Black Recruits’ Totals Down a Third Since ‘01
WASHINGTON — The number of blacks joining the military has plunged by more than one-third since the Afghanistan and Iraq wars began.
Other job prospects are soaring and relatives of potential recruits increasingly are discouraging them from joining the armed services. 
According to Pentagon data obtained by the Associated Press, the decline covers all four military services for active duty recruits.
The drop is even more dramatic when National Guard and Reserve recruiting is included.
The findings reflect the growing unpopularity of the wars, particularly among family members and other adults who exert influence over high school and college students considering the military as a place to serve their country, further their education, or build a career.
Slightly more Hispanics have been joining the military since the wars began, but recruiters say that trend may be about to change.
The figures involving Hispanics are somewhat mixed and vary according to military service, with more heading into the Army in 2006 than in 2001 and fewer answering the Marines’ call.
The latest Army figures suggest a potential problem with sustaining the current level of Hispanic recruiting in the future: There was slight dip between 2005 and 2006, the last year for which numbers were available.
Walking past the Army recruiting station in downtown Washington last week, Sean Glover said he has done all he can to talk his black relatives out of joining the military.
“I don’t think it’s a good time. I don’t support the government’s efforts here and abroad,” said Glover, 36. “There’s other ways you can pay for college. There’s other ways you can get your life together. Joining the Army, the military, comes at a very high price.”
© Copyright 2007 The Associated Press
Obviously this hurts the military. It also hurts the Guard which used to appeal to people with a desire for service as well as the associated benefits for themselves; and then we all lose their help in hurricanes and tornadoes. And we have also lost a major source of upward mobility for the poor.
Black recruitment has always been a good deal for the conservative elites. Instead of providing social and economic justice for the black community, to keep them from rising up they’re recruited into the military. Makes for easy jingoist and religious brainwashing and suicidal roboticizing as well as providing cheap mercenaries for corporate exploitation of other countries (and our own?). After leaving the military, they become good conservatives, working for the man at minimum wage, fighting the WOD and other brown people for God, country, and the Republicrat Party, drunk and under control. Blacks hoping to take advantage of any educational benefits from the military have only to look at the many homeless vets. There must be better ways of getting an education.
but i tho’t all that rap music was making black people stupid. maybe it’s just making them ungrateful. and after all we’ve done for black people, too…
(sorry, i couldn’t resist. i see remarks like that anytime “black” people are discussed on sites like WaPo and the NYTimes.)
i love this line:
“Other job prospects are soaring”
what’s the friggin’ evidence for that? unless you count the “employed” black men in prison.
Good news is nice once in awhile. Hopefully all recruiting will go down, completely down, seems like it is heading in that direction. Who wants to die for the oil and gasoline companies?
Perhaps the other job prospects are any job that doesn’t have someone trying to kill you. I’m not black, but I am a mother. I went from totally brainwashed by the ‘Greatest Generation’ to encouraging my boys to emigrate if their number came up in the draft lottery during Vietnam.
I’d imagine that Black families, like all the rest of us, would rather our kids sign up for anything with a life expectancy of 75 years or so, rather then being a target in the Mid-East.
It must disappoint the Oligarchy to discover the minorities aren’t buying their scams. I wonder what insulting offer they’ll come up with to procure the cooperation of the poor minorities…
People tend to focus on the male recruit and not the female. Certainly everything about the US military is directly attributed to -and a reinforcement of- WASP social structure, which is patriarchal….
Nonetheless, I think female enlistment is also down. Not that women make up a large percentage of the total population, it is just that a large percentage of the female population in the military are/were(?) African-American. It is very hard to find any news coverage discussing both gender and race percentage drops in the same article.
One might wish to look at the picture above one more time and then go to the National Guard website and surf around. Now look around and see what stock images of military personnel are used during a news article. Who is in the picture and what does the image contribute to the news article?
Anyway, my hunch is there is a significant loss of African-American female recruits.
Without a Draft to snag young men/women of color or poverty and no refuge in Bu$h’s Nat’l Guard or Reserves I’m guessing even Black folk can see/hear the news of some who thought the Guard was a Domestic job but are now off to their 3rd & 4th 15mo(!) tours. Now if White folk would follow their lead we can let the military dry up and die on the vine. END OF WAR(s).
“What if there were a war and nobody showed up?”
Just more jobs Americans won’t do. We have outsourced half of the military. The plan here is to outsource the rest with some really nice no bid contracts.
This is of course part of the war on ‘tare’ and it is a big emergency so only those who support the terrorists will oppose Operation Willing Defender.
On one hand this is good for our body politic because more people are becoming aware of being screwed by the present administration. There may even be a Darwinian effect with only people susceptible to right wingnut thought getting their reproductive opportunities cut short. If only the Young Republicans would enlist. But on the other hand what will happen and what is happening now is that the fighting will be outsourced to the mercenaries of which Blackwater is only the most visible. There are many more. Then the functioning “military” will be even less accountable than it is now.
Dear DKM,
The Military, Vice President, Atty Gen’l, and EVERYBODY WORKING FOR THIS ADMINISTRATION IS NOT BEING HELD “ACCOUNTABLE” NOW - ‘cept maybe poor SCOOTER. And BTW, I’ll believe Ken Lay is REALLY DEAD when I can stab the bottom of his foot with a hat pin!
WOO ARAB! Any room for us people who desire freedom/peace/prosperity for you in your world?
arab June 26th, 2007 3:00 am
No need to worry Arab, we are self destructing at a far faster rate than any external force could ever hope to achieve.
Lobo Gris
It is a shame that we have a need for a military. I understand the point of article, but what I do not understand is that we as a people can not imagine life without a military.
Here is an idea. We open up a branch of the government that provides jobs and training, for anyone and everyone just like the military but, in the role of building communities, infrastructure, businesses, schools and helping people as well as helping bordering nations to become self sufficient. Training in agriculture, architecture, medicine, science, computers, etc… This branch of the government would not carry weapons nor use force of any kind, just offer services. Our federal tax dollars would be used to pay the wages of the new GIs that would be deployed in areas that need assistance armed with knowledge.
I imagine that as this branch of the government grows and provides services there would not be a need for a military, a huge prison system as well as a NEED to keep a portion of the population in poverty in order to force them into military service. Imagine that, a government that provides services for its people, all of its people.
Sounds like a progressive proposition to me.