Wrote Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, quoted in "Supreme Court Won’t Block Use of Race in West Point Admissions for Now/The court rejected an emergency request to temporarily bar the military academy from using race in admissions while a lower-court lawsuit proceeds" (NYT).
The recent Harvard and UNC cases did not determine the outcome. When it comes to the military, there is different potential to articulate a compelling government interest in race-based admissions.
Remember this passage from Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)(overruled in the Harvard and UNC case):
[H]igh-ranking retired officers and civilian leaders of the United States military assert that, “[b]ased on [their] decades of experience,” a “highly qualified, racially diverse officer corps … is essential to the military’s ability to fulfill its principle mission to provide national security.” Brief for Julius W. Becton, Jr. et al. as Amici Curiae 27. The primary sources for the Nation’s officer corps are the service academies and the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), the latter comprising students already admitted to participating colleges and universities. At present, “the military cannot achieve an officer corps that is both highly qualified and racially diverse unless the service academies and the ROTC used limited race-conscious recruiting and admissions policies.” Ibid. (emphasis in original). To fulfill its mission, the military “must be selective in admissions for training and education for the officer corps, and it must train and educate a highly qualified, racially diverse officer corps in a racially diverse setting.” Id., at 29 (emphasis in original).....
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105 comments:
I read it to mean black guys aren’t taking orders from a white General Klinger in a dress…
I am happy to have any general that takes an IQ test and scores at 125 or better.
At east we'd be getting the smartest blacks.
But if the average black IQ is 85-90, the 'genius' blacks are 110.
Not smart enough...
This may go a long way to explain why we haven't performed well since Desert Storm, thirty-three years ago. The risen diversity candidates aren't the best. Looking forward to seeing the Lesbian Robert E. Lee, the Negro George Patton, or the Transexual Norman Schwarzkopf. And don't throw the preening General Mattis at me. Which campaign did he win?
Everyone apparently assumes that it is true that a color blind merit-based system would inevitably produce a disproportionate number of white people in positions of authority.
Either our concept of "merit" fails to capture something important about an individual's capacity to do the job, or the use of race is going to reduce the effectiveness of our military.
I had a hard time absorbing this phrase:
"... and that achieving that diversity requires [a] limited consideration of race in selecting those who join the Army as cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point..."
Shouldn't the Solicitor General have added an "a" where indicated in brackets?
As written, the original implies efforts should be aimed at limiting race conscious admissions to the point of zero. Whereas, what she meant to say was efforts should be aimed at pushing it somewhere above zero.
"... is essential to the military’s ability to fulfill its principle mission to provide national security.”
The question is, which nation? Jordan? Israel? Iraq? Afghanistan?
The court keeps rewarding the regime for defiance
We certainly hit a quota at Tower 22 recently.
Also, "But if the average black IQ is 85-90, the 'genius' blacks are 110."
After a few thousand whacks one might want to stop beating the horse.
“The military teaches that one can assess the quality of a new command by three things: morale, esprit de corps, and humor.”
Mamet’s latest book.
Not a day goes by when I don't thank my lucky stars for retiring when I did.
Have any of these jokers ever won a war.
No ? Then sit down, shut the fuck up, figure out why that is. What a bunch of self important assholes.
'After a few thousand whacks one might want to stop beating the horse.'
Just explaining the numbers that are real.
We should not be sacrificing national security to political correctness.
I am happy to have anyone in a position of leadership as long as they can pass a minimal standard of intelligence.
The stakes are too high...
Diversity has and always remain a strength.
This is also a reminder 20% of the recipients of the Medal of Honor have been immigrants. Just saying.
"For more than 40 years, our nation’s military leaders have determined that a diverse Army officer corps is a national-security imperative..."
Considering that we haven't won a war in more than 40 years, they may not be the best judge of that.
Joe Smith, that’s not how IQ measurement works and the fact you don’t know that…
Well it indicates you wouldn’t qualify, by your IQ standards, to provide an opinion on this matter. Or many important matters.
Just applying your way of thinking to yourself.
I guess the Pentagon learned two lessons in Vietnam: don't draft anyone; and try to prevent the fragging of officers.
The black Americans and non-Americans (knew an NCO from Haiti) I worked with in the military were good at what they did, just like the white personnel.
In ROTC, the Battalion S-3 was was black. And prior service. And had his Ranger tab. And scored a 5 at ROTC Advanced Camp.
Totally squared away and a nice guy who everyone respected. Being black had nothing to do with his accomplishments and proficiency. Being an exemplary student in the profession of arms had everything to do with it.
I thought I Taw a Trump Truth Social Post.
White guys aren’t joining the military in the proportions they used to.
West Point hasn’t been elite in generations. The best athletes don’t consider that place and the best students don’t either. So it’s a combination of above average athletes and students with brown noses.
