Army's Top Enlisted Leader Removed Diversity Consideration for Top Enlisted Roles

Wow you mean to tell me that when selecting leaders at the very top echelons of the MILITARY we should just choose the ones most qualified for the job and not take into consideration what race or gender they are? What a radical idea...

I'm not holding my breath, this sort of thing ebbs and flows with the political climate. Half of the Armed Forces Committee is probably throwing a temper tantrum right now and if the Army isn't forced to change this back now they will be forced to do so in the future when the top ranks are mostly white men again.

I believe this is based on their recruiting numbers, even the article states this comes after a few other changes the Army has made recently involving its woke crap recruiting policy that has failed miserably. I didn't realize that they dropped the "People First" policy according to the article, that's not going to end well at all. It took the Army decades to finally tackle arguably the number one issue within the Army which was quality of life. I get why they are taking another look at that right now, it has been pretty good for service members but it's been a disaster for the force overall. Especially that paternal leave policy. I'm trying to be fair here but that 12 week paternal leave policy is a royal pain in the ass. Within the past year I have literally not had all of my subordinate Officers available for duty at any given point, not one single time. That's because for some reason Cupid has been firing arrows like crazy in this unit last year and damn near everybody's wives are popping out babies all of a sudden. Which is perfectly fine, I get it start a family, but them getting 3 months of paid leave off that they can take in chunks whenever they want has been crushing me. For a few weeks at one point they were ALL GONE on baby leave at the same time. Work doesn't stop, it just means others have to pick up the work, which in this case is me because it's my department. Which leads to me having to take my work computer home whenever I go on regular leave because I can't not be available because I don't have anybody to cover down.

They're also exempt from having to participate in field exercises or deployments for like a year or something after the baby is born. We're critically short staffed as it is and my own guys have been at work like 1/3rd of the time this entire year between their baby leave and regular leave they still can take. They would routinely even pop in to work for a few mins and I'd see them and get excited only to hear them say naw I'm still on leave I just stopped in for a second to check something.

Rant off

But if the Army went back on that policy now they would piss everybody off and retention would suffer. Rock and a hard place. But seriously, **** that new baby leave policy it's being exploited way too much. They aren't even necessarily using it for it's intended purpose. One of my guys is on "baby leave" and sent me pictures of him on a damn fishing trip the other day lol...Meanwhile I'm on leave sitting on my home computer next to my work computer working because somebody has to work and I can't bother my guys on their entitled "baby leave" while they go fishing...

 

It wasn't, it was only started at the beginning of last year as part of the "People First" policy. The Army has adopted measures to improve quality of life for Soldiers and their families in quite a few different areas, this liberal paternity leave policy is one of them. Longer assignments and the ability to sort of homestead at a location if you want as well. I think assignments are now 5 years for new recruits and 3-5 years for others instead of the normal 2 or 3 year stints. That way it gives families more stability in a single location rather than moving people around every couple years like before. They've also decided to change the name of DFAC's to "restaurants" I guess lol...Oh and women can put their hair down now or in a normal ponytail or whatever.

They're basically doing what they can to try to make the Army into more of a "normal" life as far as the military goes in an effort to help recruitment and retention. As with anything though it's always a double edged sword, yes it's better for Soldiers and their families but it's worse for the force overall. The fact that you can take 1/4th of the entire work year off (1/3 if you stack your own normal 30 days of leave) after having a baby is a bit much. Especially when coupled with the fact that you are exempt from deployments or FTX's for the year as well. The way leave is allowed to be taken now as well basically lets these guys take months of time off at a time while only burning a handful of leave days. Just submit multiple leave forms for the weekdays and exclude the weekends so you can basically just take 5 days Mon-Fri but get 9 total days off with both weekends on either end. Plus it's the military so there are 3 day and 4 day weekends scattered all throughout the calendar. One of my guys had his baby in February and I've seen him about 3 times for a day or so since then and it's about to be October...

