gridlore | Let;s hear it for ignorance!

From an article on aggressive tactics my military recruiters.

Nancy Carroll didn't know schools were giving military recruiters her family's contact information until a recruiter called her 17-year-old granddaughter.

That didn't sit well with Carroll, who believes recruiters unfairly target minority students. So she joined activists across the country who are urging families to notify schools that they don't want their children's contact information given out.

"People of color who go into the military are put on the front line," said the 67-year-old Carroll, who is black.

Bollocks. The majority of people in Army combat units are white. Minorities tend to join for job skill training and college opportunities, whites more for the adventure and experience. I state this as a former infantryman. Every infantry unit I was in had more white guys than other races. But our support units looked like the bloody UN.

So yes, decry the overly aggressive recruiters who are crossing far too many lines in trying to fill the ranks, but don't play the damn race card when it isn't warranted.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She was worried about her boyfriends during Vietnam. You did not serve in a draft-era military. I think she's probably expressing accurately how things were at that time. So this lady hasn't considered how perhaps looking for volunteers might change the population AND the job assignments from when all men were subject to the draft, and the impovrished (read "black" if you like) didn't have the resources to scheme for non-combat assignments.

I should add that now that there IS a war going on, I don't know that your or my experience necesarilly represents the way things are, either. Maybe we should both ask SoldierGrrl (or however it's spelled).

Honestly, there's a huge mix of people in the military. The combat arms units that I've been around were primarily white guys from the South, but that's probably a bit skewed.

You're going to find more lower-class folx in jobs that require a lower GT score, only because of the schooling, I guess.

My unit, which is a public affairs outfit from Austin, Texas is almost completely white. We've got, out of 20 people, two Latinas and one Phillipino. The rest of us are as white as it gets. And journalists are in the shit pretty regularly, too.

My transpo unit was the opposite, though. We had a lot of blacks and a few Latinos.

I'm not sure how the demographics actually break down. My darling

sappersgt might be able to better break it down for you, since he's CA.

My MI unit is mostly white, the Cav Troop my team is currently attached to seems to have about the same proportion of minorities as the general population does, as did the Artillery battery we were with in OIF 1. The MEchanized Infantry unit we were with for NTC a few years ago was almost entirely white.

Even during Vietnam minorities were not over represented in the combat arms because they did tend to opt for technical jobs over combat jobs.

Let;s hear it for ignorance!

Yea, but look at her age

Re: Yea, but look at her age

Re: Yea, but look at her age

Re: Yea, but look at her age