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[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
One of the Biden administration’s big arguments for racially discriminating against white and Asian students in college admissions was the need for military diversity. More than half of the ‘national interest’ section in its amicus brief argued that the military “depends on a well-qualified and diverse officer corps” which requires that colleges select for diversity over merit.
“It is not possible to achieve that diversity without race-conscious admissions, including at the nation’s service academies,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the Supreme Court.
The Roberts decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard shot down affirmative action as a legal practice, but punted on the question of racial discrimination within the military and its service branch academies. A footnote briefly stated that, “no military academy is a party to these cases, however, and none of the courts below addressed the propriety of race-based admissions systems in that context. This opinion also does not address the issue, in light of the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.”
The idea that racial discrimination should be illegal at colleges, but still legal at service branch academies like the Air Force Academy and the Naval Academy, is a loophole. Justice Sotomayor argued that the exception proves that “the Fourteenth Amendment does not categorically prohibit the use of race in college admissions.” And it’s hard to deny her reasoning. Either racially discriminating against students is legal or it’s illegal. National security can only go so far to justify an illegal practice especially when it’s a social element with an indirect effect.
Democrats quickly attacked Justice Roberts for seemingly leaving the carveout on military diversity that the Biden administration had demanded as a matter of national security.
“Adding insult to injury is that the Court exempted military service academies, like West Point and the Naval Academy, from its own ruling,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin complained. “So the majority on the Court does in fact recognize the inherent importance of a diverse military and that diversity makes our country not only more fair, but more stable and secure — but they refuse to allow our colleges and universities to hold the same values.”
“This decision is deeply upsetting but outright grotesque for exempting military academies. The court is saying diversity shouldn’t matter, EXCEPT when deciding who can fight and die for our country,” Rep. Jason Crow tweeted, inverting an illegal racial preference into a disadvantage.
Justice Roberts’ footnote and the outcry from Democrats and Republicans over the status of service branch academies suggests that affirmative action at service branch academies may have to be revisited at some point. Meanwhile some members of Congress are acting.
Senator Roger Wicker, a ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, plans to introduce his ‘Military Merit, Fairness, and Equality Act of 2023’ as an amendment to the defense bill which would “prohibit the Department of Defense from prioritizing the demographic characteristics of service members above individual merit and demonstrated performance.”
The senator has said that as part of that his amendment “would further prohibit our military service academies from engaging in race-based affirmative action.”
This legislation isn’t likely to advance in a Democrat Senate, but may be the beginning of an important conversation. Affirmative action did not arrive in the military yesterday, it has been around for far too long, but in recent years it has escalated to an alarming degree.
In May, an exclusive investigation by Front Page Magazine and the David Horowitz Freedom Center revealed that Air Force Chief of Staff Charles Q. Brown Jr., Biden’s nominee to succeed Milley as the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had signed off on a quota that would keep the number of white male officers in the Air Force down to only 43%.
Even before Senate hearings on Brown’s nomination get underway, the American Accountability Foundation filed a complaint against the Air Force boss on the grounds that “General Brown has made statements in favor of making hiring and promotion decisions in the Air Force based on race.” It notes Brown’s public statements such as “I hire for diversity” and “I purposely build my office, my front office, and my team with diverse” backgrounds.
Military officials have stated publicly that service academies “employ race as a factor in recruiting and admission policies and decisions.” This is illegal, but there’s a reason that it’s been the trump card of proponents of this form of systemic racism. Many things get a pass when national security is introduced into the equation. National security has been used by the Biden administration to argue that abortion and transgender procedures on children should be legal. The Biden military brass have chosen to halt confirmation of 150 nominees, including the new commandant of the Marine Corps, rather than abandon its allegiance to abortion.
While the Biden administration has no interest in winning any wars, it wants to fight its culture wars using the military. Service branch academies have become battlegrounds on issues such as BLM and the LGBTQ movement. The Biden administration has also led a purge of alumni and conservatives from boards, including from the Air Force Academy and the Naval Academy.
Chief Justice Roberts may have wanted to avoid addressing racial discrimination at service branch academies, but it is an inescapable question. Unlike Harvard and Yale, there isn’t a sympathetic high-achieving minority group in the crosshairs. Asians are seen as underrepresented in the military and especially the officer corps, but their numbers have been growing sharply.
Asian students and candidates generally suffer from racial preferences in academic settings, but the military is still a case where they are seen as statistically underrepresented and less likely to be impacted by affirmative action. That is another reason why the Left would like to take the battle over systemic racism in college admissions into the service branch academies.
