A U.S. Army soldier with the 10th Special Forces Group and his military working dog jump off the ramp of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment during water training over the Gulf of Mexico as part of exercise Emerald Warrior 2011 on March 1, 2011. (Tech. Sgt. Manuel J. Martinez / U.S. Air Force)
The U.S. military’s tradition of excellence and achievement faces strain amid the push for racial, sexual, and gender equity—aka mediocrity.
In line with President Joe Biden’s directive, the 2022 Department of Defense Equity Action Plan, released this month, shows where its priorities are: labeling minority-owned defense contracting companies as “disadvantaged” instead of based on individual merit and mainstreaming “transgender” service personnel despite ample evidence of their poor deployability. Is it inequitable to say that age or obesity standards are racist or discriminatory, considering that statistics show that black Americans are 51 percent more likely to be obese than whites?
Studies have shown that equity via multiculturalism can “result in stereotyping” and in “some sense prototypical members of their constituent groups as more representative of that group than people who are non-prototypical members (just as people perceive a robin as more of a bird than an ostrich is).”
The military has standards for a reason. Failing to live up to those standards is a life-or-death matter.
These high standards have given lower-income individuals from historically discriminated groups, such as blacks and Hispanics, a way out of their disadvantage. The late Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell, exemplifies this tradition.
Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State Colin Powell is seen at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Dec. 4, 2018. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Powell strove his way up the ladder via hard work and determination in the face of racism and poverty at home. He lived the best traditions of the U.S. military by refusing to blame others, having a vision, ignoring naysayers, showing optimism, and not letting others control his destiny. He was a living example of meritocracy in action.
“…[R]esearch indicates that blinding practices may be more effective at combating gender bias than racial and ethnic bias,” said a 2021 RAND Corporation report on equity and diversity in the U.S. Air Force.
Biden appears to put politicization of the military at a higher priority than modernizing the force, which he seems intent on curtailing through budget cuts to the Navy and Air Force. This takes place during Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and China’s military buildup in East Asia, amid which the administration appears intent on ceding advantages to America’s enemies.
The drive for “equity” in the military accomplishes the exact opposite. It works to blame others for one’s shortcomings. It also refuses to acknowledge that certain persons aren’t cut out for the military. Should people who are math-challenged such as this writer be allowed into the military or be allowed to rise into math- and engineering-intensive positions they aren’t qualified for?
Equity ideologues rely on overly broad statistics without quantifiable alternative explanations, apart from ideological ones, that presume discrimination is behind everything. That’s known as the logical fallacy of begging the question.
I always wanted to join the Navy, but that wasn’t to be. I tried signing up, but my command of advanced mathematics wasn’t up to par, and I bombed the officer candidate test in 2006. Equity says that had I been a black or Hispanic man, or a woman, I might have been admitted even though I wasn’t qualified.
Vice President Kamala Harris said in a post on her Twitter account during the 2020 presidential campaign that minorities are in need of an artificial hand-up due to historical discrimination.
Equity works to keep others down to achieve its artificial construct. Our young service personnel should strive to the standard shown by General Powell. We shouldn’t dumb down testing or standards so that unqualified individuals can compete on a playing field they weren’t qualified to be on in the first place.
It places an asterisk in the minds of young minority service personnel, saying, “Did I get the job because of my talent or because of the box I fit into?”
We’re individuals, not a collective whose futures are etched in stone by virtue of the color of our skin or our genitalia. Equity results in lowered standards and the promotion of mediocrity at the expense of excellence. Reduced physical fitness standards for women in the U.S. Army are one such example. In combat situations, being physically and mentally fit is a matter of life or death.
“‘Equity’ may sound like equality, but in the hands of Biden, his team, and the professoriate dictating the terms from the faculty lounge, it has become its functional opposite. This drives a dagger into any hope of unifying around the foundational principle of equality,” Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez wrote. “Equality calls for government to treat Americans equally, a standard that, when aspired to, has solved many vicissitudes, but when ignored, has led to calamity. Equity, under the corrupted new meaning, calls for government to dispense unequal treatment in order to achieve equal outcomes.”
Thus, the Biden administration’s pursuit of equity increases racial prejudices instead of reducing them.
The push for equity looks at the lack of equality of outcome in the military. It assumes it’s due to racial or gender bias instead of a lack of aptitude among the applicants from the communities being studied. The push to minimize the difference between males and females falls into the ideological trap of refusing to acknowledge that men and women are different.
Males and females respond to situations differently and shouldn’t be shoehorned into situations based on statistics rooted in arbitrary ideological constructs of academia.
Merit combined with the needs of the armed forces to successfully defeat America’s adversaries are the only criteria that should matter. Equity should be called what it is: enforced mediocrity.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
John Rossomando is a senior analyst for defense policy at the Center for Security Policy and served as senior analyst for counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years.
