The Air Force's Racial Disparity Review and Black Pilot "Myths"

Introduction

I was inspired to write this book after reading the Air Force’s December 2020 Racial Disparity Review (RDR). I believe the Air Force initiated the RDR in response to the national crisis surrounding the death of George Floyd. I further believe that is why this report focuses on African Americans and not any other ethnic group. Many national corporations and institutions took the initiative to make statements or take action in response to the George Floyd crisis. I do not fault the Air Force for doing the same.

However, I believe the Air Force’s Racial Disparity Review falls gravely short of what the Air Force needs to make lasting change in the area of race relations, bias (both conscious and unconscious), and overt discrimination.

To understand the approach that I will take in this book, the reader must know that I have written three books on diversity in the Air Force, primarily focused on pilots: “The Air Force’s Black Ceiling,” “The Air Force’s Black Pilot Training Experience,” and “The Air Force’s Black Pilot State of the Union.” I have written hundreds and hundreds of pages detailing the Air Force’s diversity efforts. I have captured both its successes and failures.

The Air Force’s RDR proudly states that the results of 23 previous diversity studies had been reviewed, which sounds impressive until you read the report a couple of times. When I read the RDR the second time, and certainly the third time, I realized that this report had merely found its place atop a stack of diversity reports that will have little to no impact on pilot diversity.

In “Black Pilot,” I wrote a chapter entitled “No More Studies.” In that chapter, I was adamant that the Air Force didn’t need any more studies that gave basically the same recommendations I’d seen since I worked on the Secretary of Defense’s Diversity Task Force in 2003. Here’s an excerpt from that chapter:

“I have seen many ‘studies’ on how to increase the number of African American pilots. I don’t even read them anymore. It seems that they are all filled with similar recommendations that go nowhere. It has come to the point where it seems that every few years, the Air Force spends millions of dollars on a study. Inevitably the study that says that there aren’t enough college-educated minorities in the pipeline to effect a significant change in its officer—or certainly rated officer—diversity landscape.

The completed studies have now begun to feel like appeasement. Specifically, a gesture offered to appease those clamoring for greater diversity in the Air Force officer/rated officer ranks. What if the Air Force had given those millions of dollars to aviation camps to cultivate an early interest in flying amongst minority youth? Or dedicated them to restoring Type II ROTC scholarships at Historically Black Colleges (HBCUs) and minority institutions?

In my role as Deputy Director of the Defense Business Board, I helped to complete a diversity study for the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF). I will refer to the research that I completed for that study throughout this book. When the SECDEF’s diversity study was complete in 2003, I wrote to former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Colin Powell. I wanted his feedback on the diversity recommendations which had been subtracted from the final Defense Business Board report. He read them and wrote back. I was elated…until I read his words. He said that I hadn’t really come up with anything that hadn’t been recommended before.

At first, his response hurt my feelings because I felt that the task group and I had worked so hard to research the diversity recommendations. That’s when it hit me. The problem wasn’t with the recommendations. The problem was that there was no genuine interest in making the significant changes that would be required to implement the recommendations. Since then, I have seen many of the same recommendations in studies that came after the 2003 study and in diversity interest groups on social media.

We don’t need any more studies and repeats of past recommendations. What is needed is action on the good recommendations that have been surfacing for decades. The actions the Air Force must take are at an institutional and cultural level.”

My concerns with the Air Force’s RDR are a little more serious than with the myriad diversity reports that have gone before it. In my opinion, the RDR goes to great lengths to make the case that the myriad racial disparities found in the Air Force’s judicial, development, promotion, and other processes are not due to bias, racism, or discrimination. This is very troubling but mirrors the sentiments echoed in the majority white culture in America at the time of George Floyd.

 After the death of George Floyd, many of our national leaders went public with the sentiment that systemic racism does not exist in America’s system of justice and that what happened to Floyd was the work of “a few bad apples.”

In similar fashion, the Air Force’s RDR goes into great detail in detailing the disparities that black service members and civilians experience in nearly every aspect of Air Force life but tries to paint these wide-reaching disparities as “individual” experiences. Just as many segments of America tried to make George Floyd’s death an individual experience, discounting many similar high-profile deaths/shootings that occurred in the same time frame (Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arberry, Jacob Blake, etc.)

Because of the Air Force’s RDR’s position on whether bias, racism, and discrimination exist or caused most of the disparities that were found, I have written this book the way I did. Some readers may find my approach harsh, disrespectful, or even offensive. Just as I have found offensive and egregious, the notion that widespread disparities against a particular race cannot be conclusively linked to bias, racism, or discrimination.

It is my hope that some readers at high levels within the Air Force may be so offended at what they read in this very short book that they prevent reports like this from ever being approved ever again.