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Everyone I’ve talked to who was enlisted says the military was basically a continuation of high school with all the cliquishness, and although you’re right that racial tension is usually not part of the story there’s often an implication that the blacks mostly flock together, as they do in civilian life(and often other ethnically distinctive groups common in the military, like Puerto Ricans, Cajuns, etc), and that unit based loyalties are strongest for combat troops and usually don’t quite supplant ethnic or personal cliquishness outside of the infantry and special forces.
I served in a multi-ethnic non-US country as a reservist in the infantry. I can't remember any racial cliquishness either in boot camp or my unit. Basically everyone's race was 'green' and they were largely mission orientated.
Bootcamp at the time was identical for reservists and regulars, so when I went through we had mostly regulars with a minority of reservists. All of the infantry guys (before going through corps specific training) were switched on, but I remember a lot of the other enlisted guys being absolute idiots. I think they actually assigned people that tested higher to combat corps (with the exception of technical corps such as signals or intelligence).
Wouldn't surprise me if this had downstream impacts on interracial cohesion.
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