Good for them I suppose, if that's the policy then take advantage of it, but holy **** is it taking a toll on the rest of us. I've taken leave 3 times this year and I've spent roughly 60% of my leave sitting at home on my work computer doing work and/or answering phone calls to cover down for all my guys who have exploited the hell out of this new baby leave policy and haven't been to work for more than a week in the past 6 months or so. It's not just my department either, other departments are in the same boat, one in particular is critical to the very operation of the unit. It got so bad earlier this year that Command had to beg one of the guys from that department on baby leave to please cancel his leave and agree to work for a week because we literally had NOBODY left to do the job and we were going to the field. I remember sitting in that meeting, I laughed, Command had to cut some sort of backroom deal with the guy for him to agree to do that. I get the policy, but I'm sorry this is the military...Command should never be put in a position to where they have to call and cut a deal with Officers in the unit to please come back to work because their particular role is so critical that the unit literally cannot function without them. Apparently something is written in the policy to where barring legit WWIII or something Command literally HAS TO approve your baby leave whenever you want it once you have the kid which leads to insane scenarios like I just described. That's nuts.

Can't even say I blame them though honestly. If I were them I'd probably do the same thing. I mean we're all salary at the end of the day and it's not like we have an easy life. If you have the ability to not goto work for months and still get the same paycheck every 2 weeks then why exactly would you go to work when you could stay at home with your new family, or go fishing...

 

I agree with that which is why I'm glad they've moved towards the 5 year assignment length for new Soldiers now. At least new Soldiers in my career field, I'm not 100% sure if that applies to everybody or not. I actually think it would be beneficial to stabilize even some Officers and Senior NCO's in locations as well. I know the RLO's have pretty set career paths to where they can't stay in one spot very long but for NCO's and Warrant Officers there's no real reason to move them around all the time outside of the standard "well rounded" ideology the Army has. I mean if you're an NCO in a tank mechanic platoon for example then there really isn't that much benefit to moving you to a different duty station to become more well rounded. Tank mechanics do tank mechanic stuff no matter where they are and working on tanks in a facility in Colorado is not really much different than working in a facility in Texas. Same with most Warrants. Being a supply Warrant in New York is the same exact job as being one in California. Sure some units are slightly different but the Army is the Army by and large. If the supply Warrant in New York likes being in New York then let him stay there if he's competent, the new Warrant that shows up is going to be doing the exact same job anyway. I've had 4 different supply Warrants in my unit since I've been here and outside of their obvious personality differences seeing how they are different people they've all done literally the exact same job to virtually the exact same level of competency. Outside of seeing a different face at meetings I would have never known about any of those guys coming and going over the years.

 

Of course it did and it did so due to a reality that so many refuse to accept. So many folks have this mentality that minorities are underrepresented in leadership roles due to systemic racism and if we just "give them a chance" we'd see that they'd excel. The reality is that minorities are by and large simply unqualified for leadership roles and the only way to dramatically increase minority representation among commissioned officers would be to lower the initial qualification standards thus harming the force. And I say this as a relatively high ranking minority officer in a highly competitive and exclusive career field in the military.

I've been doing this a long time, simply look around and look at the real world raw numbers. The majority of minorities work in the lower skilled MOS's and as the qualifications for an MOS increase the minority representation tends to decrease. Go to any supply warehouse on any US military installation on the planet and it's mostly minorities. Same with fuelers and cooks, etc. Move over to any highly technical MOS such as mine with extremely technical and competitive initial qualification requirements and you'll see very few. I'm usually one of maybe two or three walking around. Add in my rank and I'm always the only one walking around no matter where I go. The majority of minorities just flat out do not have the education or skills required to even qualify to take the tests to even see if they qualify for my job. It's unfortunate really, plenty have approached me asking about it throughout my career and I'm not exaggerating when I say only 2 so far even had the ASVAB test score's required to qualify to take OUR test to see if they can pass it. And those 2 folks were African immigrants, not American born minorities.

That's the reality. Nobody lowered the qualifications for my MOS to just "give me a chance" allowing me to prove myself worthy even though I wasn't actually qualified. I had the brain bits required to pass the qualification tests and pass the years long training course required for my job as well as excel in my job elevating me to the rank and position I currently hold. The rank and position of which I am usually the only one who looks like me walking around doing this wherever I go. And I am fully aware and accepting of the REALITY that I am RARE in this regard among my race. And no I am by no means a "pull the ladder up behind me" sort of guy. Due to my rank alone I am basically a walking billboard for other aspiring minorities in the force. I've had dozens of minorities sit down with me over the years aspiring to follow in my footsteps and I will ALWAYS take the time to help them whenever I can. The problem is almost none of them qualify initially and even when I explain the steps to take to improve their ASVAB scores, pre courses, etc, they never want to go. In other words, when they see the amount of WORK it requires to be me they no longer want to be me and instead choose to settle for less.