Since we have ROTC and OCS we should close those dinosaur academies and sell the land of West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs.
The West Point graduating class of 2021 was 15% African American.
This is the problem. A "modest" attempt to attain a racially diverse officer corps inevitably becomes a quota to match the US demographics. And as our friend Joe and the Amici Curiae quoted by Althouse point out this means placing appreciably less qualified individuals in the military's leadership which leads to a host of negative outcomes related to it's primary mission.
Rabel,
I am entirely at a lost to understand what Tower 22 has to do with service academy admissions...
Peacetime "national security" and wartime "national security" are two distinct animals.
What is "essential" is ultimately relative.
Before questioning "the science" you couldn't question "National Security".
Stay free my friends.
You need native informants in the military to interpret what the drums are saying.
Re: Ampersand:
Everyone apparently assumes that it is true that a color blind merit-based system would inevitably produce a disproportionate number of white people in positions of authority.
That's certainly the underlying premise if the military is saying it can't achieve a "diverse" set of highly qualified candidates without taking race into account.
But contra others here, I do think there's some rationale there if we want to have a cohesive, well-functioning military. The British Indian Army wasn't bad in the field, but there was, you know, the Mutiny. A marked racial division between officers and enlisted is the kind of thing that can render officers impotent to tamp down conspiracy theories about cartridges being greased with fat from cows and pigs.
The US is a racially and ethnically diverse country, and that diversity creates a lot of problems of mistrust and racial antagonism that need to be managed carefully. This sort of race discrimination is one way. And it's certainly better than the most obvious alternative (drop standards low enough that you don't have any significant differences among the races you care about, then choose randomly by lottery), or the alternative the FAA apparently tried out briefly with air traffic controllers (implement a bizarre "biographical" test to filter candidates out, and let an insider leak the "right" answers to Black affinity group members). With this approach, you may not get the very best of the best (well, "best" within your candidate pool), but you at least get the best of every subgroup.
it's SIMPLE!
would you RATHER Have an officer corps, picked for their competence..
or one picked to fill slots?
This is a BIGGER question than diversity.. How many officers have been picked to fill slots?
which slots?
how many captains got a company to lead..
Not because they were good; but because they needed it to "punch their ticket"?
How many troops (and others) DIED because of ticket punchers?
Would you like the US Army to be merit based? Do you think it Ever Was?
Diversity of color judgments (e.g. racism) and class bigotry (e.g. elites, deplorables).
The service academies, which are the institutions being asked to become colorblind in their admissions policies, are not the largest breeding grounds for military officers. The vast bulk of our officer corps comes from ROTC programs around the country. Even if USMA were to suddenly graduate only white officers, the effect upon diversity in the Army's officer corps would be negligible. No one is asking that the academies become single race institutions, though, and so the actual effect of slight differences in current graduation diversity stats would be less than noticeable.
Based upon 20 years in the military, and despite my aversion to affirmative action, the ethnic composition of the officer corps needs to bear some resemblance to the enlisted force. If that requires being somewhat race selective, then so be it. The alternative is worse.
Also, it isn't clear to me that this is justiciable. (I hope I have the right word.) The military is part of the executive branch, and does not enjoy all manner of constitutional rights — freedom of speech and association, and right to bear arms among them. Race conscious admissions to the academies, ROTC and OTS doesn't seem any different.
DEI/DIE. Affirmative discrimination. Color quotas. Progressive liberalism. Secular religion.
"A lack of diversity in leadership can jeopardize the Army’s ability to win wars...." This statement cannot be proven to be true.
How many wars have we won without diverse leadership? a lot.
What wins wars is competent, or outstanding, leadership. Diversity is not a factor in this. Soldiers do their best when they have good leadership.
Thank god it's only the Army and not the FAA. Oh. wait.
I washed out of USAF pilot training in the 80's. The military was going through a downsizing and out of 60 or so students in our class, 35 washed out. I was the next to the last guy to wash out, lucky me. Of the 35 who washed out, four were retained in the AF - one engineer, one meteorologist, and two of us who were selected to go to Nav training. One of the washouts I met while awaiting our fate was one of the first women selected to go to Pilot training. She was a few classes ahead of me. She quickly discovered she was terrified of flying little jets and refused to fly. She wanted out of the AF. She had a degree in history or political science. The AF refused to release her - they kept trying to get her back into a class to continue her training. I left for Nav training after three or four months of waiting, and she was still there almost a year after she stopped flying. Thankfully I never ran across her on a flight deck. Diversity hiring doesn't work in an environment that demands your best. All it does is get you killed.
