Serving soldiers from BAME backgrounds who spoke to the Guardian about their experience of the armed forces say the days of daily abuse and overt name-calling are gone, but instead it has been replaced with “subtle racism”.

“Comments such as ‘people like you’, ‘you people from the colonies,’ or ‘passport seeking’ are still uttered in plain hearing,” said one veteran serviceman, who described his experience over more than a decade in the ranks as “nothing but traumatic”.

Like others who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, he complained of a dysfunctional and untrusted complaints system which he had used but described as “not fit for purpose”.

He said that military initiatives designed to combat racism were “lip service and tick-box exercise with little or no consolidated effort to root out the underlying issues causing some of the most blatant offenders”.

At a time when the army hopes to tackle a recruitment crisis by increasing the number of recruits from Commonwealth countries, serving personnel from some of those to which recruiters are looking are among those who paint a very different picture of the military from the one painted in Ministry of Defence marketing campaigns.

“I know the racist language is there and it gets used, even if they won’t say it directly to me these days, or they might disguise it as a ‘joke’,” said one soldier from an African nation who joined during the noughties and said he had weathered a period of being ostracised by colleagues after raising a complaint.

“The reality is that people are scared and reluctant to report things because they think ‘oh it’s going to ruin my career’ or ‘everyone is going to hate me.’”

For its part, the MoD points to initiatives aimed at preventing and tackling racism, including the army’s Speak Out helpline – a confidential helpline manned by serving soldiers – and “climate assessments” which are conducted at unit level to assess behaviours. An army BAME network is another employee support initiative that has been established.

Yet concerns persist, focusing at their most serious on far-right infiltration of the armed forces. L/Cpl Mikko Vehvilainen, a British army veteran who served in Afghanistan and had been described as an “outstanding” soldier, was convicted in 2018 of being a member of the banned neo-Nazi group National Action. He had been working within the army as a “recruiter” for the banned organisation, said prosecutors, and was connected through that activity to at least three other soldiers.

Other incidents have included the posting of a photo and footage by the former English Defence League leader known as Tommy Robinson showing himself with a group of young soldiers, who could be heard chanting his name.

Yet it is concerns about their day-to-day experience and the institutional structures around them that were cited by current and former service personnel who spoke to the Guardian following a call-out for people to share their experiences, and who came forward by other means.

“I would have left had I not had a strength of character. It is changing but it will take at least a generation,” said one, who contrasted some units with others, such as the the Parachute Regiment, which he said had developed a reputation for inclusivity.

“A problem is that other units are forced to change from above rather than deep-rooted cultures being tackled,” said the soldier, who is from an African-Caribbean background.

Another soldier, from an African country, depicted a similar picture, though was at pains to stress how he believed there was a mutual trust when it came to deployments to war zones. Joining the British army had been the realisation of a dream, he explained: “I’m still proud of what I do and I am good at it. No one can change that.”