Latest Diversity crisis: the Coast Guard Academy

Here's an excerpt from a long article in the Washington Post:

Despite pact, few blacks at Coast Guard school

Eight years after the U.S. Coast Guard and the NAACP signed a voluntary agreement to work together to boost the number of African-Americans at its 1,000-cadet service academy, the annual enrollment and graduation figures for blacks remain in single digits.

Seven blacks graduated from the academy based in New London, Conn., in the spring of 2001, the year the agreement was signed. The same number graduated from the Class of 2006, the first class for which blacks were recruited under the agreement. Subsequently, there were seven black graduates in 2007, five in 2008 and four in 2009.

That makes 23 graduates in four years under the agreement, including the academy's first black female valedictorian. In the four previous years the number was 33.

Leading lawmakers have grown increasingly upset with results even as they repeatedly are told the Guard is working hard to improve diversity in a service where only 311 of its 6,787 commissioned officers are black, with only one black admiral.

"The Coast Guard has just not paid attention to it. It is not antipathy or animosity toward it," said Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation Committee. "I think we're moving in the right direction and got the Coast Guard's attention and we're not going to let up."

Under a House bill, sponsored by Oberstar and Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the Coast Guard subcommittee chairman, members of Congress would nominate candidates for the academy. All the other service academies have long used congressional nominations.

On a 385-11 vote last month, the House advanced the legislation to the Senate.

The Coast Guard Academy historically has taken pride in viewing itself merit-based and choosing its applicants without regard to their geographical distribution among the states.

Cummings, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, expects black enrollment to grow with congressional involvement, at least in part because the House typically has about 40 black lawmakers who would be effective recruiters in largely black congressional districts.

The Coast Guard's position on the bill has been rather subdued.

The academy's superintendent, Rear Adm. J. Scott Burhoe, likes the existing "merit-based system," but would be "fine" if Congress adopted congressional nominations.

"I think for us part of our fear is the unknown, really, right now," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The Coast Guard Academy graduated its first black officer in 1966. In the 43 years since, only about 2 percent of the academy's graduates have been black and only once has there been as many as 10 in a single year.

Two years ago, the academy drew national attention when a noose was found among a black cadet's personal effects on a Coast Guard vessel. That was followed with the appearance of a noose for a white officer who was conducting race relations training at the academy.

Cummings said at the time that the Coast Guard must redouble its efforts in the face of a clear attempt to threaten and intimidate efforts to increase diversity.

An investigation involving 50 federal agents including the FBI produced no arrests or motives.

At present, the academy reports it has 136 minorities, with 72 Hispanics, 39 Asians and 25 African-Americans.

The Coast Guard, when asked by The Associated Press how many African-Americans were admitted to its academy as a result of the NAACP memorandum of agreement, said, through spokeswoman Nadine Santiago, that there was no way to know.

Lawmakers lashed out at the Coast Guard at a hearing last June for admitting so few blacks for the 2013 class only months after a previous hearing and discussion about the need to provide for congressional nominations.

"I am shocked that you only have five African Americans entering the class of 2013 and that you only offered two African American students appointments that were coming directly from high school that did not need additional preparation from a preparatory school," Oberstar said. "The Naval Academy found 149 fully qualified African-Americans to attend their Academy."

The U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Md.,, accepted 1,328 as cadets for its Class of 2013. For that class, 327 African-Americans applied, with 138 of the 149 blacks deemed fully qualified accepting offers of admission.

The Coast Guard, for its own 2013 Class, offered admission to 411 of 1,672 applicants, with 290 accepting offers. Only 47 blacks had applied, with seven being offered admission and five accepting. At the same time, 26 Hispanics and five Asian-Americans accepted admission. ...

The Coast Guard must graduate 70 percent of its cadets in science, math and technological fields. For the 2013 Class, the average SAT math and verbal scores totaled 1240, with the average GPA a 3.8, and half of the students were in the top 10 percent of their high school class.

A couple of points: Is it really that surprising that as the Naval Academy increases its "commitment to diversity," that has an effect on the demographics of the Coast Guard Academy?

I call it the Diversity Domino Effect.

Second, I introduced the concept of "critical mass" into the diversity debate in this 1995 National Review article, which the Supreme Court used in its Grutter and Gratz decisions of 2003:

One little-appreciated reason for the impressive record of accomplishment by blacks in the Army (e.g., after Desert Storm there were 26 black generals) is their lack of success in the Navy (only two black admirals). Achievement in one field naturally breeds more success in that same field. Initially arbitrary variations self-perpetuate. Successful immigrant group like Asian Indians rise to affluence precisely by dominating niches of the economy like motel-keeping. As Adam Smith pointed out on P. 1 of The Wealth of Nations, specialization is the road to riches.

According to Charles Moskos of Northwestern, the leading sociologist of military life, one key to the strong performance of black Army officers has been a widespread self-help organization for black officers called Rocks. In it, senior officers mentor younger men in how to live up to the demands of being an officer and a gentleman. In the Navy, however, a lack of critical mass hampers similar efforts: if, say, you are the only African-American officer on your nuclear submarine, you can't turn to another black man for advice for your entire cruise. Thus, it continues to makes more sense for an ambitious young black to join the Army than the Navy.

Of course, the Supreme Court got the concept of critical mass absolutely backwards, seeing it as a reason for quotas: We must have critical masses of talented blacks in every single institution in America! To have Diversity we must have utter homogeneity at the institutional level!

Yeah, well, there simply aren't enough talented blacks to go around -- that the reason for quotas in the first place. Instead, what happens when, say, the Army gets a critical mass of black talent is the Navy gets pressured to raid the same pool of black military academy applicants. Then, when the Navy gets its quota system going full strength, the next domino to fall is the Coast Guard. Unsurprisingly, you end up with no critical mass of talented blacks anywhere. There's no place where blacks feel comfortable.

Of course, that's the point of it all. The NAACP doesn't want talented blacks to come together where they feel comfortable. It wants to spread them thinly, mixed in with untalented blacks, so they always feel people around them are biased against them. Thus, the NAACP stays in business. As Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison wrote in 1964 about Quebec in his Oxford History of the American People, "Racial minorities, as the history of the last century shows, are seldom satisfied because their leaders, to keep in power, are always stirring up fresh resentments." [Vol. III, p. 77, 1972 edition]

But, nobody in power understands this simple chain of logic because if you wrote it down and emailed to anybody, your career is in jeopardy the next time there's a discovery process in a discrimination lawsuit. So, nobody even thinks about it.

It's the unilateral intellectual disarmament of America.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer