COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Youth of Color
Conway irked by drop in minority enlistments
Gidget Fuentes, Marine Corp Times
July 24, 2007
CORONADO, Calif. The Marine Corps has made significant strides inattracting and retaining more minorities in uniform, but troubling
signs loom on the horizon, Commandant Gen. James Conway told an
officers' association meeting.
Minority enlisted accessions have slid over time. While 27 percent of
Marines enlisting in 1979 were minorities, the number of minority
enlistments had dropped by last year to about 7 percent, said Conway,
speaking to a luncheon crowd July 19 at the annual National Naval
Officers Association conference.
"Not a good news story. Not a pretty picture," he conceded.
The number of minority officers joining the Corps during that period
hit a high in 1998 but has also dropped, although not as dramatically.
With the Corps set to grow to 202,000 Marines by 2011, the trend is
worrisome. "I'm showing the Marine figures, but I suspect that's what
all the services face at this point," he told the audience.
Conway said he and other officials are looking closely at a new study
by the Center for Naval Analyses that might help them find some
near-term and long-term solutions.
The study shows a mixed bag of good and bad news, he told the
audience. One set of good news is in a snapshot of the percentage of
minorities who are deciding to stay in the Corps.
Among enlisted Marines, the number of minorities at the higher staff
noncommissioned officer ranks has jumped dramatically, with more
minority Marines re-enlisting into the career force. Among
first-termers, 40.4 percent of blacks are re-enlisting, a higher rate
than whites, who re-enlisted at a rate of 23.8 percent. Second-term
re-enlistments saw similar hikes among minorities, he said, although
racial and ethnic differences level out after the third re-enlistment.
"It is dramatically larger, I think, in the earlier opportunities for
re-enlistment, " he said.
The playing field today for black sergeants major and master gunnery
sergeants has improved since they enlisted, statistics show. When
they joined in the late 1970s and early 1980s, only 20 percent of
E-9s were blacks, but blacks represent about 32 percent of that top
rank today. Overall, minorities represent 45 percent of all sergeants
major and master gunnery sergeants, much higher than the Corps'
overall minority rate of 33.5 percent, Conway said.
Still, the number of black Marines is slightly down, and below the
national average, a noticeable drop since "historically we have been
a little bit above" the national population breakdown, Conway said.
"That's troubling to us, because we want to look like America. We are
America's Marine Corps, and we need to look like the rest of the country."
Conway said he hopes to see better results in recruiting as well as
retention. "Everyone that goes out the door, we've got to recruit,"
he said. His message to recruiters: "Tighten up."
Today, minorities represent 17 percent of the Corps' officers, a jump
from 1988, when minorities represented about 8 percent of officers.
The general officer corps includes 10 minorities. "We're pretty proud
of that. Not saying we can't do better," Conway said, "but it takes a
long time to grow a colonel or a general."
The study found a noticeable dip in minority officers around the
20-year mark, leaving officials wondering why more minority officers
opt to retire at that point than white officers do.
The mixed news comes more than a decade since the Corps took steps to
recruit and retain more minorities, especially blacks. But today, the
military services are struggling to recruit minorities as fewer
youths of all racial and ethnic groups are thinking of joining the
military, influenced by ongoing combat deployments and less support
from families, teachers and other "influencers. "
"We know what that's all about," Conway said, noting that recruiters
must spend much more time talking and convincing the influencers than
ever before. "It's a tougher job out there, and yet we're trying to
grow the force, we're trying to maintain the force that we've got and
we're certainly trying to keep our minority numbers tall."
Conway said he became especially concerned when he learned that only
2 percent of the Corps' aviators are minorities. "I was surprised by
that. I just thought it was more," he said after the luncheon. He
also saw a jump of about 150 among the minority sergeants major and
master gunnery sergeants just in the last two years, and he's asked
CNA to find out why.
One of his larger concerns, though, is the number of minorities
officer and enlisted in combat arms skills. The large war-fighting
community, which includes infantry, armor, artillery and aviation,
remains predominantly white, with fewer minorities than officials
would have hoped to see. Intelligence and engineer fields are among
those that show comparable numbers of whites and minorities, but
several communities, mainly administration and supply, have the
largest concentration of minorities.
Conway said he wants to "make the case" and find ways to increase
that minority representation and ensure that those officers and
enlisted Marines have equal opportunities for promotions and career
opportunities.
"Black ... officers are underrepresented by combat arms," which is a
concern when taken together with the fact that 83 percent of general
officers are in combat arms, he said.
"What we are starting to see in the Marine Corps [is] minorities
competing against minorities in certain fields and not potentially
able to go all the way to the fence when we've got such a high
percentage who are combat arms," he said.
He used this example: Of the 10 generals who traveled with him on his
trip to California, seven of the nine male generals were in combat
arms. "If we don't continue to grow [them] and put them in the right
MOSs, I am just concerned that we won't continue to see the progress
that we have seen to date," he added.
Conway asked NNOA members to help mentor prospective officers and
young Marines. "Go combat arms early," he implored them. "You can
always get out of the combat arms field because they're overpopulated. "
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