Diversity plans said to get Pentagon OK

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 Friday.

Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller on Thursday signed a memo ordering the implementation of 15 broad recommendations including 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.

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. Such steps are expected to get quick attention from Congress or President-elect Joe Biden’s administration next month.

“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 this year and ordered to deliver recommendations by 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 leadership posts, increase ROTC opportunities for members of minority groups, review aptitude tests to remove barriers to diversity without impairing rigorous screening and make service members and workers more aware of inclusion policies.

The Pentagon over the summer took some initial steps to limit discrimination based on race and gender. In a four-page July memo, Esper ordered all military services to stop providing service members’ photos to 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% is Black, but the minority percentage declines as rank increases. The U.S. population overall is about three-quarters white and 13% Black, according to Census Bureau statistics.

And while the military prides itself on a record of taking the lead on social change, including in integration, it has had incidents of racial hatred and a history of implicit bias in a predominantly white institution.

This year, Gen. Charles Brown Jr. was sworn in as the Air Force’s first Black chief of staff. And he and other senior Black officers spoke out in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd, noting that Black people have long been underrepresented in the higher ranks. Floyd’s death at the hands of a police officer in Minnesota in May sparked widespread protests and calls for racial justice.

The military’s ties to Confederate generals and symbols, however, have been much more difficult to untangle.

After extensive wrangling and debate, Esper this summer issued a directive that banned the display of the Confederate flag, without mentioning the word “ban” or that specific flag. The Pentagon policy lists the types of flags that may be displayed at military installations and does not mention the Confederate banner. Acceptable flags listed in the memo include the U.S. and state banners, flags of allies and partners, the widely displayed POW/MIA flag and official military unit flags.

It was deemed a creative way to bar the Confederate flag’s display without openly contradicting or angering President Donald Trump, who has defended flying the flag as a freedom-ofspeech issue and has flatly rejected any notion of changing base names.

Confederate flags, monuments and military base names became a national flash point in the weeks after Floyd’s death. Protesters decrying racism targeted Confederate monuments in multiple cities, and many monuments have been removed.