Are soldiers mostly black & poor?
by Steve Sailer
UPI National Correspondent
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Congressman Charles Rangel (D-Harlem, NY), a Korean War veteran, has
introduced a bill to reinstate the military draft, arguing, "A
disproportionate number of the poor and members of minority groups make up
the enlisted ranks of the [volunteer] military…"

Indeed, in a little noticed development, the percentage of military personnel
who were minorities shot upward during the years from 1995 to 2000, with
enlisted ranks rising from 28 percent to 38 percent minority (compared to
about 30% of the national population), and the officer corps growing from 11
percent to 19 percent minority.

The booming economy of the late 1990s may have made it harder for the
Pentagon to recruit whites, who tend to enjoy more lucrative opportunities in
the civilian economy than do blacks or Hispanics.

Blacks are found disproportionately in the military, while Hispanic
residents, many of whom are not citizens, are slightly underrepresented.
Blacks cluster most heavily in the Army and are least common in the Air Force.

Contrary to popular belief, blacks have not died in combat in
disproportionate numbers, even in Vietnam. Two leading military sociologists,
Charles Moskos of Northwestern and John Sibley Butler of the U. of Texas,
researched this carefully for their 1996 book "All We Can Be: Black
Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way." They reported, "Black
fatalities amounted to 12.1 percent of all Americans killed in Southeast Asia
-- a figure proportional to the number of blacks in the U.S. population at
the time and slightly lower than the proportion of blacks in the Army at the
close of the war."

In recent decades, blacks have tended to gravitate away from combat jobs. In
arguing against Congressman Rangel's bill, the Department of Defense noted,
"Blacks today account for 21 percent of the enlisted force, but make up only
15 percent of combat arms (e.g., infantry, armor, artillery)."
(African-Americans make up about 13 percent of young adults, so they are
still somewhat over-represented in combat positions, by a ratio of about 15
to 13.) "In contrast, blacks account for 36 percent of Functional Support
and Administration and 27 percent of Medical and Dental career fields. "

Interestingly, the military today seems to attract pugnacious whites and
pragmatic blacks. Analysts have suggested that more young white men see the
infantry as a way, in the words of one, to "play Rambo" from age 18 to 22,
then go to college using military tuition benefits. In contrast, blacks often
view the military as either a long-term career in itself, or as a way to get
practical training for a civilian white-collar or technical career.

Are soldiers the products of particularly poor families? In general, the
enlisted ranks come from neither the top nor the bottom of society, but from
working and middle class backgrounds. Very few enlistees appear to be the
scions of the wealthy. (Some officers are from rich families, however; but a
larger proportion of officers are the sons and daughters of officers, who are
of course not paid lavishly.)

White enlistees tend to come from households somewhat lower in income than
the general white population: $33,500 per year versus $44,400 for the average
white, according to 1999 Defense Department statistics. Strikingly, black
enlistees come from households above the black national average: $32,000 vs.
$27,900.

In fact, on a number of measures, African-American enlistees tend to stand
well above the black average and very close to, or above, the mean for white
enlistees. The celebrated high degree of racial equality and amity found in
the military, especially in the Army, would appear to benefit from the
similar backgrounds that black and white soldiers bring to the Army.

Not only do black and white soldiers come from households of almost equal
income, but their educational attainments are virtually identical. In 1994,
99 percent of black and 97 percent of white Army enlisted personnel were high
school graduates, figures above the national average.

When the Volunteer Army began three decades ago, black recruits had much
higher graduation rates that whites. In the late 1970s, according to Moskos
and Sibley, 90 percent of black Army enlistees had their degrees, versus only
about 40 percent of whites. After the large pay raises of the early 1980s,
the Army was able to recruit a better class of youth, so the black advantage
narrowed as both groups' graduations rates approached 100%.

The racial gap in test scores that bedevils American civilian society is a
much smaller problem in the Army. Moskos and Sibley found that in 1994: "83
percent of white recruits scored in the upper half of the mental aptitude
test (compared with 61 percent of white youths in the national population),
while 59 percent of black recruits scored in the upper half (compared with 14
percent of the black youths nationwide)."

African-American enlistees are also more likely to come from two-parent
families than is the norm among blacks, according to the Defense Department.