How do they separate the lack of racial diversity in the officer corps from other causes which may have caused decades of racial tension to erupt during the Vietnam war? How do they know it wasn't caused by perceptions of how they were being treated unfairly in the military or at home? How do they know it wasn't because of stories of how their fathers or uncles fought in a segregated military in WWII and then came home to segregated life at home? How do they know that it wasn't because on top of them being treated unfairly at home they may have been drafted and forced to fight for a nation that they feel fundamentally didn't value them as equal citizens? Also, if a person has problems with taking orders from someone who doesn't look like them, doesn't that make that person a bad candidate for the military to begin with?
I think it's great that they are doing social experiments with the military. It will eventually force them to reign in their plan to achieve total world domination, and hopefully avert a worldwide conflagration.
Already:
By having top level generals fulminate about "white rage," they we managed to cut the number of white recruits in half. While not increasing the recruits from other races.
By demonizing guns, we have raised a generation that wants nothing to do with guns, except for those accused of "white rage" who are no longer considering the military as a career.
By flushing our industrial might down the toilet by shifting manufacturing to where wages are lowest, we have gutted our potential to sustain any war.
By weaponizing our financial system against people we don't like, we are undermining the goose that has laid so many golden eggs. We thought that booting Russia from SWIFT would cause economic collapse, but Russia survived it, and other countries have taken note. We tried to force Russia to pay in dollars, and meanwhile cut it off from dollars, and Russia came up with ways to pay and take payments in other currencies. Other countries have taken note.
We are in decline, our empire is in decline, and Joe Biden is a perfect emperor for this state of affairs, because he keeps blundering about the globe starting fires we can't put out. This decline was self imposed, but I no longer think that it is reversible.
I think any military that doesn't have at least 50 percent of its officers as Female, 5 percent Gay, and 15 percent black simply can't function on the battlefield.
That's why we lost WW II.
BTW, not being a lawyer or a SCOTUS judge, I'm confused as to why discrimination against White men is OK under the civil rights act, but not OK for everyone else. Guess there's that secret invisible ink clause in that no one else can read.
Of course, the real question is why Congess/POTUS doesnt insist on color-blind sex-blind performance based admissions. Or why anyone cares if the military is competent or not. Maybe if our military is incompetent and diverse it will be less likely to be used. Sign me up for that!
I think any military that doesn't have at least 50 percent of its officers as Female, 5 percent Gay, and 15 percent black simply can't function on the battlefield.
That's why we lost WW II.
BTW, not being a lawyer or a SCOTUS judge, I'm confused as to why discrimination against White men is OK under the civil rights act, but not OK for everyone else. Guess there's that secret invisible ink clause in that no one else can read.
Of course, the real question is why Congess/POTUS doesnt insist on color-blind sex-blind performance based admissions. Or why anyone cares if the military is competent or not. Maybe if our military is incompetent and diverse it will be less likely to be used. Sign me up for that!
As for our "Miitary leaders". In 2020, General millie vannillee and his pals stated that the US Military cant function without our "transgenders".
Really. Who knew crazy people who think they're the opposite sex were the backbone of the US military? Guess they're all Navy Captains or Battalion Commanders.
As for our "Miitary leaders". In 2020, General millie vannillee and his pals stated that the US Military cant function without our "transgenders".
Really. Who knew crazy people who think they're the opposite sex were the backbone of the US military? Guess they're all Navy Captains or Battalion Commanders.
[H]igh-ranking retired officers and civilian leaders of the United States military assert that, “[b]ased on [their] decades of experience,” a “highly qualified, racially diverse officer corps … is essential to the military’s ability to fulfill its principle mission to provide national security.
I wish the quote had included more about why these retired officers and civilian leaders asserted that diversity is not just our strength but impressive to national security. Just asserting it isn't helping me to understand why it's so.
The only comment so far to address this point is rehajm's - that "black guys aren’t taking orders from a white General Klinger in a dress" - but really, could that be the reason? That a majority-minority emlisted corps (which I don't think we have at this point, but I haven't looked into it) won't obey the orders of a white officer, so we have to have more minority-ethnicity officers so they don't get fragged all the time? I'd this is the reason, I guess I can understand why they wouldn't want to say it out loud.
Had we invested instead in a color-blind military maybe we could focus instead on recruiting people for Annapolis, Colorado Springs, and West Point who have a nonzero chance of winning a future war.
Does anyone have a clue as to what the 'Military' is for????
IT IS TO KILL, TO SMASH, TO DESTROY THE ENEMIES OF THE UNITED STATES
It isn't a jobs corp or some kind of welfare project.
It is supposed to be lean, mean, and a killing machine.
But sadly it is now a political football for the woke. And woke turns it into being weak.
When the gong sounds on day and we have a real war.. we will pay in lives for what is being done now.
Reap what you sow.
