[pabianice]

And here I thought flag officers were selected from the best, not the most diverse.

[yldstrk]

believe me, the Army gives less than a sh8 about skin color, if you are competent, the job is yours, if you ain’t, you ain’t

[Olog-hai]

Wasn’t Colin Powell selected in that manner?

[Izzy Dunne]

military sociologists

Why does such a thing exist?

[YankeeReb]

And here I thought flag officers were selected from the best, not the most diverse.

This is 0'Mugaube's military now. Straight White men need not apply.

[Future Snake Eater]

Black senior leaders were bitching about this when I was a cadet in the early 2000s. I’m sure the bitching goes much farther back than that. I still don’t GAS.

[all the best]

It is shameful that racist insist on always pointing out that blacks are not keeping up with the rest of the world.

[where's_the_Outrage?]

Allen West should be a Flag Officer. A GWB failure IMHO.

[arthurus]

Time for Affirmative Action in the Officer Corps and to do away with racist Merit selection.

[junta]

I believe the current army sgt major is a shirker who happens to be black who spent the GWOT going thru schools and then voila the second black president comes along and suddenly he steps into that role.

[Right Brother]

There is also a lack of red heads, midgets and paraplegics in leadership positions, so what?

[Radix]

It has been a well known secret for many years that Blacks both officers and enlisted tend to enter into the non combat arms MOS positions.

[Gay State Conservative]

So now I don’t just look at my doctor and wonder “affirmative action?”....I have to do the same with my CO? Or with *his* CO?

[Night Hides Not]

Times must have changed. When I was in 108th ADA Group in Germany, our Group Cdr from 78-80 was Johnie Forte, Jr., a black Colonel. From there, he would go on to BG.

He was a great leader, and it was an honor to serve with him.

There were other fine officers that I served with, many of whom were black. My best efficiency reports came from black supervisors.

What the heck has happened over the past 30 years?

[WyCoKsRepublican]

While serving in the Naval Reserve, I found that blacks that served were educated, patriotic and in most cases conservative. There were exceptions, bear in mind this has been about 15 years ago. I recall we had one black officer that was very sharp, but a flaming lib. Skin color was the least consideration for promotion. Today the bar has to be lowered and that is not good.

[Arthur McGowan]

According to John Derbyshire, ten percent of whites have an IQ of 80 or below. Forty percent of blacks have an IQ of 80 or below.

Therefore...

[Cowboy Bob]

When people complain about all the Blacks in the NBA, the typical response is that blacks are better basketball players. Yet when Blacks are “underrepresented” in some field (based on their percentage of the population), there is always a cry of racism. The Blacks live in a dreamworld where it should always be a win-win situation (for themselves) for getting a piece of the pie - whether they deserve it or not. The Blacks think that 13% of Mensa should be Black.

The Blacks didn’t even fight for their freedom. White people fought white people to free the slaves. If it wasn’t for the whites in the north, there would still be slavery in the south.

[Chainmail]

Back when I was a Lieutenant in '77, I made the idiotic mistake of engaging in a discussion about leadership with two fellow lieutenants who were black. The discussion was about why so few black candidates made it through OCS successfully and I forwarded the theory that leadership wasn't fostered in the black community - that it a "every man for himself" environment and that there were few fathers to give a guide for leadership.

My supposed friends went apocalyptic on me, screaming (literally - in the middle of the Commissioned Officer's Mess)that I was a racist and went directly to my commanding officer with the charge. The only thing that saved me and my career was another black officer who went to the colonel and vouched for me - and the colonel had a fast-fill billet to lead a shooting team and I was sent there and out of the way.

Believe me, I never discussed anything at all about race again with any of my fellow officers. I did look for officer potential among all of my troops and got commissioning programs for as many as I was able - but honest discussion is never possible.

[vetvetdoug]

I only met one black officer that deserved his accolades. His name was Daniel James. He didn't have a chip on his shoulder and was as down to Earth as any. Most of the others that I served with were affirmative action selectees and were intolerable with which to be around. The idiocy even extended into the enlisted ranks where blacks were promoted over qualified whites just because of the color. We saw the results during the Carter Administration. There was a saying, Cream rises to the top but so does feces.

[Iron Munro]

Turning the US military into another disfunctional liberal social experiment one Affirmative Action promotion at a time.

[Phillyred]

Judging by the color of one’s skin, not their character. The democrat way.