Rep. Eli Crane, who looks and sounds disturbingly like a Batman villain, yesterday introduced an anti-woke amendment to the military funding bill that would prohibit "race, gender, religion, or political affiliations, or any other ideological concepts as the sole basis for recruitment, training education, promotion, or retention decisions." Then he dug himself a further hole by saying his amendment had nothing to do with "colored people."
Well, shit happens, I guess. But perhaps Crane would be interested in knowing just how diverse the Army is right now. It turns out that (a) it is 85% male, (b) white people have been leaving in droves, down from 62% of all active duty members in 2010 to only 54% today—replaced mostly by Hispanic and Asian recruits, and (c) the upper officer ranks remain pretty solidly white:
In case you're interested in the very upper ranks, there are 247 white generals, 36 Black generals, 4 Hispanic generals, and 4 Asian generals.
The proportion of black officers is between ten and twelve percent from Lieutenant through General. So the increased proportion of white officers at higher ranks must be at the expense of Hispanics and Asians, not blacks. Based solely on these figures, it looks like there aren't any significant impediments to your promotional opportunities for being black and an officer.
As I understand it, ethnic/racial diversity efforts are directed at all ethnic/racial groups -- not just Blacks. So I'm wondering what point you're trying to make.
The fraction of blacks in officer ranks is near that in the population. But if you're coming up from the ranks, where non-whites predominate, you may have a much better chance of reaching general if you're white - the percentage of blacks decreases greatly.
Actually most generals probably come from West Point. The percentages of races there would be relevant. How will the end of affirmative action affect service academy applicants?
I think that's a different question. How many officers come up through the ranks? It could be that there are fewer opportunities for blacks to make officer than whites, but I think enlisted and officer are simply different categories to begin with. The chart provided doesn't give a clue about the transition to commissioned officer.
Just so. Anybody heard of rank 'third lieutenant'? You're nominally an officer so theoretically you outrank the sergeant in the unit you're attached to. But in practice, you learn real quick (that's the idea) that mostly you do what Sarge tells you to do. This was a big thing -- or so I am told -- when the war in Viet Nam went from cold to hot.
"Mustangs" - commissioned officers who started as enlisted - are very rare. Commissioned officers generally enter the armed forces with a bachelors degree, as a 2nd Lieutenant.
Yeah, this.
Also, lots of people simply enlist to improve their economic status and then leave the service after a certain point. In such a situation (where military service offers a reliable way to improve one's socioeconomic status, often more reliably than other means available to those in lower economic classes) I would expect lower ranks to be more racially diverse given that there is a racial component to socioeconomic class.
I would have liked to see that upper ranks would have been more diverse as well as presumably people stick around, but I guess at least it's not worse than society as a whole (at least as far as white/black is concerned).
If one sticks around having started as an enlisted soldier, there are I thought two paths “up” - commissioned officer, and increasing levels of sargeant.
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I always appreciate it when trash like Crane make it obvious what they are. It just saves time.
Keep running those noise flaps, dude.
I can't imagine any other reasons that the top military brass is mostly white except that they're the most talented, skilled, exceptional, hard working people in the army.
What else could it possibly be?
People of Jewish descent represent less than 0.2% of the world's population, but they represent 22.4% of all Nobel laureates.
Black Americans are 13% of the US population, but 77% of NBA MVPs have been Black.
Asian Americans are 7.2% of the US population, but 20% of Ivy League college students are American Asians.
Median household income for Indian Americans is $142,000 vs. $75,000 for whites.
Seems to me, as a society we should just make sure laws and institutional rules are fair, and then let things fall where they fall.
Agreed. Make sure there’s an even playing field but no need to manufacture diversity levels in every corner of society.
Do we have data on what the racial breakdown of Lieutenants was 25 years ago?
The generals today should be compared with their own age cohort in the junior officer ranks to see if the racial breakdown holds or if significantly more whites are getting promoted. May be better to compare with West Point numbers, since a fair numbers of junior officers are former enlisted that got into an officer program and fewer of these guys stay on to make Colonel, much less General (usually due to hitting retirement at lower ranks).
There'll be no more generals of any kind as long as Coach Tuberville's in the Senate!