"At present, 'the military cannot achieve an officer corps that is both highly qualified and racially diverse unless the service academies and the ROTC used limited race-conscious recruiting and admissions policies.'”
I wish I knew the answer to this question: Is the statement true if you take out the words starting at "unless"?
When the Navy finally allowed Blacks to be Naval Officers, they started by promoting Black Chief Petty Officers of long standing and with good records. These men had been performing exceptionally in the Navy for years when promoted, and excelled as officers. Of course these men knew how to succeed despite racist White officers, they had been doing so forever already. The success and leadership shown by these first Black officers overcame the racism of the day, and led to the acceptance of Black officers in the Navy.
Do it like that again, please, since diversity is a requirement for the officer corps of the military. Merit before, over, and beyond skin color.
Rich writes, "Just saying."
Just claiming, is more likely. Cite your source, please.
I agree with their reasoning, but those who fail to meet the minimum requirements should not be considered. In some jobs, extra IQ points are wasted but some are vital. I've seen some affirmative action hires that were disasters, and others that worked out well. Who will pick the pickers?
Joe Smith wrote: “But if the average black IQ is 85-90, the 'genius' blacks are 110.”
Joe Smith is no Adam Smith ……
Diversity is the reality of military life and has been for sixty+ years. Wokeness has nothing to do with it. We need a fighting force that looks like our nation — all of our nation — because our military forces do more than fight, they represent our nation's values. If you have problem with diversity in America, you actually have a problem with the reality of America. And if you want to serve honorably and effectively in the military or have an effective military force, you need to get over that.
I think there may be an important difference between DEI writ large, in all its transgender, orientation, etc. splendor, and recognizing how valuable diverse races have been to our military. Young men from Guam and Central America have made great soldiers over the past couple of decades. Native Americans and Filipinos, or men of such descent, have served honorably and well across our services, as rich white young men stay away from the military -- and especially the officer ranks -- at what seems an ever-increasing rate. I'm not sure where the line of reasonableness lies, but there's some truth in the solicitor general's statement, though probably also a convenient nod to the DEI monster. I served in the Navy, and my son will also. On my ship, I met two of the finest black guys I ever knew, one from the Academy and one from an HBCU NROTC program. I don't know their high school scores, SATs, etc., but I was proud to serve with them.
After the Civil War, there was an attempt to integrate white southerners into our military. I understand that's what the naming of those bases after Confederate generals was about. The efforts worked. During WWI and WWII, no southerner ever sais "no Kraut ever burned my farmhouse" and refused to go.....A cohesive army is more formidable than a smart one. I suppose the aspirational ideal should be a cohesive, smart enough army, and I think that's a worthwhile and practicable goal.
Diversity of individuals, minority of one. Men and and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature.
#HateLovesAbortion
I was reading a bio of Wellington. He had some outmoded ideas, but he was wrong at the right time in the right way. He felt that officers should be allowed to buy their commissions, but if they demonstrated unfitness for their posts, they should be eased out of the service.....The reason why he wanted the children of moneyed gentry to serve as the officer class was because he felt that they were committed to the establishment and to good order. They weren't like the adventurers in Napoleon's army. When, during periods of peace, they had to serve on half pay with few prospects of advancement, they weren't plotting to overthrow their rulers. After Waterloo, this happened in certain European countries whose armies were more democratic than that of Britain.....I think Black officer class is a good thing, but I'd just as soon it not be comprised of activist, BLM types.
"I am entirely at a lost to understand what Tower 22 has to do with service academy admissions..."
Three dead, needlessly. All African Americans, two female. We're discussing race, affirmative action, and the military. Not a direct connection, and rather snide, but not totally unrelated as the situation looks to me to be a total failure of command at multiple levels.
"Just explaining the numbers that are real."
We all know that, but the apparent need to throw it into every discussion, not just by you, begins to look quite ugly.
'Diversity has and always remain a strength.'
This is idiotic. But you're a liberal.
'Joe Smith, that’s not how IQ measurement works and the fact you don’t know that...'
Duh. A person with a high IQ may not do smart things.
But a person with a low IQ is unlikely to win a Nobel Prize in physics.
When it comes to national security, I want smart people in charge.
But that's just me...
Winning wars? Isn't that what colonialist oppressors did? That's not the kind of strength diversity is intended to bring.
Bubbie aborted... baby sequestered. Christ in urine. MLK, Jr in feces. DEI
---Joe Smith, that’s not how IQ measurement works and the fact you don’t know that…
Well it indicates you wouldn’t qualify, by your IQ standards, to provide an opinion on this matter. Or many important matters.
What's not how it works, TreeJoe? Please explain your statement. What do you know that allows you to condemn Joe Smith's comments? (I won't ask for a list of those other many important matters you cite.)
