of the unreal official pretense that segregation does not mean discrimination.

Lack of courage and conviction in official attitudes toward individual Negroes, which was very harmful in the effect on Negroes as soldiers and officers, was closely related to the tendency to be unfair toward Negroes in general.

There were thousands of failures to deal with Negro miscreants in a forceful and military manner.  Even in the Navy, during the period when it was trying to defend its segregation policies instead of outgrow them, granted many pardons to Negro mutineers and others convicted of serious military offenses.  This would not be necessary in the Navy today, because the Navy's policies are now sincere in abolishing discrimination by the necessary means of abolishing segregation.

Vacillation and inaction are inevitable consequence of pretending that Negro individuals do not really possess individual responsibility, but somehow are members of a group possessing group responsibility.  In other words, the delusion, perpetuated by segregation, that Negroes are a "separate nation" in America, which they are not, renders most commanders incapable of dealing with Negroes as separate American individuals, which they are.

The unfortunate effect of customary discrimination on those individual officers for whom segregation offers "a way out" of the problems of leadership and administration created by race prejudice is perhaps the greatest penalty of all.  As Myrdal explains it:

[[footnote]]90 The author once sat on a reclassification board which retained in service an unqualified officer who happened to be Jewish.  Some members of the board stated that since they did not like Jews, they would feel better if they did this one favor.