Black History Month: Dyess AFB leaders make Abilene history

Partial reproduction, originally published Feb. 20, 2020 (Abilene Reporter News)

For two years, Eric Dugger knew exactly where he would be every Sunday: at Ernest Davis's dining room table.

As a young, black man enlisted in the Air Force in the early 1990s, Dugger needed a role model. He found it in Davis while the two were stationed in Japan. Davis was a master sergeant; Dugger was assigned as a food service apprentice.

"He wanted to see me succeed," Dugger said. "He wanted to make sure I was doing good by my mom, doing good by him and doing good by myself."

At the time — and  even today, though it's becoming less noticeable — it was unusual to see people of color in leadership roles within the Air Force, Dugger said.

So, for Dugger, having an African-American mentor available to him made his experience easier.

Since those first two years half a world away from his native Philadelphia, Dugger has had plenty of influencers step into his path. Some pushed him into positions and trusted him with responsibilities; others encouraged him to lead and instilled servant-leadership qualities.

But Davis's immediate helpful hand, combined with his own career trajectory that has taken him to one of the top positions inside Dyess Air Force Base's leadership, causes him pause.

Dugger is the top-ranking enlisted airman at the Abilene base.

He knows that one day, his picture will hang on the wall outside his administrative office, next to previous and future 7th Bomb Wing command chiefs. It's a humbling thought, he said. In a way, he's making history.

But so is everyone else, he said.

"We're all history-makers," Dugger said. "Not only are we making history, we're also paying it forward to the future generation.

"We're not where we want to be, I think, as a black race, but everyone who works hard, everyone who goes out and is successful, can help us get there. It's about paying it back, remembering where it is we came from."

One life-changing moment

Sitting in his office, Dugger opens up about his past.

It wasn't exactly straight and narrow. But the 50-year-old wouldn't be where he is this day without those twists, turns and potholes, he said.

It starts in Philadelphia.

The late 1970s and early 1980s were a rough, dirty, dangerous time to be a young black man. At 10, Dugger  already was drinking hard liquor and beer, hanging out on porches with known drug dealers and worrying more than any pre-teen should about whether or not he was going to survive the next day.

It was a fear that permeated his day-to-day thinking. He wasn't concerned with discrimination because the possibility of a neighborhood gunfight was too real.

Well before he got involved in the military, he said, he'd seen people shot and killed. It was his reality.

That was just one side of Dugger's young life.

Flipped from booze and guns, he said, was a nerdy student who made good grades in school and, thanks to his familial influences, was able to attend college.

For this, he left Philly for his city's hated cross-state rival: Pittsburgh. While there was some playful bickering at times, it wasn't much of an issue because of the sports scene of the day, he said.

"By the time I went to college, it was 1987," Dugger said. "The (Philadelphia) Eagles (football team) were not that good. And when you go to college, everyone's from everywhere. We were in Pennsylvania still, so it was really us versus those from outside."

The nerdy kid had, at the time, visions of one day managing hotels.

They never came to be.

Four years into college at the University of Pittsburgh, Dugger dropped out. He didn't believe his student's role was leading him to where he needed to be. And tired of wasting his mother's money on school, he returned to Philadelphia. Empty-handed.

There, Dugger faced a choice. It was either live on the edge selling drugs and fighting every day for his life, or stepping into a role in the military. He chose straight and narrow.

"I was working as a security guard in Philly when a recruiter stopped me," Dugger said. "He told me I was a good fit for the Air Force."

He's never looked back, he said.

‘It felt like us vs. them’

Sometimes it's overt. Sometimes it's covert. But no matter what, racism hurts those toward which it's directed.

Capt. Brittney Lee once called the melting pot named New Orleans home. Then, in 2005, her world was destroyed.

At 11, Lee didn't fully understand what was happening as Hurricane Katrina laid waste to her precious city.

With nothing left, her family moved to Alabama. Her experiences in her new home left her struggling, having felt the effects of racism, both directly and indirectly.

"New Orleans is very similar to the Air Force," Lee said. "It's very diverse and accepting. I didn't experience any racism as a child. After we moved to Alabama, it was vastly different."

Most notably, she experienced pure hatred while attending school at the University of Alabama. From 2010-14, Lee, 27, was witness to a fairly significant act of racism.

One day, while walking to class from her sorority house, Lee saw nooses hung in the school's quad.

There are two kinds of racism, she said. Nooses count as the more noticeable kind, the overtly discriminatory. It was meant to send a message to the black students on campus.

What she wasn't expecting was the second kind, the covert racism, disguised as other things. She and her fellow students received this type from school administration as word got out about how they (administrators) punished those responsible.

"The reaction of the students of color when they found out it was just a hand slap was strong," Lee said. "We questioned if we belonged there or didn't we. It felt like it was us vs. them."

She struggles mostly with these and other microaggressions, where people subtly — without even realizing they are doing it — make comments that belittle her or her heritage, she said.

For instance, she said she often hears "I'm colorblind" from people who are trying to express their understanding and lack of racism. But, she said, it's achieving the opposite of what they hope for.

Though she can't speak for every person of color, she said she personally dislikes that qualifier.

"As a black woman, I want you to see color," she said. "I want you to see my curly hair and to ask questions and see my culture. I want them to see that even though my hair is curly and their hair may be straight, we're not different."