Balfegor mentioned the British Indian Army, but the mutinies were in the East India Company Army. The B I A was a response to the corporate mismanagement of John Company, which led to a gummint takeover.
The visuals of the recent return of the three casualties and the coffin crew made me think of the Vietnam era critique that blacks were suffering disproportionate casualties, which was true at a certain level of granularity (though the difference was not significant) but not so much at the level of age cohorts. But perception rules, and any competent opposition to the warhawks should focus on the class and race issues that the government itself has brought to the fore.
Three multi-ethnic armies fell apart in the First World War, and the victorious multi-racial and multi-cultural imperial armies misused their subject soldiers atrociously. There's no reason that our own social experiment militaries won't prove as fragile and prone to abuse by would-be statesmen.
I guess it really doesn't matter what color the people are who are going to our kids killed.
“You need native informants in the military to interpret what the drums are saying.”
But can they put their ear on the rail and tell you how many palefaces are coming on the next train? Yet in truth, I think your statement is absolutely correct.
We can probably all agree that a multiracial Army will work better if the officer corps is multiracial. And so, it is argued, we should support "limited consideration of race in selecting those who join the Army as cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point...." But what does "limited consideration of race" mean? It can't mean admitting as cadets Black applicants who don't have the ability to be good officers. That would make racial friction within the service worse, not better. What it SHOULD mean is figuring out how to adjust the standards for admission so that they don't exclude applicants who have the potential to be excellent officers. In theory, that could be accomplished if the Army made a careful and creative analysis of its standards to figure out whether they are unnecessarily excluding candidates who have the potential to be excellent officers.
In reality, though, it will probably mean establishing de facto quotas -- sorry "targets" -- for admitting Blacks to West Point.
@Rusty: Thank god it's only the Army and not the FAA. Oh. wait.
sorry, I'm a bit confused. When did you guys last win a war?
Rich said...
Diversity has and always remain a strength.
This is also a reminder 20% of the recipients of the Medal of Honor have been immigrants. Just saying.
I agree, generally, that diversity is a good thing. But it is not top of the list. Or should not be. Competence, attitude, ability, merit should all supersede it.
When you say immigrants, Rich, don't you mean legal immigrants? And, for the most part, citizens, not aliens.
For the less than literate alien is the proper legal term for anyone in any country of which they are not a citizen. They can be legal or illegal, permanent or temporary. Whatever their status, they are aliens.
John Henry
Right. Our military is so diverse that we have a Secretary of Defense who signs himself out wherever he wants to go out for a short beer.
"Paging Major Hasan. Would Major Hasan please pick up the lobby phone. Your Muslim diversity is needed at the base immediately."
Karen Hultgren was killed (murdered?) by the Navy on 10/25/94 in the worship of diversity.
She kept getting passed in flight training where a male would have been bilged out at the very first stage.
Finally she got in a routine situation that was too much for her. She killed herself, nearly killed her RIO and destroyed an expensive f-14.
Let's have a round of applause for diversity a a moment of silence for a good woman put in a position almost guaranteed to kill her at some point.
John Henry
7 sailors were drowned in their racks on the USS Fitzgerald in the name of diversity.
The woman lieutenant who had the conn on the bridge and the woman lieutenant who had the watch in CIC where the radars are were not on speaking terms for personal reasons.
One of the causes for the collision was a failure to communicate between bridge and CIC because of the snit.
This unprofessional behavior would be unlikely between guys. If it did happen they would be court martialed so fast their assholes wouldn't catch up with them til next Thursday.
You don't have to like your shipmates. You do have to live and work with them.
Unless you are a woman
John Henry
7 sailors were drowned in their racks on the USS Fitzgerald in the name of diversity.
The woman lieutenant who had the conn on the bridge and the woman lieutenant who had the watch in CIC where the radars are were not on speaking terms for personal reasons.
One of the causes for the collision was a failure to communicate between bridge and CIC because of the snit.
This unprofessional behavior would be unlikely between guys. If it did happen they would be court martialed so fast their assholes wouldn't catch up with them til next Thursday.
You don't have to like your shipmates. You do have to live and work with them.
Unless you are a woman
John Henry
Rich,
Serious question: have you ever served in the military?
Not serving doesn't preclude you from having an opinion, of course. But I don't think it is possible to understand what the military, even the peacetime military, is like without having served.
Incompetent people can kill or maim fellow members on pretty much a daily basis. Unlike most of civilian life.
John Henry
USN 67-75
Females on submarines?
Could there be a more stupid idea?
Probably not at the moment but the left has its full-time R&D department working on it.
a “highly qualified, racially diverse officer corps … is essential to the military’s ability to fulfill its principle mission to provide national security.”