A legal battle over racial discrimination in and around the military would have white people as the victims. And not only white people, but poor white people. As the Biden amicus brief notes, “West Point, for example, reports that its efforts to emphasize socioeconomic status have actually reduced racial diversity”. What that means is that providing special preferences to poor kids reduced ‘diversity’ by helping poor white candidates. The same people who form the backbone of the active duty combat military. Discriminating by race is required, the Biden administration implicitly admitted, to keep poor white kids down in the ranks.
Those are the same poor white kids taking jobs at an Amazon warehouse or a fast food place instead of risking their lives for a military brass that wants them to be ready to die without hope of rising in the ranks to a real career because they were born with the wrong skin color.
There is a compelling moral case to be made for ending racial discrimination in the military. And an even more compelling national security case. Senator Wicker noted that, “a recent survey found nearly 7 in 10 active members believe the armed forces are being politicized and that this would affect whether they encourage their children to enlist”. The Biden administration claims that it needs to racially discriminate for national security, but its racism harms national security.
The Supreme Court needs to have the courage to do to systemic racism in the military what it did to systemic racism in civilian higher education. A nation, a society and a system cannot endure half-slave and half-free, half-racist and half-equal. It’s time to end military racism.
As a former US Army officer (albeit a very junior one) I will say that diversity kills American soldiers and loses wars. I saw diversity in action kill our troops because of unqualified pilots being graduated from flight school and they got in due to quotas.
This a true national security matter. Race based discrimination is not only a crime but a threat to the United States. There is only one color in the Army and that is green
Thanks Chief!!!
Merit, not skin color, should be the sole criteria for entry to the service academies – and everywhere else. The idea that skin color carries some special property that means objective merit should be disregarded is obnoxious and the very sine qua non of racism.
Yes. Except racism has been renamed diversity. And diversity claims that every race has special qualities and gifts. And that nothing works until all those gifts are combined through racial quotas.
The people who believe that must also believe in the tooth fairy. I’m a white male. Tom Brady is a white man. Therefore, under those peoples’ logic, I must be able to throw a football through the center of a tire fifty yards away. Um, don’t think so.
“Diversity” is a left-wing code word for non white. In many cases, it means anti-white.
All,
From Romans 2:11, “God does not show favoritism”.
https://www.biblehub.com/niv/romans/2.htm
“This decision is deeply upsetting but outright grotesque for exempting military academies. The court is saying diversity shouldn’t matter, EXCEPT when deciding who can fight and die for our country,” Rep. Jason Crow tweeted,
That’s ironic considering his surname.
Coloured people have equal rights under the law for 60 years.
How much longer do they need to be pandered to?
At least a 1,000 years apparently
As long as the Left can use them as false flags to gain power and rule.
Merit should be the only criteria that counts in the military
and anywhere else…
How many Americans were serving in our army by WWIIs end? How many four generals?
How many now?
There are currently more than 4 times as many generals today as in 1945. There is more than one admiral per ship in the US Navy, the Marines have 25 generals per division
Four times as many Four Stars. A fraction of the troops. A thousand plus USMA graduates annually.
WWII saw twelve Army four stars, with three of those AAF.
I see little reason for optimism.
The USMC has what per division?
The Marines have a grand total of 4 divisions and just over 100 generals
That’s a lot of brass ass. Seems like a surfeit to me, especially when you consider incompetent, racist traitors like Brown. And Milley got to retire with honors when he should’ve been put in front of a firing squad.
Does anyone remember Vietnam with a disproportionate number of working class whites and blacks dying while elite youth got college exemptions?
Yup and TaliBiden was one of many of those exemptions
To be fair, *Biden is such a colossal idiot, that he didn’t have to worry about being accepted in.
A two minute conversion with any recruiter, would have him slamming the door behind Sleepy as he left the room.
I bet he gives himself medals for “bravery.” It’s not like he can give himself ones for pedophilia.
In 1968 Bush, Jr shot to head of the list for the Alabama Air National Guard.
He was too good to serve as a National Guard private, like that underachieving Ted Kennedy. Was he not a flying lieutenant? A Yale graduated, wire pulling somebody, with the best possible head start in inside connections?
He couldn’t walk into danger with a rifle. That’s what the little people are for. He had to save himself for better things. His patriotism required it.
Look how we benefited. No Bush, no Patriot Act. No Patriot Act, no Obama MAGA project. [ as in Make America Go Away ]
I can’t thank him enough.
Agreed, but what the hell do I know. I enlisted as an E-1 Private and in three years rose to the rank of E-5 Sergeant before I went to flight school and became a Warrant Officer
Thank you for your service.
I’d be dead, literally would be dead, from both cancer and heart disease, without the VA. I emphasize this care came from VAMC systems outside Florida.
The medical people save me, while the eligibility people in Atlanta, seem to want to finish me off.
