The All-American Bowl is a recruiting event wrapped in a football game, but the one held here Saturday offered a subtle look at a new Army priority: diversifying the officer corps 64 years after the military was integrated.
Today's crop of generals doesn't reflect the Army or the nation. It's mostly white and male, with a sprinkling of Hispanics, African Americans and women.
Breaking the barrier for an Army that includes 40 Hispanic and black generals and 26 women generals will take a generation, but it requires seeding the force now.
During the game at the Alamodome, the Army's biggest recruiting event of the year, blacks were targeted for recruitment into the officer corps in a 30-second spot that had a simple message, one the Army hopes will take root.
“I was one of those guys who didn't think the Army had anything for me. And then I found out that less than one-tenth of 1 percent of all Americans wear the uniform of an Army officer,” said Maj. Myles Caggins III, an African American.
“It's a small group of us, but we're among the most highly educated, compared to many other corporations or institutions. I was surprised at what I found in being an officer and at what the Army helped bring out of me.”
The push to increase minorities in the officer corps comes in the wake of a 2011 report and other studies in recent years that found there were fewer black and Hispanic officers than in the civilian world. A Pentagon plan for 2012 to 2017 calls diversity “a strategic imperative, critical to mission readiness and accomplishment, and a leadership requirement.”
President Harry S. Truman ordered the armed forces integrated in 1948, but progress hasn't come easily for the Army's 1.1 million-strong force. In calling the military a model for racial integration, a RAND report on diversity five years ago showed why the Pentagon believes a more representative force is a national security issue.
It cited comments from 29 former military and civilian Pentagon leaders who said the military saw “increased racial polarization, pervasive disciplinary problems and racially motivated incidents in Vietnam and on posts around the world.” They pointed to an “extremely low” percentage of minority officers, compared with the number of African American enlistees, as a reason.