Alice Kaplan is professor of Romance studies, literature and history at Duke University.
Kaplan studies disturbing courts-martial and the racially skewed statistics that emerge from World War II military justice to find that blacks were charged and convicted of rape and murder in disproportionate numbers as compared to their white counterparts for a variety of reasons.
Standard sentences for rape were either life in prison or the death penalty, which made commanding officers hesitant to bring their men up on rape charges. "In military law," Kaplan notes, "it's the commanding officer, not the victim, who brings the charge." Commanding officers were more likely to bring up black men on charges of rape, not only because of racial assumptions about black criminality, but also because African Americans were assigned to service units and considered dispensable. Predominantly black service unit soldiers were assumed to be committing rape in larger number than predominantly white combat troops, when in fact, says Kaplan, they were being arrested for rape in larger number than the other troops.
According to Kaplan, US soldiers convicted of rape and murder were hanged publicly in the community where their crimes had taken place, proving to the local population that the American liberators would not tolerate criminal behavior among troops. "In the public hanging of black rapists by an army who needed to maintain impeccable relations with French civilians," Kaplan asks, "how many white rapes were covered up?"
|
|