Military Misconceptions: If Democrats want to lead today's military, they must drop the stereotypes about who serves.

by David L. Englin
TomPaine.com, Oct. 22, 2004

As Rep. John Conyers and filmmaker Michael Moore reminded me recently, many on the left still think the military is where poor, uneducated minorities go for lack of other options.  During the recent, tragically brief flurry of discussion about the bill offered by Conyers and Rep. Charles Rangel, D-NY, to reinstate the draft, Conyers proclaimed that today’s military amounts to “an indirect draft of minorities and the poor.”  In Fahrenheit 9/11 , Michael Moore presented viewers with a pair of Marine Corps recruiters zealously targeting African-American high school students in an economically struggling community. These are but two manifestations of a liberal zeitgeist about military service that is out of touch with the reality of today’s force.

Until recently, I had been associated with the U.S. military for my entire life, from my birth and childhood on U.S. military bases overseas, to my cadet years at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and through eight years of service as a commissioned officer.  But thanks to my own liberalism, marrying a liberal activist, and the Air Force sending me to an elite liberal graduate school, I spent my time in uniform straddling two worlds: the military officer corps and liberal intelligentsia.  Now that our nation is suddenly embroiled in an election-year showdown over which candidate might reinstate the draft, I am more concerned than ever that many of my fellow liberals cling to Vietnam-era misconceptions about the makeup of the military.  Liberal concerns about the draft and military demographics stem mostly from a laudable sense of justice about who pays the price when America goes to war.  While that moral impulse is correct, Democrats need to get a better handle on the facts if we expect to bring a credible promise of hope to military men and women suffering under the Bush administration’s mismanagement.

 Despite the widely held—and voiced—misconceptions about the military, the most recent Department of Defense population study paints an ethnic picture of new recruits and officers that looks fairly similar to the civilian population.  In the enlisted force (versus the officer corps) African Americans make up 16 percent of new recruits, compared to 14 percent of civilians of comparable age (between 18 and 24 years old.)  Hispanics make up 11 percent of new recruits, compared to 16 percent of comparable civilians.  “Other” minority categories make up 6 percent of new recruits, compared to 5 percent of comparable civilians.

Commissioned officers are required to have college degrees.  Many on the left might be surprised to learn that, at 8 percent, the proportion of African-American commissioned officers is exactly the same as the proportion of African Americans in the civilian workforce aged 21 to 49 with college degrees.  Hispanics make up 4 percent of commissioned officers, compared to 5 percent of comparable civilians. “Other” minority categories make up 5 percent of commissioned officers, compared to 8 percent of comparable civilians.

Looking beyond officers and new enlistees to the total enlisted population, 10 percent are Hispanic, compared to 14 percent of the civilian workforce aged 18 to 44, but 22 percent are African American, compared to 13 percent of comparable civilians.  This last figure might be the source of lingering misconceptions.  While the number of African Americans who join the military is about the same as the number of African Americans in the comparable civilian population, more African Americans stay in the military longer.  It could be that this is due to fewer good employment options in the civilian world.  However, studies have shown that the military is better racially integrated than any other segment of American society.  Therefore, it is just as likely that African Americans stay in the military because it is a rare slice of America where merit matters more than race and where Americans of all ethnic backgrounds are treated fairly.

If we are concerned about who bears the scars of war, we also need to look at who serves in risky combat specialties.  Even with a higher proportion of African Americans in the enlisted ranks, it turns out that only about 12 percent of African American enlistees serve in direct combat specialties, compared to about 18 percent of white and Hispanic enlistees.  Conversely, only about 12 percent of white enlistees serve in less-risky functional support and administrative specialties, compared to about 27 percent of African-American and 18 percent of Hispanic enlistees.

The military does not track the family incomes of new enlistees, so it is difficult to know whether the people joining the military are indeed poor.  However, the military does keep detailed statistics on the levels of education new recruits achieved before joining the service, and we know that a person with less education is more likely to be poor.  The National Center for Children in Poverty found that 81 percent of children whose parents have no high school diploma live in low-income families, and that as education increases, the likelihood of poverty decreases.  Far from being the dregs of America’s schools, new enlistees actually come into the service much better educated than their civilian compatriots.  Among new active-duty enlistees, 92 percent had a high school diploma or equivalent before enlisting, compared to 79 percent of comparable civilians.  In the Reserve, the figure is 87 percent.  Among officers, 95 percent had at least a bachelor’s degree before being commissioned, and more than a quarter of all officers have advanced degrees (although the majority of advanced degrees were earned while in uniform.)  Additionally, before enlisting, new recruits on average scored higher on standardized tests and read at a higher grade level than their civilian counterparts.  Obviously, new recruits are not uneducated compared to their peers, and given the link between education and income, it is clear that the vast majority of them are not poor.

Anecdotally, most military men and women come from solidly middle-class backgrounds, but today’s military is by no means a direct representation of the American population.  Women account for just 17 percent of the military, and a disproportionately high number of new recruits come from the South, whereas a disproportionately low number come from the Northeast.  However, it is clear that the Vietnam-era image held by many liberals of a military that serves up poor, uneducated, ethnic minorities as cannon fodder bears no resemblance to today’s force.

As the Bush administration ambles down a foreign policy road that could eventually lead to the enormous appetite for troops that only a draft could provide, Democrats like Conyers and Rangel are right to want an honest national discussion about who pays the price when America goes to war.  The war in Iraq is stretching our military—especially the National Guard and Reserve—to the breaking point, and any long-term solution must include an increase in the size of the force.  The discussion ought to include a thoughtful examination of the draft, and it was a sad abdication of leadership for Republicans in Congress to ignore that for months, only to shut down the issue with great fanfare to score campaign points for the president.  If we want to save our overstretched forces and fill the void in leadership left by those on the right, Democrats will need to move beyond long-held misconceptions about the face of America’s military.