The Pentagon is struggling to meet President Obama’s demands for more diversity in officer-ranks because a stunning 80 percent of minority teens who might consider military service are ineligible because of bad grades, criminal records, obesity and drug use, the head of the Military Leadership Diversity Commission revealed Tuesday.
White kids aren’t much better, with 70 percent unable to meet military standards, said retired Gen. Lester Lyles, head of the commission. “It’s the elephant in the room,” he told a Capitol Hill confab called that featured minority House members barking over the administration’s failure to make changes recommended by the commission to boost the number of minority officers, including generals and admirals.
It could get worse: Funding for ROTC is under pressure, meaning fewer high-schoolers and college-aged students will get the military bug, officials said at the confab.
In the commision’s March 2011 report on diversity in the military, they also said that “racial/ethnic minorities are less likely to meet eligibility requirements than are non-Hispanic whites, and that gap is widening.” It suggested broadening outreach and citizenship programs in K-12 classes.
In a report presented to the Congressional Tri-Caucus Tuesday, Lyles graded the Pentagon’s effort to implement recommendations made by his commission a year ago. His view: the pace of reform is slow and “there’s a chance we will lose.” His report card that found that only five of 20 recommendations had been implemented.
Leading the criticism of the Pentagon’s reform pace was Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., of the Congressional Tri-Caucus, made up of the black, Hispanic and Asian Pacific American caucuses. He said the military so far has a “mixed record” and raised concerns that the Pentagon was just hoping the calls for diversity would go away. “I don’t want to be a situation where we are getting lip service. Life is short,” he said.
Cummings noted that while African Americans and Hispanics comprise 27 percent of the population, they fill only 13 percent of the active duty officer corps. Lyles responded with what he hoped was good news: There are now four black four-star generals, and two women four-stars.
