Slaves Leaving the Plantation? What The??? Enlistments down, even when Blood Money is Offered.

August 22, 2007
Iraq War Brings Drop in Black Enlistees
By SARAH ABRUZZESE
WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 — Joining the Reserve Officer Training Corps was once an attractive choice for people with few options growing up in impoverished, predominantly black East Baltimore. That has all changed, largely because of the war in Iraq.

“Now, it is like, no way,” said Cornelius McMurray, who does outreach with a local church and says the young black people he works with view life in Baltimore as enough of a war. “It is a continuous fight waking up and walking the streets every day.”

In the Bronx, Adeyefa Finch says he simply walks past the recruiters who, seeking out minority members along Fordham Road, make the case that the military can help with college financing and job placement after they serve. “I’m not really into going overseas with guns and fighting other people’s wars,” said Mr. Finch, 18, headed to college this fall to study accounting.

That kind of rejection of military service as an option of young blacks throughout the country has resulted in a sharp drop in black recruitment figures since the war began. Defense Department reports show that the share of blacks among active-duty recruits declined to 13 percent in 2006 from 20 percent in 2001, the last year before the invasion of Iraq began to seem inevitable.

And while blacks continue to account for a larger share of the existing troop level than their share of the general population, as has been the case throughout the 34 years of the all-volunteer force, that margin is shrinking.

The sharpest decline in black recruitment has been experienced by the Army, which has the most troops deployed in Iraq; black recruits dropped to 13 percent of the Army’s total in 2006 from 23 percent in 2001. In the Marines, with the second-largest force in Iraq, the share of black recruits decreased to 8 percent from 12 percent in the same period. There were also declines in the Navy and the Air Force, though not as great as those in the two other services.

The commander of the Army’s recruitment efforts, Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, himself a black graduate of West Point, said there were several reasons for the change, including a healthy job market competing for youths but also African-Americans’ disapproval of the war. General Bostick said parents and educators who had recommended the military in the past might be less inclined to do so today.

In a recent CBS News telephone poll, 83 percent of the blacks surveyed said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq; only 14 percent said it had done the right thing in taking military action. Whites, by contrast, were closely divided: 48 percent said military action had been right, and 46 percent said the United States should have stayed out. The poll was conducted Aug. 8-12 with 1,214 adults nationwide and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

The poll numbers show up in the daily hardships of recruiters trained by Sgt. First Class Abdul-Malik Muhammad, based in Birmingham, Ala. “With blacks, there is not really a great support for the war,” Sergeant Muhammad said, recalling one prospective recruit who was told by his parents that they would sever all ties with him if he enlisted.

There were few such warnings half a century ago, when, as a trailblazer in equal opportunity employment, the military offered a chance for education and training. “You could go right off the street and into the military and make something of yourself,” said Ronald Walters, director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland.

One vocal opponent of the war, the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, senior pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, said, “I still think that in many ways the armed forces is unfortunately one of the few viable options for young people growing up in inner cities who may lack resources for college and have few other opportunities for upward mobility.”

But for others, times have changed. Joining up is not even part of the discussion for high school students who attend Bethel A.M.E. Church in Baltimore, said the Rev. Dana Ashton, who works with young people. Students within her congregation go to college.

And Latoya Rawls of Clinton, Md., has decided against the military despite flirting with the idea for some time. Ms. Rawls, a college student who works at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, cites both the danger of serving in Iraq — a peril evident in the wounded soldiers she sees at the hospital — and what she deems the unjust nature of the war.

The severity of the decline has caused the Army to take a close look at how it recruits blacks, General Bostick said, resulting in new marketing campaigns and the use of soldiers who are returned to their home areas to recruit.

In addition, the military has started offering higher enlistment bonuses. The Army met its recruitment goal in July after failing to do so the previous two months, and part of the success has been attributed to a new “quick ship” bonus of $20,000 for those recruits who can report to basic training by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Marjorie Connelly contributed reporting.