COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Youth of Color
West Point, ROTC struggle to recruit African-Americans
Kelly Kennedy, Army Times
September 25, 2006
West
Point, N.Y. — Officials here at the U.S. Military Academy said
just 616 black youths had the qualifications to attend the academy this
year, which mirrors a national trend of decreasing academic achievement
by that minority group.
They don’t mean 616 blacks who applied to West Point qualified;
they mean of all black high school seniors who graduated last spring
nationwide, only 616 met West Point’s entrance requirements,
according to Col. Michael Jones, director of admissions.
“It’s worse than even five years ago,” Jones said
— the point, according to Jones, when the academy and the Army
began to see an increase in students with low SAT scores or without
high school diplomas, as well as an increase in overweight candidates
and those with medical problems such as diabetes and asthma.
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“This is a societal problem that we have to get a handle on,” he said.
A Cadet Command official said the Army’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps faces a similar problem.
“It’s not a situation where African Americans are
underrepresented in ROTC,” said Paul Kotakis, cadet command
spokesman. “They’re underrepresented at college campuses in
general.”
Nationally, white students score an average of 1,068 points on the SAT
and black students an average of 864, according to the College Board,
which administers the test. West Point requires a score of 1,200 points
to gain admittance.
“SAT scores for black males are going down,” Jones said. “Females do OK.”
Based solely on SAT scores, Jones said, only 2,784 black students qualified for West Point nationwide.
When making admissions decisions, Jones said he also looks at the
classes students chose in high school. Black high school students are
less likely to take high-level math classes, such as calculus, or
Advanced Placement classes geared toward preparing students for
college, College Board statistics show.
But the problem isn’t purely academic: Of black high school
students, 26 percent do not qualify medically, in part because of a
rise in health problems such as diabetes and asthma within that
minority population, according to Jones and Army recruiting command
statistics.
Another 21 percent don’t make it because they’re overweight — a percentage that continues to go up.
Army recruiting officials say the numbers of youths not able to join
the military because they are overweight or dropped out of high school
are going up across the board, but are especially high among black and
Hispanic youths.
In an Army where black soldiers make up 23 percent of the enlisted
ranks, but only 12 percent of the commissioned officers’ corps
— compared with 75 percent white officers and 58 percent white
enlisted — officials see a need for change.
“We need Army leadership that looks like the population,”
Jones said. “We need mentors for our soldiers.”
There have been black cadets in every class at West Point since 1948,
and they were in ROTC programs long before that. But the percentage of
black male officers in 2005 stood at 10 percent of all male officers,
only 0.3 percent more than in 1998. The number of blacks in ROTC in
2005 was down by 18 percent from 2004, and 34 percent lower than in
2002.
“It’s not that our school doesn’t want them,”
said Marjana Mair, a black senior at West Point. “It’s that
the education system is failing them.”
According to a study by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for
Social Organization of Schools, half of black students attend 2,000
high schools where 40 percent of the entering freshmen don’t
graduate.
Half of all black high school students don’t graduate from high
school. In 2005, 824,775 white students took the SAT, compared to
153,132 blacks. Furthermore, half the black men who take the test and
get into college drop out their freshman year.
But Mair, who said she grew up in inner-city Albany, N.Y., said the
problems disappeared for her and her peers after they got into West
Point.
“It’s so focused on teamwork and performance here,”
she said. “Culture, race — that goes out the window. You
just see a person.”
Convincing candidates
ROTC programs face different problems, Kotakis said, because there are
more reasons for students to fall out of programs or never get involved
in the first place.
This is important because more than 60 percent of black and Hispanic
students attend high-poverty schools, compared to 30 percent of Asians
and 18 percent of whites, according to the Civil Rights Project at
Harvard University.
And 43 percent of black students come from single-parent homes, which
often means those students need part-time jobs or scholarships to go to
college.
“In ROTC, they have to be a full-time student,” Kotakis said.
Cadet recruiters also have to convince sought-after students to commit
to six years in the Army after they graduate, take a lower paycheck
than they might earn in the business world and, especially since the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, put their lives on the line, Jones said.
“If an African-American scores a 1,200 [on the SAT], every school
and company in the country wants that kid,” Jones said.
“But students aren’t getting shot at with GM.”
That doesn’t even begin to touch upon the cultural issues that could be at work in black communities.
“Where I come from, you don’t want to go in the
Army,” explained West Point spokeswoman Maj. Shelly Jackson, who
is black. “You’re working for the man. There is still some
of that out there, so part of it is getting over some myths.”
For her, a strong mentoring program was key when she made the switch to
Officer Candidate School after six years as an enlisted soldier.
“I’m a first-generation college graduate, so I
couldn’t ask my mom and dad.” And, she said, she
didn’t always feel comfortable asking students who didn’t
look like her. She related better when black officers took her under
their wings.
Since the mid-1990s, West Point has sent 40 to 50 percent of its black
cadet candidates to prep school to improve their SAT scores, meet
physical requirements and spend time with mentors. Potential students
also come up for long weekends with black faculty and staff members,
and the admissions department has begun reaching out as early as
students’ freshman year of high school to let them know what they
need to do to attend West Point.
In 1996, West Point cadets and faculty formed the Association of
Graduates Diversity Leadership committee, which strives to keep the
academy’s black population at 8 percent to 12 percent. To do
that, committee members hope to coach students to do well on the SAT,
ask alumni to reach out as mentors, use success stories of other
students to sell the school to minorities and help students prepare for
the physical fitness requirement.
At Cadet Command, recruiters have begun working with The Rocks, a
mentoring organization for black officers, and 100 Black Men, a
leadership and mentoring organization for blacks.
Kotakis said Cadet Command and West Point have joined forces to try to
work the problem out together. And Jones said the cadets who are coming
in believe in what they’re doing.
“Those who come are coming for the right reasons,” Jones
said. “They are turning down good offers — good fully
funded offers. They’re going in with their eyes wide open and
they understand what it’s all about.”
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