Make no mistake about. I long for the day when I am no longer rare. The day when I can walk into the shoppette and grab a drink without some young black guy walking up to shake my hand with wide eyes because they've never seen something like this before. Not because I hate being bothered but rather because I hate being unique in this aspect. Nobody bothers my white colleagues when they goto the store to grab a drink in uniform. But what we absolutely cannot do is lower the standards in order to "diversify" my MOS. What minorities need to do is step up to the plate and MEET the standards we require. I WANT TO HELP YOU! My arm is extended, take my ****ing hand and stop letting go the moment you realize it's HARD.

 

Surprisingly this was the case for plenty of minorities in my personal experience. I've had quite a few straight up tell me "I didn't know we even COULD do this" when they talk to me. Which admittedly always surprises me seeing how my career has spanned throughout the 2000's and it's not like this is 1950 anymore. But I guess many minorities do hold those sentiments even today. I think much of it has to do with the fact that they rarely, if ever, actually SEE "us" doing something like what I do so they just assumed it was off limits or something. Unfortunately this tends to reinforce their already preconceived notions of systemic racism. Nobody actually believes there is a military regulation prohibiting black people from becoming Officers or something in 2024. Rather they tend to believe that there is that oh so famous "systemic racism" embedded in the military to where black OCS candidates applications are just rejected in favor of white candidates to "keep us down".

The reality is simply what I said earlier, the majority of minorities in the military, especially blacks, simply do not meet the qualifications required for these more technical MOS's and/or higher leadership positions. But instead of accepting that objective fact we tend to desperately try to conjure up a different explanation such as "systemic racism". This is evident by the fact that even these service academies who are directly targeting minority candidates have still failed to meet their own quotas. Even when the Army removed DA photo's from promotion board packets a few years ago the numbers of minority promotions didn't increase by any significant measurable metric. The problem is openly stating the truth in 2024 is extremely uncomfortable and instead of admitting it we try to figure out a way around it and it STILL doesn't work.

Fixing this problem is a societal issue, not a military one. I'll focus on blacks because I obviously have a great deal of familiarity with us. Blacks tend to come from lower income single parent households in poor neighborhoods. Around 75%-85% (depending on the census) of black children are born out of wedlock. The majority of which are raised in single mother households so right off the bat they lack the proper upbringing that a two parent traditional household provides. Most importantly they lack the guidance and necessary discipline of a father in the home. Without that discipline and guidance they tend to do poorly in regards to education in these already terrible schools. Upwards of 80%+ of black students at all grade levels cannot read or do math at their respective appropriate levels. Less than 20% of black students can read at a proficient level corresponding with their grade. These raw studies are phrased in a way to make them less harsh, the reality is that we're talking 80%+ of black students in some high schools who are functionally illiterate.

That right there stops the majority of young black military applicants from even being considered for a service academy. When taking the ASVAB test most tend to score poorly and only qualify for the lower skilled MOS's due to the aforementioned factors. Then we we talk about possible prep courses to maybe improve their ASVAB scores to qualify for these more technical MOS's the majority can't pass the prep courses because the majority can't do math or read at a high school level. Then we can talk about the lack of discipline among much of the youth of today including many black service members and it's seriously not exactly difficult to look at this whole thing objectively and understand clearly why there are so few black officers or senior leaders in the military. Black folks by and large are simply not raised in an environment conducive to meeting the standards required for technical MOS's and/or leadership positions.

I'm blunt I'm way too old to beat around the bush or care how it sounds. This is personal to me I know exactly what I'm talking about having lived this experience as both a once black child and now a black man who grew up around this stuff. Society, if you want more black military officers then tell black people to stop popping babies out of wedlock willy nilly, bring the fathers back into the home, and raise better black children. Of course there aren't that many black military officers, the majority of young black people of initial military service age can't do basic math or even ****ing read!

This isn't that hard to figure out...

 

I've long since stopped giving credence to most of what the left says. Anything in modern society that black people struggle with is considered racist and that's an argument I'm just simply no longer willing to entertain. What the black community needs most is blunt truths and tough love and the rest of society needs to snatch away that stupid victim card that black folks carry around that seems to make the community immune to any criticism whatsoever. It seems to be happening in some regards and I'm thankful for that but I won't hold my breath in belief that we'll ever see any significant change.