The point is rapidly becoming moot, as I spiral downward. The VA does support euthanasia. So don’t let VAMC Miami get their hands on you, or you may need it.
The “eligibilty” people in Atlanta sound like the death panels Sarah Palin warned us about. Atlanta. No surprise those scumbags live in that shithole.
Stay strong, buddy! Don’t give up, even when God eventually rips the air from your lungs. It will happen to us all but we don’t have to like it or accept it without spitting and cursing.
My mother’s third husband stayed in college as long as he was able to avoid the draft. I don’t blame him but it was a crime to send working class kids off to die for what ultimately turned out to be pointless.
Well, obviously because SCOTUS only saved things for the last remaining remnant still playing by the rules. Don’t worry those are the rules we play by.
Harvard doesn’t need Affirmative Action to do what it does anymore.
Have you seen the new President of Harvard? She’s got lots of boxes checked!
The ugly box is the first.
Having affirmative polices in the United States miliary is a Red herring that only distracts the US Forces from its duty which to to protect America and he citizens..
The US military needs the best m the brightest and strongest, Affirmation action would only harm that goal.
Clearly leftists don’t believe that is the duty of the military.
The Biden administration says that the duty of the military is to ‘protect democracy’.
The enlistment oath is dedicated to the Constitution.
I don’t recall any sunset provision. I consider myself bound.
I consider it an honor to resist all enemies, foreign and domestic. As well as a duty.
I gave my oath.
Maybe to protect the Ukraine democracy, as we are a Republic.
Yes, I wondered about the baseless assertion that the service academies needed racist admission policies to be successful. Of course, that baseless claim is just destructive and silly-stupid. The service academies are in a state of collapse, just like the rest of the military. That exception had the cowardly Roberts written all over it.
Just finished Irresistible Revolution by Mathew Lohmeier, how the military from academies to enlisted are all being brainwashed into Cultural Marxism.
It’s a eye opening read.
Service members have to walk on eggshells to avoid a charge-sheet for misremembering a bullshit personal pronoun.
There are actually videos to help military members on how to remember them . . . all while being subjected to mandatory attendance at drag-queen shows.
(Thanks for the heads-up on the book.)
Here’s the bottom line – who do you want next to you in a foxhole when the SHTF? A flamingly gay Dylan McHaney (focusing on their trans – ness) or a straight up dude who’s more focused on the mission?
Consider shrinking West Point.
Absolutely throw out girly men. War is entirely testosterone driven.
Segregate the genders. Hanky panky is inevitable. And destroys any prospect for success. Having female soldiers anywhere near a theater of combat invites catastrophe. Remember the US nurses in the Philippines.
Female officers should never be awarded command over male troop organizations. They mishandle authority, infuriating the men and raising rates of dissertation and AWOL. There are few policies that destroy effectiveness more effectively. This seems why the Left demands them.
As China considers invading Taiwan, the only thing that gives them pause is how Russia got so bogged down in Ukraine.
The last thing Xi is worried about is the pathetic idiot in the White/Stash House, or our affirmative-action, gender-affirming military.
Both are alarmingly weak.
It’s bad enough we have a doddering fool that’s flanked by an affirmative-action VP, it’s that that doddering fool is bought and paid for by the CCP.
China gambled on buying a retarded fool . . . and found that their investment matured in January 2021. Our enemies all popped champagne corks on hearing the news.
(Sorry, Taiwan. You’re on your own.)
This is dangerous, deceitful and malevolent to the core. It’s part of a plan.
This one-party, perverse “vapidization” of the individual, the family, education, business, the professions, the arts and the military is deliberately creating psychological havoc to make life meaningless, without self worth or purpose.
If you want to substitute one person for another, then just turn America into one big movie studio.
With DEI, picking people is like choosing an actor for a movie because of a desired superficial appearance. Then the actor successfully depicts the role in a movie only because the actor’s mouth is filled with words written by the author and then the actor is directed as to how to perform every move, every action, every faked sincere emotion.
Hey, who wouldn’t want to just watch a pretend war on a movie screen with pretend courageous, heroic soldiers of every color and sexual persuasion than to actually be terrorized and targeted in a real war.
People who have experienced the trauma of war don’t watch war movies.
Screen rapes and beatings and pretend sadistic violence isn’t entertainment for real life victims. Should it be for everyone else?
So, if not part of the audience enjoying this show, this one-party government would have us believe that we should live our lives as if we are actors in a movie with a script they have written, putting words in our mouths and controlling our every move.
But do we want our life stories written by other people?
Time to stop production.
Cut!
A psychologist acquaintance recently told me that she sees more and more patients who struggle with the feeling that life is meaningless.
Any wonder?