The U.S. Supreme Court decision rejecting race conscious admissions at colleges and universities includes an exemption for military service academies.
Although a challenge to the exemption is expected, the justices who struck down affirmative action in admissions noted that military academies have “potentially distinct interests” when it comes to promoting racial diversity. Thirty-five former military leaders filed a friend-of-the-court brief that referenced the national security interests at stake in sustaining the longstanding admissions policy.
“Our military’s diversity is a strength, not a weakness,” tweeted President Joe Biden on July 27. “It’s a necessary part of warfighting and all successful military operations. And our unity out of many — not division — ensures good order and discipline, unit cohesion and effectiveness, and military readiness.”
In 1968, African Americans made up 10.5% of the U.S. population and 12.6% of the U.S. Army, but only one of 520 generals was Black, notes Dr. Beth Bailey, a Foundation Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas and author of An Army Afire: How the U.S. Army Confronted Its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era. Of the Army’s 6,399 colonels, 42 were Black, which was less than 1%. In 1967, the Department of Defense (DoD) made it clear that it expected the service academies to increase the number and percentage of Black cadets.
“The military services must raise their own senior leaders, and that takes decades,” said Bailey. “So, decisions made about who is admitted to the military academies, what institutions have ROTC programs and who comes to the officer corps through that path have major long-term consequences — as do decisions about assignments, the availability of mentoring and the evaluation process.”
Service academies
Bailey said affirmative action in admission was a key tool in attacking the ongoing and long-lasting legacy of racial discrimination and segregation, “which had produced an officer corps that did not correspond to the diversity of the enlisted ranks, the composition of the American public or represent the full range of talents and abilities that might strengthen the Army in fulfilling its mission of national defense.”
