WASHINGTON — Blacks have made great strides in the military since it was integrated 60 years ago, but they still struggle to gain a foothold in the higher ranks, where fewer than 6 percent of U.S. general officers are African-American.
At a ceremony Wednesday commemorating President Truman’s July 26, 1948, executive order mandating the end of segregation in the armed forces, military officials and black leaders said the U.S. must not rest on its laurels.
“My hope and expectation is that, in the years ahead, more African-Americans will staff the armed forces at the highest levels,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a crowd that included many black former service members. “We must make sure the American military continues to be a great engine of progress and equality.”
While blacks make up about 17 percent of the total force, they are just 9 percent of all officers, according to data obtained by The Associated Press.
The rarity of blacks in the top ranks is apparent in one startling statistic: Only one of the 38 four-star generals or admirals serving as of May was black. And just 10 black men have ever gained four-star rank — five in the Army, four in the Air Force and one in the Navy, according to the Pentagon.
As a result, younger African- American soldiers have few mentors of their own race. And as the overall percentage of blacks in the service falls, particularly in combat careers that lead to top posts, the situation seems unlikely to change.
Still, officials this week can point to some historic gains by blacks in the services.
Best known among the four- stars is retired Gen. Colin Powell, who later became the country’s first black secretary of state, under President Bush.
In a stirring salute in the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday, Powell said that as a youngster in 1948, it never occurred to him that he could rise to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
But when he joined the military 10 years later, “they no longer cared whether I was black or white, immigrant kid or not,” Powell told the crowd, which was dotted with the red blazers of Tuskegee Airmen — the first group of black fighter pilots allowed into the U.S. Army Air Corps that flew in World War II. “The only thing my commanders ever told me from 1958 for the rest of my career, is ‘Can you perform?’ And that’s all we have ever asked for.”
The Army has led the way with black officers, with nearly double the percentage at times over the past three decades as the other services. Blacks represented 11 percent to 12 percent of all Army officers during that time, compared with 4 percent to 8 percent in the Navy, Air Force and Marines.
The reasons for the lack of blacks in higher ranks are many and complex, ranging from simple career choices to Congress and family recommendations. Most often mentioned is that black recruits show less interest in combat jobs, which are more likely to propel them through the officer ranks.
“Kids I’ve spoken to … have the impression that, ‘If I go to Army and become an infantry person, that is not a skill that I can carry to the civilian workforce,’ ” said Clarence Johnson, director of the Pentagon’s Office of Diversity Management.
Retired four-star Gen. John nie E. Wilson — who specialized in logistics — said he does not believe ROTC programs or the military steer black recruits to the noncombat jobs — although that may have been a problem many years ago.
Instead, he said, young black officers choose other fields because “they want to prepare for a future outside of the military, and they believe that being in communications, being in logistics will provide them a better opportunity to succeed.”
