I agree with Wendell Wagner, and I question those who say that enlisted ranks are dominated by the poor and minorities.
I did a great deal of research on this, when just before the Iraq war began I saw many people arguing that the casualties would fall disproportionately on the poor and minorities. I had just visited my son’s Marine Corps battalion, and saw his battalion and the others in the 1st Marine Regiment on parade. This Marine infantry regiment was overwhelmingly white, with a smattering of hispanics, and almost no blacks.
I got to know the Marines in my son’s company, and found anecdotally that most were from “middle class” families – parents worked, owned homes, etc.
That led me to do the research from many sources, including DoD sources, and I discovering that most of what people say about military demographics are either urban legends or politically tendentious. What I witnessed anecdotally proved to be statistically correct.
The enlisted ranks are neither dominated by the poor nor by minorities.
My research told me that regardless of political affiliation, they voted for Bush in 2004 by a wide margin.
Incidentally, in one of my military history classes (I think it was US Military History 1600-Modern Day, with Dr. Work, at Texas A&M a few years ago), our teacher discussed various things folks say about the Vietnam War which turned out to be either untrue or never backed up with factual research.
On the top of the list was the idea that the majority of the casualties were draftees (IIRC, overall it was about 50/50 between draftees and volunteers, depending on the branch, with the Air Force and Navy having disproportionately high volunteer casualties, since most of their personnel in harm’s way were pilots, who were all officers, and thus almost all volunteers (I suppose it’s possible that a draftee could go into OCS if they had the qualifications, so I hesitate to say the officers were all volunteers)
Also, 5% of the casualties were in the officer ranks overall, which is far more than it sounds like since the officers made up far less than 5% of the personel at the time. Generally speaking, Lieutenants, being both in obvious leadership positions (which draws fire) and being lacking in experience (due to their young age and short time in service), tended to die a lot.
There was other stuff that was historically unfounded or unproven, such as veterans being spat upon by people in the US (It may have happened, but nobody seems to be able to think of a particular time it happened), but that veers wildly off topic here.
In the era of the volunteer force, white male volunteers tend to disproportionately choose branches and job specialties that maximize their potential to see combat and perform well in it, while minority volunteers tend to disproportionately choose specialties that will provide them with skills and a better job upon discharge.
Women volunteers of all races are still barred from some jobs, which further skews the statistics.
Nobody here has said that they are. What’s been claimed is that the poor (although not the very poorest part of the population, as Wendell notes) and minorities (although not all minorities) are disproportionately represented in the enlisted ranks. Not that they actually constitute a majority or otherwise “dominate” the enlisted ranks.
This is an anecdote so I am not saying it is a cite. Nothing in my military career has shown it to be false. We work security at the local county votech highschool on our days off. One day an army recruiter was there during lunch. He had a table set up outside the lunchroom and was not getting many visitors. As a point of reference this was post 911, pre Iraq invasion. This is a school were a large percentage of the students come from the lowest economic level, many are minorities and many don’t seem to see much of a future for themselves. In other words the people I have heard populate the military. I stopped to talk to this recruiter since he didn’t seem to have much to do and I had spent quite a bit of time in the army. He was a sergeant first class (E7), obviously infantry (blue braid, CIB) and African American. He told me he hated going to this school but he had to because it was in his area. He said that he had a lot more luck recruiting in schools with a large white population. The idea that the government uses minorities as cannon fodder is so widespread it makes it very difficult to recruit minorities. It made it almost impossible to recruit them into his beloved infantry. This sergeant said he had to show each black potential recruit the picture of his own graduating class from infantry school. There were two black guys in a sea of white faces.
In 18 years in the army I have seen nothing to make me think otherwise. The army is mostly white and middle class. Combat arms tends to be even whiter than the army as a whole. National Guard units tend to be different since most member come from the local area so it depends on where the unit is stationed.
I was Navy, which did have significant black and Latino enlistment. But the sales pitch for the Navy is quite different than that for the Army, and always has been.
I understand the point the recruiter was trying to make with the minority students, and the misconception he was trying to correct. Good on him. But it seems to me that showing them a photo like that would not make many prospective recruits think, “Hey, if I join, I won’t be cannon fodder exploited by The Man!” but rather, “Why join the Army if there are going to be so few people like me in it?”
That fact that the pitch was coming from a black infantryman tempers that a bit. The point was to leave someones options open and not close out a career path that he might otherwise find ideal because of misconceptions. For some infantry would never be an option, like me it doesn’t appeal to them. For others they would but the perception is that infantry is where the army dumps the refuse. I did not find that to be the case.
I did find that infantrymen tend to be dumb as a box of rocks, but that might just be my own prejudices talking .
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