To put it succinctly: based on publicly-available data published by DoD, the claim appears to be bullsh!t.<\/p>\n
The \u201clack of diversity\u201d claim appears in this article<\/a> by the Washington Times,<\/span> and in this article<\/a> from USA Today<\/span>. In each article, senior Army leadership appears to indicate that Blacks are \u201cunderrepresented\u201d in the Army\u2019s Commissioned Officer Corps. The claim that specifically caught my interest was the claim that that Blacks make up “less than 10%” of the Army\u2019s officer corps.<\/p>\n Based on the latest publicly-available data I could find, these articles appear to be factually incorrect. They also IMO appear to be the result of someone attempting to create the appearance of an issue where no legitimate problem exists.<\/em><\/p>\n The Fiscal Year 2015 Defense Manpower Requirements Report<\/a> was released in June 2014. Information on pages 69 and 76 of that document directly contradicts the claim that \u201c10% of the Army\u2019s officers are Black\u201d.<\/p>\n Page 69 of the 2015 DMRR gives demographic data for the Army\u2019s active duty forces as of 30 September 2013. On that date, the Army had 82,916 commissioned officers. Of that total, 10,173 were Black.<\/p>\n That works out to 12.269+<\/strong>%. Last time I checked, 12.269+% is not \u201cless than 10%\u201d.<\/p>\n Page 76 of the 2015 DMRR gives the same data for the Army\u2019s Selected Reserve (USAR and ARNG). On 30 September 2013, the Army\u2019s Selected Reserve had a total of 68,601 commissioned officers. Of that total, 8,701 were Black.<\/p>\n That works out to 12.683<\/strong>+%. Last time I checked, 12.683+% isn\u2019t \u201cless than 10%\u201d, either.<\/p>\n Even if you restrict the analysis to only those individuals who are considered (or perhaps consider themselves) \u201cnon-Hispanic Blacks\u201d, the fraction of Army Commissioned Officers appears to be substantially greater than 10%. For the Active Army, the number of non-Hispanic Black officers was 9,426 \u2013 or 11.368+% of the Army\u2019s commissioned officers. For the Army\u2019s Selected Reserves, the number of non-Hispanic Black officers was 5,537 \u2013 or 12.467+% of the Army Selected Reserves\u2019 commissioned officers. (Both of these latter totals\/calculations exclude the number of Black officers counted as \u201cBlack-unknown\u201d.)<\/p>\n So much for the “less than 10%” claim being factually correct.<\/p>\n Now, let’s look at the claim of “underrepresentation”.\u00a0 Well, based on US population demographics that’s essentially bullsh!t too.<\/p>\n
![According to data from the 2010 Census<\/a>, the percentage of the US population that was Black in 2010 was approximately 12.6%<\/strong>, while the non-Hispanic Black percentage was 12.2%<\/strong>; I doubt those figures have changed very much since. Comparing those percentages with the ones listed above, it seems to me that the US Army\u2019s commissioned officers today are a fairly accurate representation of US population demographics – at least when it comes to Black Americans.<\/p>\nBut that\u2019s just me. I\u2019m just looking at the actual numbers published by DoD and doing a little math. I\u2019m not trying to sell Army leadership a bottle of snake oil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To put it succinctly: based on publicly-available data published by DoD, the claim appears to be … About That \u201cLack of Diversity in Army Officers\u201d Claim . . . .<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[198],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-army"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Demographics_of_the_United_States#mediaviewer\/File:Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries.jpg\"){kind=link}