Diversity for diversity sake is lame. We have yet to start saying “we need at least 10% of each RASP class to be African-American and 10% to be Asian.” I don’t foresee that ever happening but who knows.
I’ll say I like to have a broader spectrum of the population around for my guys to interact with. I grew up in the military, I spent the majority of my childhood bouncing between a diverse area of Massachusetts and a diverse area of Florida. I went to college at a huge school that had me interact with an even broader spectrum of the population. Then I enlisted- I have had zero issues fitting in or getting along with a wide range of people.
I cannot say the same for a lot of my peers and Rangers. A lot of guys from the far ends of the spectrum- from the true inner city or from the middle of nowhere- had minimal interaction with people of different backgrounds, and it can be an adjustment for them to really click.
To echo our favorite Deep State member
@Salt USMC it helps to have people who can interact and move around non permissive and semi permissive environments us whiteys can’t move in, especially in certain career fields and units.
Real world example- there’s a squad leader, who’s a behemoth of a man who is of Arabic decent. He speaks Arabic, Farsi and a couple other dialects, including decent Pashtu. When he’s been over seas on target he will literally be able to scream at and take charge of Afghans without a Terp. It’s impressive.
That’s why we need more diversity- getting guys opened up to new cultures is cool and will help if they decide to get out of the Army. But really it comes down to the fact we need a lot of weird experiences and random skill sets we can’t hope to obtain (like being able to scream/translate Ranger into Pashtu) without getting less traditional groups to join theDOD, Army and SOF more specifically
