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23 Armed Forces & Soc'y 7 (1996-1997)

handle is hein.journals/amdfcsad23 and id is 1 raw text is: Race and Gender in the U.S. Military DAVID J. ARMOR P eriodically, the demographic and social composition of the United States armed forces becomes a national issue. At times the issue is over access to military service by some group, such as the recent contro- versy over opening military service to homosexuals. More commonly, the question of representation is one of degree rather than access. The most controversial issues with respect to the degree of representation have been the proportions of blacks and women in the military. The issue of black representation flared up during the Persian Gulf war, and the question of women's representation was in the news again as a result of major Con- gressional initiatives to eliminate combat restrictions for women. The controversies over blacks and women in the military raise quite different equity and fairness issues. During the troop buildup before the Persian Gulf War, U.S. defense policies were strongly criticized by such African American leaders as Jesse Jackson and Benjamin Hooks.1 While their main target was the war itself, they complained vigorously about the fact that the Army troops being sent to the Gulf were nearly 30 percent black, contrasting with a U.S. population that was only 11 percent black. This cannon fodder allegation, that blacks and poor Americans bore an unfair burden of combat risks, is not new; it also arose during the Viet- nam War. After the Persian Gulf War, Ronald Walters, Chairman of the Political Science Department at Howard University, endorsed specific quotas to limit blacks in the military to their population proportion.2 If the controversy about black representation is over the equity of burden, the debate about women is over the equity of opportunity. Here DAVID J. ARMOR is a research professor in the Institute of Public Policy at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he teaches courses in civil rights policy and multivariate analysis. He is former Principal Deputy and Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense (Force Management and Personnel) and author of Forced Justice: School Deseg- regation and the Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Address for correspon- dence: 5 Sharp Rock Rd., Sperryville, VA 22740. ARMED FORCES & SOCIETY, Vol. 23, No. 1, Fall 1996, pp. 7-27.

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