Fire and hire

According to an October 13th article, the Army is trying to boost its numbers of minority officers. [Source]

The move is pretty timely, especially since the Army's Officer Separation Board just chose to boot out black captains at more than twice the rate of their white counterparts.

Twenty percent of the African-Americans considered by the captain board were selected for separation or retirement versus 9.4 percent of the whites considered. Hispanics, too, took a hit, with 16.2 percent of the considered population getting the proverbial pink slip. [Source: Army Times, August 18th]

With only one of 24 brigade combat teams led by an African-American colonel (O-6), the situation is pretty awkward. Even worse, looking at the 78 subordinate battalions within those brigades, only one is led by black lieutenant colonel (O-5).

According to the article, the Army's solution to this problem isn't affirmative action -- it's recruiting. Suffice to say, this is not a quick fix. Because there's no such thing as outside hiring, it takes fully 25 years to "grow" a colonel.

So the only way to see if this effort is successful might be to check back in a generation and see how things have worked out.