Diversity Thursday

The USAF has a problem.

Of course, you say, Sal must be talking about;

The Air Force’s growing shortage of fighter pilots is a “quiet crisis that will almost certainly get worse before it gets better,” the service’s new chief and its top civilian leader said in an opinion piece published Thursday. But how bad is it? According to data obtained by The Washington Post, the number of fighter pilots in the service has fallen five years straight, and plummeted in the last two despite increasing need.

Well, yes - a serious organization focused on mission and having an ear towards accountability to the taxpayer and the very serious mandate to promote national security would be focused on this - but this is the American military's Air Force, so...

Don't be such a militarist.

The adoption of the worst parts of 1970s racial theory, self-loathing, rent seeking political calculus, and just plain intellectual cowardice has combined along with the tens of millions of dollars of diversity slush money to meet its logical conclusion in the USAF.

Our friend John Q. Public got the first sniffs of it about a year ago;

Earlier this year, Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James introduced a series of new personnel initiatives geared toward enhancing diversity, inclusiveness, and equality across the force.

At the time, I offered criticism that her ideas appeared more politically expedient than substantive, and that some of what she wanted to do would require contending with various legal obstacles and regulatory challenges. I also worried aloud at the time that implementation of her initiatives, if done clumsily, could prove divisive, and that this might trigger new backlash and disharmony across a force already exhausted from a solid decade of human resource malpractice.

Others came right out and predicted that these policies would lead inevitably to race and gender quotas, creating unintended consequences that should be carefully considered before implementation.

“It’s quotas,” said retired Col. Terry Stevens at the time. Stevens spent 35 years in the Air Force and held a high-level post at the personnel center for 8 of those years. Stevens added:

“They won’t say that, but … [it’s] quotas. If you’re going to do that instead of picking the best qualified of any applicant, then you’re actually downgrading the quality of the force. A lot of people are not going to agree with that, but it’s true.”

What is the uniformed head of the USAF saying?

The officials said they are working on a plan for an increased retention bonus to get pilots to stay longer. Currently, they offer $25,000 a year to stay up to nine years.
"We've got to make sure that we remain competitive," Goldfein said.

In addition to a pay boost, Goldfein, a former fighter pilot, added that it was necessary to improve the "quality of service," which he said involved making sure pilots can remain engaged when not flying combat operations.

"The reality is, pilots who don't fly, maintainers who don't maintain, controllers who don't control are not going to stay with the company because we're not allowing them to be the very best they can be," he said.

Well, that was November. In less then 10 months, then this happened.

The first new initiative mandates that at least one diverse candidate will have to be in the running for important developmental positions like aide-de camp, senior enlisted advisor and executive officer, among other roles.

A second proposal, however, declares that Development Teams (DTs) and Command Selection Boards (CSBs), both intimately involved in the selection process, must have a certain number of diverse candidates sitting on them.

More dramatically, the CSB or DT president must “assess the diversity of both the selectees and those not selected for command following the board’s decision.” In other words, the heads of these boards will have to provide clear justification if they decide to make decisions that run-up against diversity goals.

Let's take a moment to clearly define this for you. "Goals" are quotas. If you don't meet them, you will be reported to the Star Chamber. It really is that simple.

To head-off immediate criticisms of the far-reaching proposals, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein recently insisted to Air Force Times in an interview: “This is not about social engineering. This is about maintaining a competitive advantage.”

Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James put down her foot and said she wants to make the demographics of the service match more closely with the changing demographics of America.

Sorry General Goldfein, no one believes you, and I would bet a tank of gas that you don't believe that either. It simply is not supported by the evidence.

If you define "competitive advantage" getting budgetary brownie points inside the Administration and in Congress, then sure. If you mean anything to do with combat effectiveness - which is color blind - then no. If you believe that race, creed, color or national origin has a competitive advantage, then you must believe in eugenics and genetic difference in races. If so, what do you believe, and how do they apply to races.

Please, tell us more about the racialist theories you support.

But even as diversity increases, there are still numerous key positions that don’t seem to attract diverse candidates, namely pilots, cyber operations, intelligence operations and space and missile operations, which is very upsetting to Air Force officials.

So in careers where there isn’t a lot of diversity, commanders will have to come up with plans explaining why airmen in those positions are mostly white, male heterosexuals and how commanders can work towards changing that representation.

So, the USAF is going to start asking Airmen about their sexual proclivities? That is a metric now as well? What if you are gender-fluid and your desires change one FY to another? How do you update that? What if one area has too many homosexuals, do we ... what - give preference to heterosexuals?

Yes friends, the USAF is well outside the, "best qualified for the job" circle of excellence.

Although the Air Force already has unconscious bias training, the service wants to change the dates of the training to take place just before officials make key career decisions.

“To the fullest extent possible, unconscious bias training will be given immediately prior to promotion boards, prior to DT meetings on school assignments, prior to civilian hiring panels, and prior to annual performance evaluations,” the fact sheet notes.

I warned you years ago that "unconscious bias" was going to get mainstreamed. You see, regardless of what you do, you are a bigot.

All this does is ensure employment for an otherwise unemployable cadre of Diversity Bullies.