When Mark Cuban starts conducting his draft to obtain a diverse team structure, I'll take it under advisement.
PMD,
Guamanians (from Guam) are not immigrants. They are 14th amendment, constitutional, US citizens. "Born in the United States" with identical status to someone born in California or New York.
Guam, along with pr, usvi and Marianas Islands are legally "states" for the purpose of citizenship.
Strangely, persons born in American Samoa and Swains Island are "nationals" but not "citizens" of the US.
Used to be you had to be a US citizen to serve in the military. There was a special exception for Filipinos. I don't understand how one could honestly take the oath without being a citizen.
John Henry
We need a fighting force that looks like our nation — all of our nation — because our military forces do more than fight, they represent our nation's values.
The military's mission is to kill people and break things.
When they do that, it is the very best way to represent.
"When it comes to the military, there is different potential to articulate a compelling government interest in race-based admissions."
Yeah. The same reason the guards in the J6 Gulag are mostly black immigrants.
And if you want to serve honorably and effectively in the military or have an effective military force, you need to get over that.
You don't get to determine who serves honorably and effectively. And I find your comment to be ignorant, insulting and condescending.
Where and when did you serve? And if you didn't? Kindly shut the fuck up.
What do you do when you have more qualified applicants than you have positions available? You use secondary criteria for whittling down the applicants. So, if all candidates meet the merit requirements, then you could then use a non merit criteria for selection based on secondary criteria. Gotta be smart and get good grades, gotta be athletic, gotta be involved in the community - Hmmm still too many candidates... how are we doing on our diversity quota? Ok We need another 50 candidates to meet the diversity quota so pick the next top 50 diversity candidates and go fro there.
I think I could live with something like that.
Of course, they are GRADUATING a diversity profile that matches pretty close to the population profile. That seems unusual as a significant proportion of candidates fail to graduate for various reasons. But, who knows, maybe they do fail out in a manner matching that profile.
Joe Smith said...
I am happy to have any general that takes an IQ test and scores at 125 or better.
At east we'd be getting the smartest blacks.
But if the average black IQ is 85-90, the 'genius' blacks are 110.
Not smart enough...
Thanks, Joe we appreciate how sloppily well you display your combined below-average IQ and racism. We are not bereft of evidence displaying your extraordinary stupidity.
Hey Skipper said...
"@Rusty: Thank god it's only the Army and not the FAA. Oh. wait."
Aw, crap. Thanks Skipper. The FAA is one of the only if not the only Federal agency that relies on the input from both general and commercial aviation to formulate rules. The rules are all about safety.
Guess I better think about driving to California from now on.
Meh. Racism is racism. Somebody always believes his or her racism is the GOOD racism.
Grutter v. Bollinger was not overruled. Justices Thomas and Sotomayor said it was “for all intents and purposes” in their concurring and dissenting opinions, but the opinion of the court did not.
Rich said...
"This is also a reminder 20% of the recipients of the Medal of Honor have been immigrants. Just saying."
Since this is a post about blacks in the officer corps, are you saying we should replace black officers with (legal) immigrants?
Rich said...
"Diversity is the reality of military life and has been for sixty+ years. Wokeness has nothing to do with it. We need a fighting force that looks like our nation — all of our nation — because our military forces do more than fight, they represent our nation's values. If you have problem with diversity in America, you actually have a problem with the reality of America. And if you want to serve honorably and effectively in the military or have an effective military force, you need to get over that."
Thanks for parodying the Otter Defense from Animal House, Rich.
@gadfly
The two black men I've known best in my life were both smarter than me, and I am comfortably on the right side of the curve : )
I just want standards...
Balfegor,
That's a disastrously naive take on the Indian Mutiny. Plenty of officers had the right ideas then; they just weren't high placed enough to make a difference.
TaeJohnDo,
Wow. At least the Air Force didn't kill her, like the Navy did Kara Hultgreen.
Rabel,
Sorry, your 3:48pm is just underpants gnome logic. Completely lacking is an explanation of how the three casualties being black has any relationship to this. Iran targeted that specific site because they were hoping to kill black American soldiers? Or what?
Get real, and offer some real explanation of what you mean.
Those two officers on the USS Fitzgerald should have been court martialed and then hung for the nearest yardarm. (Q: Do modern ships still have yardarms? ceremonial ones at least?)
Pour encourager les autres, of course.
Whoever it is who is litigating against the Solicitor General should include in their next brief a copy of the Oct 2020 open letter signed by 51 former US Intelligence officials about the Hunter Biden laptop.
That should assist the court in weighing the value of this sort of "expert" opinion.
Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.
All things being equal, intelligence is a good thing. But surely it weighs less than courage, honor, and loyalty in the scale of military virtues? I doubt any of them can be adequately measured and summarized in a single integer, but I would think that their cultivation in the officer class would be, taken as a whole, rather indifferent to skin color.
