Affirmative Action Has No Place at Military-Service Academies

By Dan Lennington & Skylar Croy

Sunday, February 11, 2024

 

For decades, the military advanced its mission in a famously color-blind fashion, which bled into popular culture. “You are no longer black, or brown, or yellow, or red. You are now green!” bellowed the drill instructor in Jarhead. In Full Metal Jacket, recruits were told, “There is no racial bigotry here. . . . You are all equally worthless!” These iconic movie scenes resonated because they mirrored a reality: The military considered unity, not diversity, its strength.

 

Not anymore. Today’s military obsesses over race, and the Biden administration is zealously defending its racialized military policies in federal court.

 

Last year, Students for Fair Admissions won a historic case against Harvard and the University of North Carolina before the United States Supreme Court, ending affirmative action in higher education — with one exception. The decision’s application to the military is murky. At the urging of Biden’s lawyers, the Court added a footnote saying that military-service academies may have “potentially distinct interests” that the decision “does not address.”

 

On the heels of that victory, Students for Fair Admissions filed another case, seeking to end affirmative action at West Point, the Army’s service academy. Just a few days ago, the Supreme Court declined to issue emergency relief that would have prevented West Point from continuing to use racial preferences during its current admissions cycle; however, the Court clarified that it was not expressing an opinion on the merits.

 

Inevitably, the Supreme Court will resolve the issue of the military’s race discrimination — hopefully sooner rather than later. West Point’s admissions policy favors blacks and Hispanics over whites and Asians — a serious constitutional issue. For example, at one stage in the admissions process, applicants are assigned a score based on academics, extracurriculars, and physical fitness. Successful white and Asian applicants must have a minimum score based on the academy’s grading system. There is no minimum-score requirement for black applicants. On another measure, which considers grades and standardized tests, blacks and Hispanics can score 15 percent lower than whites and Asians and still hit the mark.

 

In recent federal-court filings, the Biden administration defends affirmative action at West Point by relying on racial stereotypes. Biden’s lawyers claim that minority soldiers have “greater confidence” in “leaders” with “demographic similarities,” that minorities will not join the military unless they “see someone that looks like them in a higher position,” and that minorities will not stay in the military unless they are mentored by “members of their own phenotype.” The administration goes so far as to say that some minorities have different, preferred “perspectives” on “conflict and security” and use different “mental models,” which presumably other, disfavored racial groups don’t.

 

None of these claims are supported with evidence. They simply repeat modern social-justice theory and the universal, and unproven, trope that “representation matters” in all contexts and at all times.

 

Following these arguments about how minorities feel and think, the Biden administration next blames the American public. Ignoring recent polls showing that nearly 70 percent of Americans oppose affirmative action, the administration says that Americans will not trust that soldiers “will faithfully execute their duty to protect all Americans” unless the military is sufficiently racially diverse. In this fiction, white soldiers fight for white Americans, and black soldiers fight for black Americans. Again, Biden’s lawyers present no evidence for this wild claim. They even refer to racial tensions during the Vietnam War, as if that episode somehow affects the character of today’s recruits, most of whom were born decades later.

 

At bottom, the Biden administration wants an exception to the Constitution’s rule of racial equality, relying exclusively on vague references to “national security.” This type of thinking differs only in degree, not in kind, from that which allowed the Japanese internment camps during World War II, which the Supreme Court upheld in the now abandoned Korematsu decision. That decision was wrong. The military doesn’t possess some “national security” trump card to evade equal rights.

 

Based on last year’s ruling, the rules on racial equality are clear. Race may never be used as a “negative” or a “stereotype.” Imprecise racial categories such as “black,” “Hispanic,” or “Asian” (which even West Point now concedes that the Supreme Court has declared “incoherent”), should never be used to grant preferences. In circumstances where they might be allowed, race-based policies must be temporary rather than indefinite. Finally, race cannot be used to achieve “diversity” — it may be used sparingly, only to remedy a prior incident of intentional discrimination. West Point’s policy flunks all these tests.

 

Even if the Army had a compelling interest in diversity, it could use race-neutral alternatives to secure that interest. The Army could increase enlisted-to-officer promotions, for example. Enlisted soldiers have a unique pipeline toward West Point — yet only 9 percent of the academy’s class of 2027 were enlisted. Increasing this number would promote economic, social, and geographic diversity instead of mere racial diversity. It would also increase the number of officers who understand what it is like to be a young private. This is the type of true diversity our military should target.

 

Our service academies must join the rest of American higher education. Affirmative action is banned at nearly all other universities. It is even banned at statutorily recognized “senior military colleges,” such as the Virginia Military Institute, which collectively commission hundreds of officers each year — and national security is doing just fine.

 

All soldiers swear to “support and defend” the Constitution, not to participate in some grand social experiment. As famously articulated long ago, “our Constitution is color-blind. . . . The law regards man as man, and takes no account . . . of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.” The Supreme Court should strike down affirmative action at West Point.