Repeal activists from Lt. Dan Choi, to Servicemembers United’s Alexander Nicholson on down to the grassroots have indignantly proclaimed “Truman never surveyed the troops on racial integration!” This has been repeated so often, it’s become mantra.

Oops. Turns out they did. Pentagon in response to such claims has released records to the contrary. On Monday, The Advocate’s Kerry Eleveld reported:

“Prior to President Truman’s 1948 executive order integrating the armed forces,” said DOD spokeswoman Cynthia Smith, “our preliminary research shows that branches of the armed forces undertook a number of modestly sized surveys of the attitudes of enlisted and nonenlisted troops concerning racial issues, integration, and morale.”

Now, we’re not the Fox News or the right wing, so the tactic of repeating an untruth, hoping it will make it true, is off the table.

But we can point out this disclosure only serves to vindicate repeal advocates’ position. The current survey is wrong, a waste of time, money and resources and serves only to insult the servicemembers by repeating and reinforcing biased assumptions.

Cross posted at Daily Kos. Please rec if you got it.On Tuesday, the Wonk Room looked a little closer at the surveys themselves, conducted from 1942 to 1946. They conclude military attitudes were overwhelmingly against the idea of racial integration and eerily reminiscent of the current survey in showing framing bias that would surely be unacceptable today:

These surveys show that the same attitude pervaded the military: 3/4 Air Force men favored separate training schools, combat, and ground crews and 85% of white soldiers thought it was a good idea to have separate service clubs in army camps:

While smaller, these racial polls share some common questions with the DADT survey. In fact, in some instances one can even replace “negro” for “gay” and end up with today’s questionnaire. Both polls ask servicemembers if they objected to working alongside minorities, how they felt serving with minorities, how effective minorities are in combat and if their feelings have changed about the minority after serving with them. (Interestingly, 77% of respondents said they had more favorable opinion).

This is a link to the PDF of the actual survey.

Today, Wonk Room followed up with a look at surveys taken on military attitudes towards Jewish people conducted in 1946 and 1947 (it’s unclear what initiated these surveys). Highlighted questions are particularly shocking, they include:

“There is nothing good about Jews.” (Agree: 86%, Disagree: 13%)

“Jews are out to rule the world.” (Agree: 27%, Disagree: 73%)

“The Jews always get the best of everything.” (Agree: 30%, Disagree: 70%)

“You can always tell a Jew by the way he looks.” (Agree: 61%, Disagree: 39%)

“Jews are the biggest goldbricks in the Army. (Agree: 51%, Disagree: 49%)

“A Jew will always play you for a sucker.” (Agree: 48%, Disagree: 52%)

View PDF here.

Nice.

Wonk Room observes: “About 8 of the 13 statements on Jews presented to the troops bear a disturbingly negative connotation.”

I’d wager to say, viewed through the prism of the 1940s, few people at the time would have agreed with that assessment. After all, it was just what people said, right? They were just being real.

Many today do not see the homophobia peppered throughout the current DADT survey. Perhaps in 60 years it will be as clear to the rest of the country as it currently is to most of the gay community. Even Human Rights Campaign has said, “”We urge the [Defense] Department to analyze the results with an understanding of the inherent bias in the questions and use it as a tool to implement open service quickly and smoothly.” And HRC is nothing if not the forgiving, reasonable and pragmatic voice of LGBT advocacy. The criticism only gets more furious from there. I’ve rarely observed the LGBT community so united in a view.

I was at the American History Museum recently with a friend. He remarked, “I really need to study history more. I didn’t take much in school.”

I’m no expert myself, more a middling student, especially compared to many. But I know enough to have counseled my friend, “It’s depressing to study history. You learn how rarely we actually learn from it. And how often we end up repeating it.”

It is a disgrace this lesson hasn’t been learned. This shameful, degrading exercise didn’t need to be repeated. And it shouldn’t have been. There are many better methods to cull necessary information, as our learned social scientists have been saying since day one. (You know, the ones with all those degrees from elite schools?)

These disclosures merely demonstrate that polling people on their bigoted assumptions of others accomplishes little but slowing the universes’ arc toward justice.

And it leaves a permanent, shameful mark on our own record of history.

Our brave, committed troops deserved better in the 1940s. And they deserve better now.

Let us hope in 2010, regardless of the results of this survey, American leadership can again find in themselves the courage and principle to do what is right, not what polls as popular. They will hopefully rise to their role as leaders and not base policy on what “most people say.”