U.S. Central Command has removed a “Welcome Booklet” for the U.S. military training mission to Saudi Arabia that included the phrase “Negro blood" in describing the people of the Arabian peninsula.
“We regret that inappropriate material was posted to our website without a more fulsome review and apologize to anyone who took offense,” CENTCOM spokesman Navy Capt. Bill Urban said in a statement. “We removed the document as soon as we were notified of the content, and it was returned to the originating office for revision."
The 69-page manual was first referenced on American comedian Hasan Minhaj’s Netflix show “Patriot Act,” where Minhaj pointed out the use of the phrase in the Sunday premier.
The story was then reported on Thursday by the New York Times and Stars and Stripes.
“If you are sent on a training mission in Saudi Arabia, this is the official military document you get," Minhaj said in the show. “Oh, America, even in boring technical manuals you somehow manage to be racist.”
CENTCOM has not yet explained how the wording came to be in the manual, but it could be a casualty of copied documents from older manuals that weren’t properly vetted — let alone read — by service members.
The manual was designed to provide regional information to U.S. troops sent abroad to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, or KSA, where they will face restrictions not common in many other non-combat theaters, such as the KSA’s ban on pornography and alcohol.
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The phrase “Negro blood” was found under a section titled “People and Population."
“The population of the KSA is mainly composed of descendants of indigenous tribes that have inhabited the peninsula since prehistoric times with some later mixture of Negro blood from slaves imported from Africa,” the manual, dated June 2018, read before being taken down.
Before this, the manual was on CENTCOM’s official website.
CENTCOM officials are now promising to search through other publications posted online to ensure similar materiel is not present.
“We have conducted an internal review of our posting processes, and are conducting a survey of previously posted material to ensure there is no further instances of inappropriate material on our website,” Urban said in his statement.
The U.S. military supports a small cohort of military advisers to the kingdom who assist the Saudi military in a variety of roles, to include targeting Houthi rebels in the KSA’s war in Yemen.
Kyle Rempfer was an editor and reporter who has covered combat operations, criminal cases, foreign military assistance and training accidents. Before entering journalism, Kyle served in U.S. Air Force Special Tactics and deployed in 2014 to Paktika Province, Afghanistan, and Baghdad, Iraq.
