Study: 20 percent of war deaths are blacks

Nearly a fifth of the fatalities among U.S. troops in the current war in Iraq are black, which will be the highest cost African Americans have paid in any of America's wars if the trend continues.

There are also indications that Hispanics may be over-represented among the war dead, according to a Scripps Howard News Service study.

This isn't the result of minorities being assigned to dangerous duty in front-line units. Elite combat troops like Special Forces units and the Green Berets are disproportionately white, military experts said. The U.S. Army's dash to Baghdad forced supply convoys occasionally to traverse enemy-held territory in southern and central Iraq, leaving minority troops assigned to logistical units vulnerable.

"We opened ourselves up to this by driving forward, leaving long logistical supply lines that must travel territory that we do not militarily control," said David Segal, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Research on Military Organization. "But our combat doctrine is one of deep intrusion after all, to go after the command-and-control centers of our enemies."

The study was based on an analysis of the 105 fatalities identified by the Defense Department as deaths related to the war as of April 10. Scripps Howard was able to determine the race of 98 of these, of whom 19 were African American.

"I was not aware of this and am surprised by it," said Julian Bond, national chairman of the NAACP. "I knew that black soldiers were concentrated in the non-combat positions of the military, which makes this all the more surprising. But clearly, these support troops were subjected to battle conditions unexpectedly."

The study found the race of 19.4 percent of all fatalities in which race was able to be determined was black. African Americans represent 13 percent of the U.S. population and 20 percent of all military personnel.

"African Americans are, relatively speaking, over-represented in the military. But the real point of the spear, groups like Special Ops, are almost lily white," Segal said. "It is just that in the kind of war we are fighting, there is no insulation for people in the rear areas from death or injury."

Three of the dead black soldiers - Spec. Jamaal Addison of Roswell, Ga., Pfc. Howard Johnson of Mobile, Ala., and Pfc. Brandon Sloan of Bedford, Ohio - were killed March 23 when a convoy of supply troops from the Army's 507th Maintenance Co. were ambushed Nasiriyah, Iraq.

Those three and nine others were killed either by enemy gunfire during convoy duty or by accidents while driving military vehicles. The remaining seven are reported to have died in what appear to be non-convoy related combat encounters.

The study also found that 14 of the dead troops (or 14.3 percent) have Hispanic surnames and may consider themselves to be Hispanic. Fewer than 8 percent of all military personnel are Hispanic, according to the Defense Department. However, military experts warn that this is a difficult statistic to prove unofficially since ethnicity is self-defined.

For example, Mexican-born Marine Lance Cpl. Jesus Suarez del Solar of Escondido, Calif., who died March 30 when the First Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion encountered enemy fire, is officially Hispanic only if he identified himself on military records as Hispanic.

It seems likely, however, that fatalities among black and Latino troops will hit new highs in the second Iraqi war since both groups experienced steadily increasing percentages of combat-related deaths in recent wars.

Very few blacks and Hispanics were assigned to front-line combat units during World War II. According to a study released by the Pentagon's Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, blacks accounted for 8.4 percent of all military deaths during the Korean War.

"Korea was the war during which we racially integrated the military and so African American casualties started to increase," Segal said. "They actually approached parity (with population percent) during the Vietnam War."

The Pentagon estimates that 12.4 percent of the combat deaths in Vietnam were among blacks, almost exactly the percentage of blacks in the American population. In the 1991 Persian Gulf War blacks accounted for 17.3 percent of fatalities.

Hispanic casualties, although difficult to calculate exactly, also appear to be rising. Soldiers who identified themselves either as Hispanic or partially Hispanic represented 2.4 percent of deaths in Korea, 0.6 percent in Vietnam and 4.1 percent during the first Persian Gulf War.

