Goldfish Learn To Drive

Race/ethnicity
Veterans
Non-veterans
White
$93,800
$88,700
Black
$77,400
$50,300
Hispanic
$83,200
$52,400
Asian
$95,300
$100,800
Median household income in 2017 by race for
veterans and non-veterans, ages 25–54
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www.sciencenews.org 
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February 12, 2022
21
COUR
TESY OF A. WILLIAMS
American Community Survey. But the median 
income for white veterans was $93,800. 
Yet racial contact in military towns has helped 
lift everyone in those communities, Massey says. 
“That [contact] is the formula for moderating the 
color line.” Black civilians living in military towns 
enjoy slightly higher incomes and homeowner-
ship rates compared with Black people living in 
other parts of the country, according to a 2021 
report by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit eco-
nomic and social policy research organization in 
Washington, D.C. The military is often the larg-
est employer in these military towns and cities, 
thus providing good jobs to all people living in the 
vicinity, says Jung Hyun Choi, an expert on racial 
equity in housing at the Urban Institute. “Our 
question, of course, is: Can a private employer 
provide these same benefits?”
Dreams expand
Williams, who served in the military for a decade, 
never intended to leave. “I was supposed to go the 
distance,” she says. 
But then both she and her husband, Charles, 
deployed to Iraq, forcing them to leave their then 
6-month-old son in the care of her mother. When 
their daughter was born two years later, Williams 
knew she couldn’t endure another deployment. 
“If it weren’t for my babies and wanting to really, 
really put time and effort into my kids, I would 
have stayed,” Williams says. “I mourned my career 
for at least two years after getting out.” 
Two years later, Charles, who is also Black and 
who also intended to go the distance, left the 
Army. After years in harm’s way, he had developed 
post-traumatic stress disorder. But Williams says 
he left for other reasons. With so many stints over-
seas, he could not pursue the education he needed 
to move up the ranks. “He got looked over for a 
promotion,” she says. 
That story is familiar for many Black service 
members. In 2020, while over 18 percent of enlist-
ees were Black, only about 9 percent of officers 
were Black, the Department of Defense reports. 
Attendance at the prestigious military schools 
that pave the way to higher-ranking positions 
remains predominantly white, and military lead-
ers often push Black service members toward 
specializations with less promotion potential, the 
New York Times reported in 2020. 
After two years of searching, Charles found a 
job as a military contractor, with more stints over-
seas. He returned in January from his 12th overseas 
assignment, in Djibouti in eastern Africa. 
For Faber, stories like that of Amber and 
Charles Williams illustrate the potentially steep 
cost of pursuing opportunity through the mili-
tary. “Why can’t we offer these things without the 
severe risk of death or trauma?” he asks.
Amber acknowledges the costs but says she has 
no regrets. She and Charles purchased their sec-
ond home in 2010, also using a VA loan. That was 
the dream home at the time, Williams says, but 
those dreams have since grown. “Now that I live 
here, it’s not my dream home. We are looking to 
buy again!” she says via text. She has also reached 
a level of professional success she never expected. 
With her personal training business going well, 
she launched a mobile juice company in 2021.
“I was on track to stay right there with my mom 
in that mobile home,” Williams says. “I do feel like 
I’ve arrived. I really do. My kids are being raised 
differently, and we don’t have to live paycheck to 
paycheck.” 
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