Kai Akker wrote, "What's not how it works, TreeJoe? Please explain your statement. What do you know that allows you to condemn Joe Smith's comments? (I won't ask for a list of those other many important matters you cite.)"
Joe Smith, above, referenced IQ based upon a racial group as being below an average range. Specifically, he said, "But if the average black IQ is 85-90, the 'genius' blacks are 110."
This statement indicates that there is an average IQ for a racial group and that within that racial group the range for "genius" is different than another racial group. Both of these statements are not only wrong, but so wrong as it indicate he doesn't understand how IQ measurement works.
First and foremost, IQ is measured against people within an AGE GROUP as defined by a combination of mental age (here's the assessment) and chronological age. This literally evolves by age and by timeframe because it's against a group of people within a given time at that point in society as compared against the same group, at the same age, at the same time.
So you can't compare, say, IQ scores from 60 years ago to today for a given age group. It's even questionable to measure two sets of kids within the same age/time group from vastly different societies, because the tests weren't developed and validated in that manner.
Further, you don't get fixed averages - you get a curve for that group of individuals at that time. The curve could be relatively flat (i.e. huge standard deviations) or a spiky bell (i.e. small standard deviations).
Further, the definition of IQ genius is typically looked at as an IQ of 160 or above when they are scored.
Lastly, IQ is heavily driven by environmental factors. Two kids of similar aptitude, one of which has a parent who drives them hard and they study vigorously, one of which has a parent who lets them slack off and not push themselves, will have massively different IQ scores despite having similar capability. So, again, this is not a racial factor so much as a cultural or environmental factor.
I'm giving the dumbed down version here, but that's the gist of why Joe Smith's categorization of IQ was really a demonstration of his....inadequacy in that department.
P.s. Once upon a time, when I was about 11 years old, I was tested and fell within a group known as "moderately" gifted. I have significant natural aptitude, but my work ethic and focus are crap. Someone with less natural aptitude but better work ethic and focus will exceed me in many ways. And my own IQ has changed significantly over time (not necessarily for the better!).
All things being equal, intelligence is a good thing. But surely it weighs less than courage, honor, and loyalty in the scale of military virtues?
No doubt, but as it happens the armed forces used to pay A LOT of attention to IQ tests. Long long ago, in a galaxy far away, there was this thing called the draft and so the armed forces got a large regular inflow of young men from all walks of life. (OK not so much from the draft dodging walks.)
IQ tests were used to help decide which draftee got assigned to which sort of unit. Unsurprisingly, the armed forces had discovered that different jobs had different intellectual demands, and so you wanted to assign the brighter recruits to engineering/maintenance, signals, intelligence etc, and the less smart ones to the infantry.
And they measured results too, finding, not surprisingly, a significant correlation between IQ and performance in the technical jobs. But less so in the infantry. Which is not to sat they wanted dumb GIs, merely that all those other things you mentioned were relatively more important in infantry combat than in servicing aircraft.
You can find whole chapters about this in that wicked tome The Bell Curve.
(No doubt with the march of technology, the average foot soldier needs to be smarter than his counterpart 50 years ago.)
TreeJoe, you wrote a lot of verbiage that is one big smokescreen. The fact is that the IQ bell curves do vary for different races and for some different ethnic groups. Joe Smith said it bluntly but blunt is better than pretending it's not there. Yes, he used "genius" sloppily but his meaning was obvious to me.
Your meaning was also obvious. You want to shut him up because you don't like the fact he referenced. And you wanted to shut him up about all sorts of other things, though you didn't name them. Typical totalitarian behavior.
I graduated USMA in the late 70s. Even then, there was an active effort to recruit minority candidates. Every one of them that I encountered was as least as qualified as I was. Two that I knew became outstanding officers. I am proud to have served with all of them.
After graduation, we all went on to initial officer training at various bases. I went to a base in Georgia, which is called Fort Somethingelse now. It was there that I met young officers who seemed to have less than ideal qualifications. They struggled with some basic concepts that my classmates and I found trivial. It was not limited to minority candidates.
My thoughts, then and now, are that the selection process for the service academies does a good job of weeding out the poor performers.
As for racial diversity in the services, specifically the officer corps, yes, I can see that as a needed characteristic. Note that incompetence has no racial boundary.
The services still use the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) to assess qualifications for entering enlisted servicemembers. This determines assignments and training.
Lee Moore, - there is a considerable difference between "always select for maximum IQ score" and "select enough intelligence to do the job but require the virtues". Doing the latter is very hard and requires robust culture and history. The former just requires a test. I figure you're right about which way a bureaucracy will always tend.