David Segal, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Research on Military Organization

Man oh man where do we get these Clymers - an academic "expert" on the military! Here is his CV (from http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/dsegal.html)

David R. Segal is a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, Professor of Sociology, Affiliate Professor of Government and Politics and of Public Affairs, and Director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland. He earned his Ph.D. in 1967 at the University of Chicago under the mentorship of Morris Janowitz, and he served for nine years on the faculty at the University of Michigan, where he advanced to the rank of associate professor, and served as associate chair of the sociology department and as Director of the Center for Research on Social Organization.

During the early years of the volunteer military force, Segal directed the sociological research program at the Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, where he was responsible for studies of race and ethnic relations, alcohol and drug abuse, morale and motivation, gender integration, and comparative research on military organization. He joined the University of Maryland faculty in 1976.

Segal's writings on leadership include "Environmental challenges for strategic managers," in Robert L. Phillips and James G. Hunt, eds., Strategic Leadership (1992); "Management, leadership, and the future battlefield," in Jerry Hunt and John D. Blair, eds., Leadership on the Future Battlefield (1985); and "Leadership and management: Organization theory," in James H. Buck and Lawrence J. Korb, eds. Military Leadership (1981). He has been collaborating in research on youth and the American military for more than 20 years with colleagues at the University of Michigan, using data from Michigan's "Monitoring the Future" project. Their most recent publications include "Distinctive military attitudes among U.S. enlistees, 1976-1997", in Armed Forces & Society (2000); "Who chooses military service," in Military Psychology (2000); "Changing patterns of drug use among U.S. military recruits before and after enlistment," in American Journal of Public Health (1999); and "Propensity to serve in the U.S. military: Temporal trends and subgroup differences," in Armed Forces & Society (1999).

Segal is currently working on four major projects. One concerns the attitudes of youth toward the military and youth in the military, using a data set on high school seniors and their post-graduation trajectories from 1975 to the present. A second deals with American participation in multinational peacekeeping operations, focusing primarily on the Multinational Force and Observers in the Sinai over the past two decades. The third deals with changes in the nature of the military profession from the perspective of the new institutionalism. A current focus is professional closure and the exclusion of sexual minorities from the military. The last project concerns cross-national research on military organization, and in particular how the end of the Cold War in Europe has affected the nations of the Atlantic alliance.

David Segal has been President of the District of Columbia Sociological Society, and of the Research Committee on Armed Forces and Conflict Resolution of the International Sociological Association, and Chair of the Section on Peace and War of the American Sociological Association. He currently serves as President of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces & Society. His awards include the Mid-Career Award from the Section on National Security and Defense Administration of the American Society for Public Administration (1984), the Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Scholarship, Teaching, and Service from the Section on Peace and War of the American Sociological Association (2000), and the U.S. Army Medal for Outstanding Civilian Service (1989 and 2000).

Civilian universities at which he has lectured include Yale University, the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1991 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree by Towson University. Military institutions at which he has lectured include the U.S. Naval Academy, the U.S. Air Force Academy, the Royal Canadian Military College, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, L'Ecole Special Militaire de Saint Cyr, the NATO Defense College, and the Italian Army War College. He serves on the Board of Visitors of the U.S. Army War College, has been a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer and a visiting professor at West Point, and has had visiting appointments at the University of Bonn, the Brookings Institution, and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. In 1992 he held the S.L.A. Marshall Chair at the Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences.

Not only that, but I understand that Gays were very under represented in the war dead.

We all know that this was really Clinton's military that performed so well. So why this appalling evidence of descrimination? Clinton made it clear in his second week in office that sodomy in the military was one of his highest priorities.

It's such a shame to see that in two short years the Bush administration has made it nearly impossible for our soldiers to find meaningful relationships in their fox holes.

Not only that, but Women make up about 50% of our population. And only about 1% of the K.I.A. This ABSOLUTELY proves that there is sexism in the military that is holding back female personell from a critical carrier path position.....COMBAT.

Next war, there damned well better be more Gays and Women killed in combat! If not, the Bush administration may well see their polling numbers fall.

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