Disposable Heroes: The Betrayal of African American Veterans. By Benjamin Fleury-Steiner. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012. 200 pp. $36.00.

Abstract

Disposable Heroes: The Betrayal of African American Veterans.By Benjamin Fleury-Steiner. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012. 200 pp. $36.00.It is not often that one reads an academic book and is transported into another world, where the words of research subjects dominate, and the stories are left bare to expose the raw, entangled webs that make up people's lives. Benjamin Fleury-Steiner's Disposable Heroes accomplishes this task in an eminently readable and engaging book that details how racism and poverty shape the of African- American veterans. Fleury-Steiner's decision to excerpt at length from interview transcripts, while eschewing the heavy hand of theory, results in a book that shows how racial hierarchies are made, created, and sustained, while also decentering the gaze of tradi- tional studies of racial inequality and criminality.Disposable Heroes begins, according to Fleury-Steiner, a simple observation: For a grossly disproportionate number of African-American soldiers, the end of military service signals a return to a largely unforgiving civilian world that has little use for (6). Fleury-Steiner details the of 30 veterans and uncovers how systematic racism, contem- porary mass incarceration, and policies of ghettoization, urban renewal, and integration weave through the life histories of vet- erans. Joining up, serving, and returning to civil society all are infused with racial hierarchy, experience, and stigmatization, despite the military's reputation as the most successful story of affirmative action (Moskos 1995). Veterans recalled tinged not just with racial inequality, but also the struggles that ensue when returning from war, when serving in military zones, or when discharged without a support network. Veterans in this book must confront the racial exigencies of modern society while also grappling with service related disabilities, recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or navigating the complex laby- rinth of Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits.Despite these common themes, the experience of racial exclusion emerges not from the larger structural issues that many veterans confront, but from the micro-operation of power. Military service, for many, was a way to be included in the Ameri- can dream, but after service, that inclusion is revealed as partial, contingent, and as yet another site for the encoding of difference. A striking example was of veterans who joined up as a way to do something with their lives or get on the right track, only to have military experience expose them to trauma that com- pounded the difficulties of living and surviving in an ongoing racial war at home. While structural racism is certainly demon- strated throughout the book, it is the very real and palpable way that structures are embedded, contested, and recreated through person-to-person interactions that are revealed through the veteran's words. …