To: Les H who wrote (48690 ) 11/3/2025 1:53:57 PM From: Les H Read Replies (1) | Respond to The military’s diversity rises out of recruitment targets, not any ‘woke’ goals addressed hundreds of military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia in late September 2025.costly and unusual gathering , to which the assembled military leaders had been summoned from across the globe.a loyalty oath or mass firing , Hegseth and Trump railed against what they see as the military’s primary enemy: diversity.the woke department ” infected by “toxic political garbage” and the “ insane fallacy that ‘our diversity is our strength .’”not be politically correct .” Hegseth similarly called for a shift in military thinking about diversity saying, “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. … As I’ve said before and will say again, we are done with that shit.”years studying the U.S. military and writing a book on diversity and military recruiting , the speeches made clear to me that Hegseth and Trump fundamentally misunderstand military diversity. Both men see it as a symptom of “woke” culture rather than as a long-standing practice driven by the very nature and history of the all-volunteer force .established an all-volunteer force in 1973 .demographic makeup of the military quickly changed as more Black Americans and women chose to join the military. In a 2007 study of representation in the military , scholars found that Black Americans had been overrepresented in the military for much of the span of the all-volunteer force. And the percentage of Latino service members more than doubled from the late 1980s to the 2000s.25% of new enlistees in 2022 .women’s military participation . Women made up 3% of military personnel in 1973 and 17% in 2022 .would not have been able to meet personnel needs and recruitment goals without the disproportionate representation of women, Black Americans, and Latino service members during this post-draft period.Hegseth and Trump claim have undermined the institution .enlist between 128,000 and 190,000 new service members annually since the 1990s, even though some armed forces, especially the Army, have struggled to meet their recruiting goals in the past few years .The military’s diversity rises out of recruitment targets, not any ‘woke’ goals
