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General: Racism still deserves dialogue

Racism in the Air Force is largely a thing of the past, but that doesn’t mean all wrongs have been righted or that the issue doesn’t merit discussion, says one of the service’s 12 black general officers and the head of its recruiting command.

Brig. Gen. A.J. Stewart sees February, designated as Black History Month, as an opportunity to talk frankly about the past and the importance of diversity.

“One of the interesting questions that comes up every year is ... ‘Why do we continue to have an African-American heritage month? I thought we were past these issues,’ ” Stewart said. “My perspective on that is yes, we are no longer under the bonds of slavery, [and] we no longer have legal discrimination. ... However, for African-Americans in particular, we suffered very deep wounds for hundreds of years in this country, and while the wounds essentially have healed, they’ve left scars, and we are still in one sense recovering from this terrible experience.”

The Air Force has recruited in recent months more blacks than at any time since the start of the war in 2001, when all the services began experiencing lower percentages of black recruits.

The percentage of Air Force enlisted recruits who are black hit a low of 13.8 percent in 2003 but has rebounded to 18.8 percent so far in fiscal 2009, according to the Air Force Recruiting Service. By comparison, 11.4 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds in the general population are black, according to the Census Bureau.

So far this fiscal year, the Air Force has brought in 2,218 black recruits out of a total of 11,827 enlisted recruits.

Overall, 14.8 percent of the active-duty force is black, according to the Air Force Personnel Center.

Blacks make up about 17 percent of enlisted airmen, and are well represented among the senior enlisted ranks, figures show. Of the service’s 2,583 chief master sergeants on active duty, more than 450 — about 17 percent — are black, according to AFPC.

The percentage of blacks is far lower in the officer corps and among the general officer ranks. Of 64,040 active-duty officers, 3,765 — 5.9 percent — reported their race to be black. (Another 5,300 declined to report their race.) Twelve of the 282 general officers — 4.3 percent — are black. The Air Force had 10 black general officers in 1980, three in 1990 and 11 in 2000.

A former Air Force personnel official attributes the underrepresentation of blacks in the officer corps to the gap between white and black educational achievement in the U.S.

“A smaller percentage of blacks than whites go to college, which means that the pool of blacks eligible to join the officer corps is going to be much smaller,” said Edwin Dorn, now a professor at the University of Texas.

Also, the Air Force has had a hard time recruiting black officers because it has a smaller presence and is less well-known than the Army in the South, which has the nation’s highest percentage of black residents, Dorn said.

The highest-ranking black Air Force officer is Lt. Gen. Edward Rice, commander of U.S. Forces Japan and 5th Air Force, who also is among a handful of black pilots.

Only 1.9 percent of Air Force pilots are black, according to AFPC. Of 14,130 Air Force pilots, 270 identified themselves as black; another 620 declined to report their race.

“We’ve been trying for 20 years to get more black pilots, but it’s a little lower than it was 20 years ago,” said Stewart, who is a pilot.

The drop in pilots is harder to explain but probably stems from blacks being underrepresented in the sciences and technical fields, where the Air Force gets many of its pilots, Dorn said.

For Black History Month, senior black officers such as Stewart and Rice are visiting schools and community groups across the country to talk about their experiences.

It is a delicate task, Stewart said.

“The terrible past African-Americans suffered in this country is an uncomfortable subject for both blacks and whites,” he said. “We look back and we see things that none of us are proud of. ... It’s uncomfortable, and I’m in a unique position as an African American and as a senior officer to speak frankly about some things.”