The District Chronicles

Issue date: 12/9/07 Section: Cover

WASHINGTON (NNPA) - In the face of a huge drop in Black recruitment, the U.S. military is waging a losing battle on the home front-for new enlistees to don the uniform. Since fiscal year 2000, Defense Department statistics show that the number of young Black enlistees has fallen by more than 58 percent.

The Army may have been hardest hit. In 2000, Pentagon statistics reveal that 42,000 Black men and women applied to join. Just five years later, that number was down to just above 17,000.

The Army Recruiting Command acknowledged that the war in Iraq has depressed respect for the military in the Black community where the war is very unpopular. A recent CBS News poll showed 83 percent of Blacks said the Iraq invasion was a mistake. In addition, Pres. Bush's approval rating is at an all-time low with Black voters at about 9 percent, according to a 2006 Pew Research Center poll.

The Black decline is by far the largest of any demographic group. By contrast, from 2000 to 2005, White applicants declined by about 10 percent, while Hispanic applications dropped by only 7 percent.

"African-Americans have been such a key part of the modern military," said Michael O'Hanlon, military analyst for the Brookings Institution, according to a published report. "There's obviously been a degree where the Black community in the United States has seen [military service] as culturally valuable and promoted it. That whole culture and value system is at risk in the Black community. That is a big, big change."

Just as frustration over the pace of the Civil Rights movement began to cool Black enthusiasm for the military during the Vietnam War era, the Bush administration's non-response to the suffering of victims during Hurricane Katrina has also increased the notion that the government itself "does not care about Black people."

According to an October 2007 Boston Globe article, young Blacks today confirmed their disillusionment with the war.

"Why would we go over there and help them [Iraqis], when [the U.S. government] can't help us over here?" Nathaniel Daley, a young Black man from Atlantic City, N.J. told Boston.com recently, noting the government's failure in 2005 at providing Hurricane Katrina relief.

The war "is unnecessary," said his friend Brian Jackson. "It's not our war. We got our own war here, just staying alive," Mr. Jackson continued, pointing to the fact that his hometown of Philadelphia has seen more than 200 homicides, mostly Black men killing other Black men, so far this year.

Continued...

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