Uncle Sam hustle to keep the ranks filled: targeting the young, the military's recruitment tactics pitch a job with enticing perks—and the rarely mentioned chance to kill or be killed

National Catholic Reporter, March 21, 2003 by Claire Schaeffer-Duffy

According to Ramirez, "Job skills training, the opportunity to travel and money for college are the three pillars that hold up the poverty draft" whose constituents are low-income, urban youth of color and rural whites.

Established in 1948, the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors bills itself as the Consumer Reports for people thinking about joining the military. The organization maintains a hotline for soldiers who want out, offers technical assistance to kids deciding to leave the Delayed Enlistment Program and provides counter-recruitment information for school communities, confronting JROTC and military access. The committee believes that if the military is going to call itself all-volunteer, everyone who joins should be a true volunteer; no one should enlist without deciding that he or she is willing to fight in a war--and risk killing and dying without questioning why.

The organization points to recruiting statistics from Puerto Rico, where unemployment is twice the national average and annual per capita income very low, as a "glaring example" of the poverty draft at work. The committee says that in 1997 and 1998, the number of Army recruits from the island was 800 and 900, respectively, double the average for the Army's 240 other recruiting companies.

According to a defense department study two years ago of the armed services population, neither the poor nor the wealthy are "well-represented among the backgrounds of new recruits." Instead, active and reserve recruits come "primarily from families in the middle and lower middle socioeconomic strata."

But statistics from the same study found that minorities, particularly blacks, are joining the military in disproportionately high numbers. Minorities represent 29 percent of the general population but account for 38 percent of all recruits. The Army, the largest branch of the armed services, is 45 percent minority; 30 percent of enlistees are blacks. While Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans enlist at a rate below or similar to their distribution in the general population, blacks are overrepresented, especially among active duty enlistments. Many of the new entrants are African-American women. In 2000, they made up 29 percent of all female recruits.

The high number of black female recruits does not surprise Chris Hellman, senior analyst for the Center for Defense Information.

"The military, despite its many failings, is viewed as color blind when compared to society as a whole. Minority women sense that there is greater opportunity, especially at the entry level, for professional development than what is available in civilian society. And that [perception] is probably true," he said

Black and Latino youth are a "hot commodity" for the Pentagon, says Ramirez. He and other observers claim the military has intensified its efforts in recent years to recruit youth of color.

They point out that in 1999, the Navy hired black filmmaker Spike Lee, director of "Malcolm X" and "Do the Right Thing," to design a television ad. A year later, the Army hired Leo Burnett, a former multinational advertising agency that was bought out during downsizing last fall.