Minority officers in the Navy receive slower promotions and lower performance evaluations than their white peers, recently released service data show. But the key reason appears to be pre-service education that is less competitive, rather than institutional racism, according to an officer "pipeline" study prepared for the Department of Defense.
"Many minority members and, to a lesser extent, women may start their careers at a disadvantage because of pre-entry differences in academic achievement and lower representation in fields of study of most interest to the military," concludes the study, entitled Career Progression of Minority and Women Officers. It was prepared by the Defense think tank RAND and the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, California,
Academic background puts minority officers behind from the start in competing for career-enhancing assignments, particularly in tactical operational fields where promotions come faster and from which most future flag officers are drawn. Minority and women officers remain concentrated in non-combat fields such as engineering/maintenance, administration, medical, and supply.
The officer pipeline study was released in late November 1999 by Rudy de Leon, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, along with a larger report on the first-ever Armed Forces Equal Opportunity Survey, which attracted national media attention.
The larger survey report, based on the racial experiences of almost 40,000 active-duty members surveyed three years ago, found wide disparities between minorities and whites in their perception of racism, both on base and off. Sixty-two percent of blacks and 38% of Hispanics, for example, said that the military paid too little attention to issues of harassment and discrimination. Only 17% of whites felt the same way.
Offensive racial incidents are more commonplace in the military than perhaps many Americans believed, the survey suggested. More than 75% of minorities—black, Hispanic, Asian (or Pacific Islander), and Native American—reported at least one "offensive encounter" involving race within a year of the 1996-97 survey. But a majority of whites—62%—also reported similar incidents, which ranged from hearing jokes that negatively portrayed race to a perception of being excluded from social activities because of race.
Still, "benchmark" comparisons of perceived racism in society at large show the military doing relatively well. Offensive encounters by members were even more frequent and pronounced off base, said Anita Lancaster, one of five researchers who prepared the report. Forty-six percent of members surveyed said that race relations were better in the military than in society at large. Only 6% felt military race relations were worse.
The officer pipeline study attempted to sort perception from reality regarding the promotion of minorities and women. For women, the greatest barrier to past promotions related to combat-exclusion rules. Because most of those rules were removed in the early 1990s, promotion opportunities for women officers are primed to improve in the years ahead, analysts said.
But minorities, particularly blacks, enter commissioned service often disadvantaged by their educational backgrounds, the report suggested. And this appears to limit their opportunity for assignments that lead to faster promotions.
"One of the most striking differences is in the tactical operations field" across the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, the report said. "In 1997, Whites in this field made up 56% of all White officers; the comparable figure for Blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities were 37%, 50%, and 47% respectively."
The report looked closer at racial representation in tactical aviation. In fiscal year 1997, less than 2% of aviators were blacks and Hispanics—although blacks made up 7.5% of all active-duty officers and Hispanics 3.1%. The study found test score cutoff points for entry into flight training had a significant impact on minority representation.
Once trained as pilots, minorities have a tougher time advancing to commander (0-5) and captain (0-6). (See Table 1.) The report suggested this disparity could be traced to entry qualifications and performance evaluations, rather than racism. One indicator of this is that minorities who graduated from top schools with high grade point averages had significantly higher performance ratings; when those factors are equal, differences in promotion rates between racial groups narrow dramatically, the report said.
One part of the study examined a range of variables affecting Marine officer promotions, including race, fitness reports, and test scores. "These findings based on two recent years of promotion outcomes indicate that the lower promotion rates of minority officers are due almost entirely to the differences in performance measures (primarily fitness reports) rather than to differences associated solely with race," the study said. The study conceded, however, that fitness report scores themselves are subjective and still could be a source of discrimination.
Race-relations studies like these, said William Leftwich, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Equal Opportunity, serve "as a form of self-examination which is absolutely vital to our institutional health." Officials will use the results to shape future equal opportunity policies, he said, and this study will serve as a baseline to measure future progress in easing harassment and discrimination. Both reports can be read on the Internet at <dticaw.dtic.mil/prhome/careerprog.html>.