Pentagon memo outlines agenda to diversify ranks
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has endorsed a new slate of initiatives to expand diversity within the ranks and reduce prejudice, calling for more aggressive efforts to recruit, retain and promote a more racially and ethnically diverse force, the Associated Press learned on Friday.
Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller on Thursday signed a memoordering the implementation of 15 broad recommendations that include a plan to crack down on participation in hate groups by service members and draft proposed changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The AP obtained a copy of the memo on Friday.
The plan, however, skirts the more politically sensitive issues that have roiled the nation and the Trump administration this year, such as the renaming of bases that honor Confederate leaders or removing Confederate statues. .
“I expect all leaders to take an aggressive approach to embed diversity and inclusion practices into the core of our military culture,” Miller said in the memo. “We must not accept — and must intentionally and proactively remove — any barriers to an inclusive and diverse force and equitable treatment of every service member.”
The recommendations were submitted by the Pentagon’s Board on Diversity and Inclusion, which was created by previous Defense Secretary Mark Esper earlier this year and ordered to deliver recommendations by last Tuesday. The plan was then to replace the temporary board with a permanent commission.
The memo lays out a series of goals to widen pools of applicants for enlistment as well as promotions and other leadership posts, increase ROTC opportunities for minorities, review aptitude tests to remove barriers to diversity without impairing rigorous screening and make service members and workers more aware of inclusion policies. Deadlines to complete the recommendations are spread through next year.
The Pentagon, last summer, had already taken some initial steps to limit discrimination based on race and gender. In a fourpage July memo, Esper ordered all military services to stop providing service members’ photos for promotion boards, directed a review of hairstyle and grooming policies and called for improved training and data collection on diversity.
Based on 2018 data, roughly two-thirds of the military’s enlisted corps is white, and about 17 percent is Black, but the minority percentage declines as rank increases. The U.S. population overall is about threequarters white and 13 percent Black, according to Census Bureau statistics.