“Diversity and inclusion are national security imperatives,” Air Force Director of Diversity and Inclusion Chevalier Cleaves said in 2015. “So we must succeed. There is no second place for us. In order to do that, we need to make sure that we leverage the talent of all Americans, not just some.”

No its not. What is a national security imperative is national unity and fair treatment to all. You can't have that when you promote sectarianism, race based preferences, and a science-free and merit blind system of promotion.

The military is a serious business. If you do not have the best and brightest, your people get killed and your nation is put under strategic risk.

Let's take a moment and play their game.

Here are the national demographics (2012);
White 77.4%
Black Americans 13.2%
Asian Americans 5.3%
Multiracial Americans 2.6%
Hispanics/Latinos (of any race) 17.8%

What are the USAF Demographics?
White 72.0%
Black Americans 14.0%
Asian Americans 3.6%
Multiracial Americans 3.8%
Hispanics/Latinos (of any race) 13.6%
Declined to respond 4.4%

OK. Tell me what you see. Look harder.

No. There isn't a problem. This is completely manufactured. The impressive thing is that we are doing so well.

Especially for Black and to a much lesser extent "Hispanic" Americans, all you need to do is look at the education and crime statistics - both of which are sure show stoppers to joining - and you see that even in a perfect world, you are going to have exceptional problems getting the same objective criteria results by racial and ethnic cohort - all subjective areas such as tradition and free will aside.

If you look at the new racialist guidelines the USAF is going to saddle itself with, you see that it isn't the aggregate numbers they are focused on. When you dig deeper in to the numbers, which we have done often in previous DivThu and won't repeat here today, there can be significant differences in racial representation as a percentage. Especially in what the Army calls, "Combat Arms" where your senior leaders, rightfully, mostly come from.

If they really cared about that discrepancy, they would work on those educational and societal factors that impact the pipeline before a recruiter even talks to someone. That is outside the USAF's control, so why punish the institution and its personnel for it through acts of commission and omission based on such divisive criteria as race, creed, color or national origin?

Let's go back to that smear on the honor of all good people and our nation, the lie of unconscious bias. Brendan Kirby over at Lifezette has a great review of what African immigrants are doing when given the opportunity this nation provides anyone who wants to work hard.

Black immigrants, on average, earn more money and use less welfare than blacks born in the United States, raising doubts about the reach and impact of systemic racism.

The income data, which comes from the Census Bureau, is not new.
...
The median household income for black immigrants, $48,232, is more than $14,000 higher than the median income for blacks born in the United States. Whites, Hispanics, and Asians born in the United States all out-earn their racial or ethnic counterparts who have immigrated to the United States. American-born blacks also are more likely than black immigrants to be enrolled at least one government-assistance program and more likely to be living in poverty. Those two categories also are the reverse of other racial and ethnic groups.

“There are some things about black immigrants that would make them do better,” said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies.
...
Black immigration, like immigration generally, is quickly rising. Since 1980, the number of foreign-born blacks in the United States more than quadrupled. Blacks currently make up nearly 10 percent of all immigrants, up from 3.1 percent in 1980.

“Many black migrants perceive things are better overall in the U.S. than where they are coming from,” said Carl Lipscombe, who is on the senior leadership team at the left-leaning Black Alliance for Just Immigration. “I think many of them don’t realize or don’t expect to face discrimination based on race.”

But some black immigrants said dark-skinned immigrants from Africa and Caribbean perceive better opportunities in America because there are better opportunities.

Rick Nugent, president of the National Association of Jamaican and Supportive Organizations, said he originally came on a student visa in 1967 because there were few opportunities in his homeland. At the time, Jamaica had a single university, he said.

“Once you get adjusted to the lifestyle and the opportunities, you don’t go back,” he said. “There are jobs for people who want to work. Same with education.”

I was hoping they would get to the Caribbean immigrants of African extraction. That is what I grew up seeing first hand.

The difference is cultural. It isn't racial. That isn't a comfortable thing to say, but it is what it is. That doesn't mean we should ignore it - it is a very American problem that American of all backgrounds need to work on - but it also isn't an Air Force problem to solve.

Right now the USAF needs to focus why it can't keep its core competency capital - its pilots - inside its lifelines, regardless of their background.

Perhaps the solution is in Congress. As we covered six years ago, at the end of the Democrat control of Congress, they did the following;

Buried in the annual Coast Guard authorization act passed this week by Congress is wording that would strike from the U.S. Code the statement that all appointments to the Coast Guard Academy "shall be made without regard to the sex, race, color or religious beliefs of an applicant."

Yep. Until 2010, the USCG was one of the last places where they were prevented from discriminating on the basis of sex, race, color, or religious belief. In order to open the door to the Diversity Bullies - which they have done with great vigor - they had to be allowed to do that.

A great disgrace to the Republican Party, they have done nothing to get rid of this red in tooth and claw discriminatory change.

So, those of us who desire a military that does not care what your DNA says, just that you do your job well, have a setback. No reason to give up, we have made so much progress, but we just have to care more than the race obsessed bigots who care about nothing else.

If you'd like to review the "Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives fact sheet, here you go.

Attach2_2016 Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives Fact Sheet by CDR Salamander on Scribd