Nominations eyed in officer imbalance
Racial disparities stem from initial process, report suggests
NEW HAVEN — The statistics were just not matching up.
The U.S. military’s active duty enlisted corps is onethird nonwhite service members, one of the most racially integrated institutions in the country, yet minority officers leading those troops are vastly underrepresented.
A new report found that 18 percent of the enlisted are Hispanic, but only 8 percent of the officer corps is Hispanic. Black Americans make up 17 percent of the troops, but only 8 percent of officers.
The multi-year study released this week looked at a major contributor to the imbalance.
The Connecticut Veterans Legal Clinic, in conjunction with the Yale Veterans Legal Services Clinic, reviewed the congressional nominations to the prestigious military service academies.
They found a huge gap between the percentage of Hispanic and Black high school students offered this opportunity and white students, a situation that continues to skew future minority leadership in the military.
The report, entitled “Gatekeepers to Opportunity: Racial Disparities in Congressional Nominations to the Military Service Academies,” is the second one undertaken by the Connecticut Veterans Legal Clinic.
In 2019 it released a report that found congressional members nominated nearly three times the number of young males than females to the service academies.
It its latest work, it looked at nearly 25 years of data on nominations by members of the current 117th Congress, material released after litigation and Freedom of Information requests to the U.S. Military Academy, commonly known as West Point; the U.S. Naval Academy; and the U.S. Air Force Academy.
It included all those congressional members who made more than 10 nominations from 1994 to early 2019.
The report found Black and Hispanic students received 6 percent and 8 percent of the nominations, respectively, while white students made up 74 percent — numbers that fail to reflect the demographic diversity of the country.
Data from the American Community Survey show Black students ages 18 to 24 constitute 15 percent of the population of young adults, while Hispanic students comprise 22 percent of this cohort.
White students make up 54 percent of the cohort. Asian students receive a relatively proportionate share of nominations: 7 percent compared to their 6 percent of young adults.
“The congressional nominations system is leaving Black and Latinx students behind,” said Liam Brennan, CVLC’s executive director.
“Because many general officers graduate from the service academies, the congressional nominations bottleneck ultimately impacts diversity at the highest levels of military leadership,” he said.
Brennan said the CVLC represents low-income veterans recovering from homelessness and mental illness and in working with
the clients, they often relay stories of alleged racism in the military.
“Part of remedying that issue is looking at leadership in the military and as the country continues to reckon with racism, it is imperative that our military leadership reflect the diversity of the country as a whole and the enlisted ranks as well. What we have found is that it does not,” he said.
As a result of the low numbers of minority officers, the report said racially diverse service members “often lack mentorship from high-ranked role models with similar experiences and backgrounds.”
The report included 290 House members who had made more than 10 nominations out of the total universe of 435 members of the House. Statistics were also published for 81 senators on the number of nominations and the percentage of minorities.
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Connecticut U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5, was not included in the statistics,
since she has only been in Congress since 2019, but she spoke at a conference held to discuss the issue.
A celebrated Waterbury teacher before heading to Congress, Hayes said she knew her district had a problem before the report came out, when no students enrolled in the robust Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program in that city had applied.
She said new protocols are needed to get students interested long before they get an application in their junior year in high school. Hayes said there is an overrepresentation of private school students in the 5th District..
Hayes said her office changed the selection process so it was less subjective and it diversified the selection panel who now are ambassadors explaining the program to counselors and students.
After one year, they have had 24 percent minorities apply and 30 percent young women.
She hoped her colleagues
across the country take the report seriously and are not defensive.
Congressional nominations make up 60 percent to 70 percent of the student body at each academy, according to the report, which outnumbers all other sources.
The report also said the underrepresented students who “do secure admission to the academies often face discriminatory treatment during their service.”
That was according to a January report in the Military Times, where about one-third of active duty respondents to a survey it ran saw “signs of white supremacist or racist ideology in the ranks.”
The study also found that both Democrats and Republicans under-nominated young people of color relative to their district or state population, although Democrats nominated a higher ratio of students of color.
In 2009-10, House Democrats nominated 32 percent compared to Republicans’15 percent, while
Senate Democrats nominated 20 percent to Republicans’ 13 percent.
Among the recommendations by the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center to the Department of Defense is that it publish data showing for each member of Congress, how many candidates — by race, ethnicity and gender — he or she has nominated to the academies each year.
It also would like the department to consider race, ethnicity and gender of potential nominees when it awards its discretionary nominations.
As for Congress, it would like to see the current PANORAMA Act enforced, so that the Department of Defense creates a central portal to collect demographic data and report it annually.
It said the defense department should award supplementary nominations to members of Congress who “equitably nominate students from underrepresented groups.” Funding for outreach by congressional offices to under-represented applicants was also on the list.
The PANORAMA Act of 2020 — Public Accountability On Nominations Offered That Result in Admissions To Military Academies — initially proposed by CVLC, requires the Department of Defense to annually report data on the race, gender and ethnicity of students admitted to the military service academies.
Brennan said it took years to get this information through the Freedom of Information Act. The new law "will bring muchneeded clarity and transparency to the nominations process," he said.
The report also recommends an expansion of the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program in Title 1-eligible schools.