Charlie Rangel Agrees with Kerry I expect better from a Korean war veteran. In fact that was the ONLY reason I respected Mr. Rangel. No more. This maroon has ignored the Army's own data that shows that education levels of all soldiers (not just the officers as in Charlie's time) are above and beyond the average. These peckerwoods need to look at the US Census figures.

Are Soldiers Black and Poor?
by Steve Sailer
UPI National Correspondent
From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk
Published 1/16/2003 12:19 PM


LOS ANGELES, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., a Korean War veteran, has introduced a bill to reinstate the military draft, arguing, "A disproportionate number of the poor and members of minority groups make up the enlisted ranks of the [volunteer] military..."

Indeed, in a little noticed development, the percentage of military personnel who were minorities shot upward during the years from 1995 to 2000, with enlisted ranks rising from 28 percent to 38 percent minority (compared to 30 percent of the national population), and the officer corps growing from 11 percent to 19 percent.

The booming economy of the late 1990s may have made it harder for the Pentagon to recruit whites, who tend to enjoy more lucrative opportunities in the civilian economy than do blacks or Hispanics.

Blacks are found disproportionately in the military, while Hispanic residents, many of whom are not citizens, are slightly underrepresented. Blacks are found most heavily in the Army and are least common in the Air Force.

Contrary to popular belief, blacks have not died in combat in disproportionate numbers, even in Vietnam. Two leading military sociologists, Charles Moskos of Northwestern and John Sibley Butler of the University of Texas, researched this carefully for their 1996 book "All We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way."

They reported, "Black fatalities amounted to 12.1 percent of all Americans killed in Southeast Asia -- a figure proportional to the number of blacks in the U.S. population at the time and slightly lower than the proportion of blacks in the Army at the close of the war."

(Moskos favors reinstituting the draft. He says Rangel's argument "persuasive" but that the most important reason is that the military is undermanned and relies too heavily on reserves.)

In recent decades, blacks have tended to gravitate away from combat jobs. In arguing against Rangel's bill, the Department of Defense noted, "Blacks today account for 21 percent of the enlisted force, but make up only 15 percent of combat arms (e.g., infantry, armor, artillery)."

African-Americans make up about 13 percent of young adults, so they are still somewhat over-represented in combat positions.

"In contrast, blacks account for 36 percent of Functional Support and Administration and 27 percent of Medical and Dental career fields. "

Interestingly, the military today seems to attract pugnacious whites and pragmatic blacks. Analysts have suggested that more young white men see the infantry as a way, in the words of one, to "play Rambo" from age 18 to 22, then go to college using military tuition benefits. In contrast, blacks often view the military as either a long-term career in itself, or as a way to get practical training for a civilian white-collar career.

Are soldiers the products of particularly poor families? In general, the enlisted ranks come from neither the top nor the bottom of society, but from working and middle class backgrounds. Very few enlistees appear to be the scions of the wealthy. (Some officers are from rich families, however; but a larger proportion of officers are the sons and daughters of officers.)

White enlistees tend to come from households somewhat lower in income than the general white population: $33,500 per year versus $44,400 for the average white, according to 1999 Defense Department statistics. Strikingly, black enlistees come from households above the black national average: $32,000 vs. $27,900.

In fact, on a number of measures, African-American enlistees tend to stand well above the black average and very close to, or above, the mean for white enlistees. The celebrated high degree of racial equality and amity found in the military, especially in the Army, would appear to benefit from the similar backgrounds that black and white soldiers bring to the Army.

Not only do black and white soldiers come from households of almost equal income, but their educational attainments are virtually identical. In 1994, 99 percent of black and 97 percent of white Army enlisted personnel were high school graduates, figures above the national average.

When the Volunteer Army began three decades ago, black recruits had much higher graduation rates that whites. In the late 1970s, according to Moskos and Sibley, 90 percent of black Army enlistees had their degrees, versus only about 40 percent of whites. After the large pay raises of the early 1980s, the Army was able to recruit a better-educated group of youth, so the black advantage narrowed as both groups' graduations rates approached 100 percent.

The racial gap in test scores that bedevils American civilian society is a much smaller problem in the Army.

Moskos and Sibley found that in 1994: "83 percent of white recruits scored in the upper half of the mental aptitude test (compared with 61 percent of white youths in the national population), while 59 percent of black recruits scored in the upper half (compared with 14 percent of the black youths nationwide)."

African-American enlistees are also more likely to come from two-parent families than is the norm among blacks, the Defense Department says.

Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International

The men and women with who I served were among the best that the USofA has to offer. Charlie makes me think that they are indeed better than the idiots currently posing as leaders in Congress. For certain most of them got better grades in college than Kerry and Gore. This is particularly true of the National Guard where some rather successful men and women are junior enlisted (grade E-4 and below) because they've only recently enlisted. They didn't enlist for the money or education benefits either as they've already accomplished enough in life for that to be a non-issue.

So the next question is who is the racist? I think Charlie is the racist as it is Charlie who thinks that young black men and women must be STUPID and IGNORANT to enlist in the armed services. None that I know. Even the young men and women (of all ethnic and racial backgrounds) are smarter than average. They must be. They can't enlist unless they are!

Of course this is all connected to the cut-and-run crowd. The thing is that while we'd made our point in Vietnam and there wasn't likely to be any change in the world by leaving there, there will be terrible changes if we leave Iraq and/or Afghanistan.

Ok, so the war in Iraq has surpassed our time in WWII (but not that of the Revolution). Why does that matter anyway? Isn't each circumstance, each goal different?

Charlie doesn't get the reason for the war (or he does and he's a traitor) nor does he understand volunteerism. Makes me wonder why he became a Representative, not to serve his constituents but for himself I suppose. Anyway...

Charlie Rangel: Volunteer army composed of unemployed youngsters who don't want to fight
This is a partial transcript of Congressman Charlie Rangel's appearance on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace today.

Chris Wallace: [begins by citing Heritage Foundation's recently-published study showing US military is better educated and from higher-income neighborhoods than the average American] Congressman, in fact, contrary to what you've been saying, isn't the volunteer army better educated and well-to-do than the general population?

Rangel: Of course not. I want to make it abundantly clear that I have been advocating a draft ever since the President's been talking about war. [snip]I want to make it abundantly clear if anyone believes that these youngsters want to fight -- as the Pentagon and some generals have said -- you can just forget about it. No young, bright individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very very high unemployment. If a young fella has an option of having a decent career or joining the army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life he would not be in Iraq. So anyone who supports the war, and is against everyone sharing in the sacrifice is just being hypocritical about the whole thing. The record is clear, and once we are able to get hearings on this, everyone will see what they already know, and that is that those who have the least opportunities at this age find themselves in the military , as I did when I was 18 years old.

You know, don't you, that there are folks who become doctors, nurses, teachers, EMTs, firemen, policemen, soldiers, priests/pastors, nuns, and so forth for no reason other than that they want to serve their fellow man, their fellow citizens. As I said, Charlie must only be in Congress to serve himself.  ¶ posted by The Editor 12:46 PM