My mentality is fairly simple, assimilate or fail. No more catering to the black community and accepting what we all KNOW is unacceptable behavior but are afraid to say so openly. No more shielding the black community from any sort of valid criticism out of guilt for historical wrongdoings. No more entertaining asinine nonsensical excuses for poor black performance in education due to us being of African decent and being unable to learn the same way as white people or whatever other stupid crap we come up with. And absolutely no more lowering of standards in the workforce in order to accommodate continuously under performing black people. And if that means that places such as the US Military will have almost no black officers or leaders then so be it. Do better or get left behind.

Last year I assisted an African Soldier who approached me at work, as so many minorities do, asking for my for help to better his career. He wanted to become an Officer and asked if I would help him review the packet, resume, biography, etc. This young man grew up in a poor village in Nigeria and went to school in a poor village in Nigeria and immigrated to America in his teens. His test scores were well above average and he had the will and drive to do the best he could as a junior enlisted Soldier in order to stand out to become an Officer, a leader. I mentored him for a few weeks and I rewrote a few things for him in his packet to make it sound better as he was ESL and wished him luck. A few months later he stops by my office to give me a hug saying he was selected for OCS. It made my day, he was one of the two I mentioned who made it and now the US Army has a great new QUALIFIED Lieutenant who I'm sure will do well.

It's people like him who make me even less tolerant of this "woe is me" American black people bullshit. Oh your schools are bad and your communities are poor. Yeah well there is a 100% guarantee that your childhood and schools aren't as bad as a kid growing up in dirt poor NIGERIA who went to school in a rundown shack with no electricity who used a chalkboard to teach advanced mathematics and computer science. Your life isn't as hard as a Nigerian kid who lived in a small house with no indoor plumbing with 6 other kids who really did have to walk back and forth to school for miles every day. Yet here he is, meanwhile a majority of American black teenagers somehow graduate high school literally unable to fully read through a ****ing Goosebumps book designed for 7 year olds.

And.....If somehow our American black brains aren't programmed the same way due to our African ancestry making us unable to adequately learn in school and pass standardized tests such as the SAT or ASVAB then explain to me in layman's terms how in the literal **** can ACTUAL AFRICANS DO IT THEN?!

 

I'm not talking about minorities who have a 4 year degree who choose to not join the military for whatever reason. I'm talking about those within the military who are unqualified for more technical MOS's as well as those unable to meet the requirements for inner service green to gold transitions or warrant transitions.

Yeah minorities are overrepresented in the NCO corps as a whole. But we are also overrepresented in the least skilled MOS's as well. And regarding the overrepresentation of minorities in the NCO corps which MOS's do they primarily fall under? How many minority Senior NCO's do you know in MOS's that require high GT or ST scores? I work with a variety of different MOS's and have done so for many years at many different locations. Even at my current unit it's no different, our supply section are all minorities, our fuelers are 80% minorities, the cooks at the DFAC are like 75% minority from the one time I ever actually went in there. Our "tech" folks who require higher skillsets are primarily white with around 5 minorities overall 3 of which are NCO's. The even more skilled techs who "check" the techs are all white NCO's with 1 Asian NCO. And in my particular MOS that requires qualifications well above any of that there are 3 minorities, 1 Asian guy who just showed up and 2 black guys with me being one of them who happens to be the second most senior of all of us.

And it's the exact same everywhere I've ever been. No matter where I go there are never more than 2 or 3 others who look like me who do what I do. We don't require a college degree but we do have stringent requirements and college level education to pass our qualification tests and pass the follow on courses required to graduate. The majority of our candidates come from within the force and oh yes plenty of minorities have aspired to try but most don't even have the GT score to take the qualification test and if they do qualify to take the test they tend to not do very well and aren't competitive enough to be selected. I'm primarily talking about black people.

So yes I will say again the majority of black people in the military are unqualified for more technical MOS's in general let alone mine which is among the top. I'll forgo addressing the pseudo racism comment as it would be quite difficult for me to be racist as a black field grade officer who has spent much of my free time throughout my career mentoring young black Soldiers in a desperate attempt to get them to put in the work to follow in my footsteps.