[PW] Re: ? African American Vietnam War Veterans Readjustment Issues

[Dennis Lien]

At 02:34 PM 10/30/2006, you wrote:
>Hi -
>
>I'm having difficulty locating statistical information on education,
>mental and physical health (PTSD?), employment and general reintegration
>(or adjustment) issues of Afro-American, or Africa American, or Black
>American veterans into the American society after the Vietnam War.  I
>found a couple of articles on PTSD & African American, but having
>trouble locating statistics in the Education and employment areas.  I've
>searched ProQuest, Ebsco, InfoTrac, Project Muse & JSTOR.  Can anyone
>help me with this?  Thank you in advance.
>
>Bruce
>
>  <mailto:thornlowb at ndu.edu> thornlowb at ndu.edu


Might try the Center for Minority Veterans website

http://www1.va.gov/centerforminorityveterans/


A search of ETHNIC NEWSWATCH database brought up some anecdotal
evidence in articles from African-American newspapers etc.
(complaints at job fairs and such) but I didn't see anything
with hard data.

LEXIS/NEXIS STATISTICAL ABSTRACT search turned up some leads
with a search of freetext term   vietnam veterans  and "by race" limits:

*****************

series: "Employment Situation of Vietnam-Era Veterans"

googling which led me to this table:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/vet.t01.htm

Table 1. Employment status of persons 18 years and over by veteran status, 
period of service, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, August 
2005, not seasonally adjusted

but unfortunately Vietnam era is lumped in with WWII and Korea...
***********

and the "Long Journey Home" PTSD progress reports, of which at least the 2000
report is available online:

http://www.nepec.org/PTSD/LJH09.pdf

************************

Almost twenty years old now, but--

"The 1988 National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS) demonstrated 
that Black and Hispanic veterans who served in Vietnam experienced 
significantly greater readjustment problems and higher levels of 
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) than White veterans."

http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/facts/veterans/fs_NVVRS.html

********************

Also almost twenty years old...

The August 1990 issue of BLACK ENTERPRISE contains results of a survey of its
readers (pp 77-94); one of the many topics was "fairness of treatment of
Vietnam veterans."

Hope this helps a little...

Dennis Lien / U of Minnesota Libraries // d-lien at umn.edu