By Jacey Eckhart
Special to GUIDON

Growing up on military bases, my brother, Nick, and I always felt ripped off because we were not ethnic. Our mom did not make lumpia, or futomaki or greens. We didn’t have hip foreign accents unless we faked ‘em when we moved. We knew we would never grow cool, curly, kinky, Gap ad hair (shoot, ol’ Nick is never going to grow any hair ever again.) We had to accept we were plain old boring white people, sentenced to suburban Ohio and perpetual baldness, world without end, amen.

So I have to say that when I picked up “The Mocha Manual To Military Life,” I was already pea green with envy. Military and ethnic?  Not fair. I felt even more envy as I read the book. Here was a great combo of both the facts of military life (like weight allowances for a PCS move) and the art of military life (like how to explain to your kids the differences of rank).

So why wasn’t this book for me? Were there really so many differences between military families of color and military families like mine that they needed their own book? Was the fact that I just referred to people of color as “they” an answer in and of itself?

I decided to speak to the authors and find out. Kimberly Seals Allen is not a military chick at all.  Instead she is the award-winning journalist behind the Mocha series. You might have seen her book, “The Mocha Manual to a Fabulous Pregnancy.”  Her coauthor, Pamela McBride, is the real military deal.  She has been married to her Soldier for more than 20 years. She also is a professional Well-Being Program Specialist for the Army.

“The differences are more small than huge,” Allen told me in an interview. In focus groups with military spouses across the country, Allen and McBride found that spouses and active-duty women of color weren’t experiencing huge institutional problems with the military itself. Instead, differences were often due to what I would call  “ignorant individuals.” But, I have to put it that way because my boss edited out the real word that I really used.

Allen and McBride found that differences experienced by women of color are often due to the communities in which bases are located. In less cosmopolitan areas, there are fewer diverse neighbors off base. That makes it more difficult to find the kind of church that feeds your spirituality. It means your children experience differences at school.

“In a community that is less used to brown faces, it is harder to blend in, harder not to feel that you do not have to be a cultural ambassador everywhere you go,” Allen said.

McBride agreed. “When you walk in a room you are gonna be black no matter what.”  That’s when I started to get what they were talking about. Any military family stationed somewhere like Korea or Japan remembers that feeling of going into a restaurant or grocery and instantly being uncomfortably aware of your own race. Imagine that happening in your own country, on your own base, in your own workplace.

Not cool. But Allen and McBride didn’t write this book to rail against difference in culture or to expose enormous unmanageable problems. Mostly their book is about getting information to a particular audience.

“Part of it is visual.  Part of it is language,” McBride said. “There are lots of good resources out there (for military families), but there are people not attracted to those resources. I’m hoping that when diverse people see this book that they are curious and it gets their attention. “

That’s a way of looking at race differences inside the military community that I hadn’t thought of before. All of us who work to make military families more functional must attract that audience. “No one knows your story until you tell it.  Everyone assumes their story is the same,” Allen said. “The way we move forward is that it is OK to talk about it, OK to understand our experience are different.”

I can live with that difference — even though it does mean accepting that once again I’m not gonna be cool or ethnic. Because when you get right down to it, it is far more important to me that some young family of color gets a chance to make life good inside the military. And I want them to get that information any way they can.

(Editor’s note: Eckhart is a military/life consultant based in Washington DC. She is the author of “The Homefront Club:  The Hardheaded Woman’s Guide to Raising a Military Family” and the voice behind “These Boots.” Check out more columns and her speaking schedule at www.jaceyeckhart.com.)