My husband was a drill sgt for 3 years. He has been in the military for almost 16 years. He has always commented that in 'line' units, units like infantry, combat engineers(which are used as inf alot),etc,there are always less african americans(not none,just less). Also, he has many many more soldiers in his unit who are hispanic. Privates in basic training who spoke spanish and could barely speak english did well and tried very hard.
Well, then your husbands experience is about the same as my own, and is in line with the statistics that cause the army so much concern. This won't be mitigated until we are in our next major ground war.
You definitely pegged it on the head regarding hispanic recruits.
I had a few Puerto Ricans in my basic training. In the beginning, they could hardly speak English. But with a good deal of hard work and the help from the rest of us, they picked up a decent vocabulary very quickly.
And learning a new language is hard enough as it is, without the added stress of basic.
Your husband's experiences and observations mesh with my son's observations. He is 11 Bravo (Infantry) and has served in 1st CAV., 2nd ID and presently is with the 3rd ID in Iraq. His Infantry units have primarily been white, actually, they probably come close to the demographics (racially speaking) of the country at large. He did say that there seems to be many blacks in Artillery, more so. Interesting. Regardless, they bleed the same, they're Amercians, they VOLUNTEERED and we love 'em all.