A friend of mine went to West Point in the late 1980s. He described how the academy was colorblind. If he was asked how many black people were in his platoon, the proper answer was, “Sir, I do not know, sir.” He loved this and said it fostered camaraderie and unity.
In the June 30, 2023, email addressing the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down affirmative action in college admissions, Lt. Gen. Clark wrote, “If we lose our limited window to reshape the racial diversity of each incoming class, it would affect our ability to meet the warfighting imperative of fielding a diverse, inclusive force.”
The “limited window” presumably means the remaining time of the Biden administration. (We can’t be sure since the USAFA didn’t respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment.) “Reshaping” the racial makeup of course means ensuring there are more minorities. Fielding a “diverse” force as a “warfighting imperative” appears to be a new express directive from top military brass, the Biden administration, or both.
Thus, although in the 1980s, the academies considered it an imperative not to consider race in the military, they now maintain that considering race is a warfighting imperative. What changed? Why was being colorblind considered the best way to build a fighting force then, but now, it’s imperative to have a racially diverse force to defeat the Chinese?
We know this isn’t coming as a result of a sophisticated warfighting analysis, because it so obviously makes no sense. How does race, sex, and sexual orientation diversity improve the military’s ability to fight wars? We know where this imperative comes from. It comes from the socialists/globalists/progressives imbedded in the Biden administration. The same people who think open U.S. borders make us stronger.
It has been implemented military-wide, and especially in promotions. Anytime we have a military blunder, one must wonder to what extent it was caused by not advancing the best-qualified candidate.
These are the people who invented diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). DEI has been around long enough now that it’s clear what it means. Mostly it’s a new name for previously unpopular affirmative action. It means making sure there are sufficient numbers of particular classes of people, typically minority groups, females, and LGBT members. If this requires discriminating against someone not in one of these groups, i.e., white males, that is fine.
Diversity does not truly mean diversity. It means enough members of these protected groups. If there are no males or white people in a particular workforce or college class, that is not a problem. Diversity also does not include diversity of thought.
And equity, we have learned, doesn’t mean equality. Equality would mean treating everyone the same—i.e., not taking into consideration a person’s race or sex in making a decision. Equity means ensuring that the outcome is equal—i.e., consider race and sex to ensure that the hiring or promotions result in enough people from these protected classes. Again, though, when it comes to the number of whites or males, any concern for equal goes out the window.
Never mind that DEI is essentially illegal. Federal law expressly prohibits employment decisions based upon race or sex. That is only permitted in the very rare circumstance in which it is proven that the employer or school recently discriminated against a particular group, and even then the affirmative action plan must be limited and temporary.
Lt. Gen. Clark likely would say that the USAFA does not discriminate against white people, that it just uses special recruiting efforts to ensure that the applicant pool is balanced on the basis of race. But it is highly doubtful that race is taken into consideration in recruitment, but then ignored in the final decisions, considering that the goal is a “diverse fighting force.” Even if it were, would not the special recruitment efforts be best focused on finding the most qualified possible recruits regardless of race?
Lt. Gen. Clark is a former Air Force Academy football player and coach. He’s leaving the academy this summer to become the director of the new 12-team college football playoff. Will Lt. Gen. Clark apply equity to the new playoff system, examining the racial makeup of teams in determining which make the playoffs? Not likely.
“The 2020 census says 12-13% of our population is Black and 58% is white. If we took DEI literally and to ‘level the playing field,’ it would seem the USAFA athletic teams should represent the demographics of the general population,” he wrote. “Of course, the racial mix on our USAFA athletic teams does NOT even roughly reflect the same diversity percentages in the U.S. population—at the exclusion of whites on the football team and blacks on the hockey team.
“I think we all know why that is the case—the mission of your coaches is to win games, so they put the best players on the field regardless of race,” Mr. Bishop wrote. “Athletic teams are a great example of meritocracy where the best qualified are fielded to win, regardless of their race. The consequences of losing a game are perhaps a loss of money and league standings. Whereas in our military, the consequences of not selecting the best qualified to fill key positions and lead our sons and daughters in combat are losing a battle or a war where tremendous losses to life and destruction could occur.”
Lt. Gen. Clark did not respond to the email. But thanks to his impending departure, he has a unique opportunity to turn the tide on DEI at the academy. It seems quite likely that Lt. Gen. Clark doesn’t actually believe the nonsense that it is more important to have diverse recruits than the best qualified recruits. With his resignation date in place, he no longer must answer to the DEI cult in D.C. Perhaps this will free him to speak his mind.
Lt. Gen. Clark, use this opportunity to correct this destructive policy. Lt. Gen. Clark, tear down DEI at the USAFA!