Its amazing how the comments seem to miss the point. The whole problem is not minority officers. So, you don't have signal how much you love black folks.
The problem is MANDATING a certain percent of black/hispanic/Female officers and putting a cap on the number of white officers and particularly the number of white male officers. But evidently white officers are OK with caps and being discriminated against as long as THEY personally are included. "Every man for himself- baby".
Of course, that's the thing about white men. They can only think about competing with other white men. Their dream seems to be an office or situation where they're the only man white man in a crowd of females and minorities. Bush tried to do that with his White HOuse. He was the great white father surrounded by chicks and people of color.
Its very dumb. but you cant get individualists to work as a team, even when others are beating them by working as a team.
Look, I'm all in favor of companies and instuations "looking like America". But lets be consistent. If havard has 25 percent white catholic/Christians that doesn't "Look like America". If hollywood has 15 percent white Christian studio execs - That doesn't "look like America".
Quit playing this con game where the low percentage of white christians is justifed based on "merit" and then turning around and demanding quotas and "we need to look like America" when white christians are overrepresented.
@TreeJoe:. Joe Smith, above, referenced IQ based upon a racial group as being below an average range. Specifically, he said, "But if the average black IQ is 85-90, the 'genius' blacks are 110."
This statement indicates that there is an average IQ for a racial group and that within that racial group the range for "genius" is different than another racial group. Both of these statements are not only wrong, but so wrong as it indicate he doesn't understand how IQ measurement works.
I can't vouch for Joe Smith's specific numbers, but he is at least conceptually correct. The US population's IQ is normed so that the peak of the normal distribution is defined as 100. Genius is 140, which corresponds to IQ's more than two standard deviations to the right of the mean.
IF blacks were measured separately, AND normed at 100, then genius would be at 140, by definition. However if the black norm corresponds to 90 on the US population norm, then the black genius IQ could correspond to 110 on the US population IQ.
(I suspect it would be closer to 125 or so, but that's a guess.)
So you can't compare, say, IQ scores from 60 years ago to today for a given age group. It's even questionable to measure two sets of kids within the same age/time group from vastly different societies, because the tests weren't developed and validated in that manner.
Yes, you can. IQ is the most extensively quantified and repeatable psychological testing there is, and have become very independent of culture.
@Kai Aker: TreeJoe, you wrote a lot of verbiage that is one big smokescreen. The fact is that the IQ bell curves do vary for different races and for some different ethnic groups.
Here is a perfect, and less controversial example of how aptitude bell curves do, in fact, very among groups. In mechanical reasoning tests, the mean for women is very nearly one standard deviation below the mean for men. This means there are virtually no women who exceed two standard deviations to the right of the male mean.
In a previous life — nearly a quarter century ago — I commanded a Navy primary pilot training squadron. During my tour, there was a commanders' conference, the topic of which was diversifying the student pilot population. At that time it was 97% male, and near as darnnit to 100% white.
As expected, the HR officer was black. As was entirely not expected, he gave us actual facts. Getting into military pilot training requires a college degree, and an Officer Qualifying Test score above the 85th percentile, which was chosen because there is a strong correlation between OQT scores and success in pilot training. The failure rate exceeds acceptable levels below the 85th percentile.
Very few blacks, and few women, exceeded the 85th percentile. For women, it was down to spatial and mechanical aptitude, which are highly correlated with success in training. For blacks, it was more general — likely down to being poorly served by public education. (I had to wash out two blacks — obviously great guys, and apparently bright enough — because their reading skills weren't sufficient to keep up with the training pace.)
The HR officer posited a couple reasons for this, primarily revolving around the college degree. Companies were already hoovering up that pool, so there were very few black college graduates left going into the military.
Regardless, his bottom line was that the student pilot population was as diverse as it could get — the expense of pilot training is so high that it would be ruinous to lower the entrance standards.
'Yes, he used "genius" sloppily but his meaning was obvious to me.'
It was obvious to you because you're not an idiot, and saw that I put the word in quotes.
As for 'driven kids' (quotes again) scoring higher, all the testing done when I was a lad was in elementary school. All the kids in my school were blue collar kids. There was no structure in our lives other than our parents saying 'do your homework before you go out to play.' Like all kids, we did as little homework as possible. There were no 'driven' third-graders : )
And yet many of these kids were shown to be 'gifted' (an IQ at or above 132 if I recall correctly).
If you eat lead paint as a child, then I'm sure environment plays a role. Otherwise, some people (like my father never having gone to college) are smart and inquisitive. They can figure things out on their own.
There are over 300 million people... persons in the American diversity pool including men, women, and children. People need to lose their color judgments, their class bigotry, their politically congruent ideology.
The US armed forces don't provide national security, at least not to the people paying for it. The racial makeup of it is a moot point.
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