AIR FORCE ACADEMY LOOKING FOR THE RIGHT MINORITY STUFF

My appointment with Colonel William Carpenter, Director of Admissions, at the US Air Force Academy, just happened to fall on 8 August 2007. The Air Force Academy is of course a military base but it is more importantly a college campus.  Most college campuses are extremely quiet the first part of August, but not the Academy.

It was the Cadet Acceptance Day and there were parents and family all over the main campus. For civilian college freshmen you just show up at the end of August, to start your post secondary adventure. For a new cadet your experience in higher learning started months before to include basic cadet training. Think military boot-camp for freshman. Imagine if all college freshmen had to attend boot camp prior to their first day of regular classes. All this pre-classroom training culminates with a parade where the new 4th class cadets are accepted into the student body of the Academy and the proud families are there to watch. The families are there not only because they love their child but because of all the years of work that went into getting their son or daughter into the Academy. I was looking for information on minorities attending the Academy and becoming Air Force officers on the graduating end of a very challenging four year process. 

In my past I had taught Air Force Junior ROTC at a 95% black high school in Mississippi and have a keen interested in minorities getting into and successfully completing their education at the Air Force Academy. The Air Force has the lowest rate of blacks in their branch of the military with the Army having the highest. I had volunteered as an Air Force retiree, to work at a recruiting office in Mississippi. All of the branches of the military had offices in the same strip mall so I got to know the other service’s recruiters. I actually heard on a number of occasions Army recruiters telling young black men that the Air Force was a more elitist branch of service and they as blacks would be happier in the Army. There is probably a little bit of truth to this but it is not race that is the issue, it is qualifying test scores that is the true difference. The test that everyone takes to join the military has a minimum that a potential enlistee must score.  The Air Force requires your lowest score to be 25% higher than the lowest you can score for the Army, Navy and Marines. It truly is tougher to enlist into the Air Force.  I was unable to discern if the academies for the other military branch’s requirements are dramatically different than the Air Force. 

One issue that is different for an Air Force cadet is that 55% of each class has to be able to pass a class “A” flight physical. After all, pilots are what the Air Force is in the business to produce. You can be a non-flying officer in any branch of the service and not be able to pass a rigid flight physical. The Air Force has the same issues that college educated professional black business women seem to be having. That is, finding professionally prepared or qualified to become professionally prepared black men, to meet the challenges of a long term commitment. Wait a minute that sounds racist. No it is statistics. Colleges produce more black female graduates then they do men. So if you are a black female college graduate your pool of future life partners who have your educational background is shrinking.

The good news for the Air Force is that the class of 2011 has the highest average of black cadets ever. Once you get future black cadets qualified they graduate from the Academy basically at the same rate as the other cadets. The exception being, Asian American cadets who blow all the other race categories to include whites out of the water on test scores and graduation rates. You only have to be smart to get into the top civilian schools in this country. If you are missing body parts or have some ongoing illness you can still go to Harvard or Yale. For the military you have to be extremely smart and exceptionally physically qualified.  That’s why civilian freshmen don’t go to boot-camp before classes start. Minority Air Force cadets go on to be outstanding officers, not outstanding minority officers. The class of 2011 will improve this process even more.  

13 Sept 2007