Black enlistments drop as war in Iraq goes on

Source: Stars & Stripes

When Danny Edwards, 26, enlisted in the Army in April 2001, he expected to stay for a career. He changed his mind while serving in Iraq in 2003, a war fought for reasons he said he still doesn’t understand.

Edwards, who is black, has for several years advised black youth in his neighborhood in Savannah, Ga., to avoid the Army and “the hell” of Iraq.

Black youth across the country appear to be heeding similar advice from parents, teaches, ministers, coaches and other black veterans. There have been changes in the racial composition of U.S. forces, particularly among first-term enlistees of ground forces heavily involved in Iraq.

Racial data on enlistees, compiled for Military Update by the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC), show that in fiscal 2002, the year before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Army had 43,400 blacks among its first-term soldiers, or 21 percent of the total. By 2006, the number of blacks on their first hitch had fallen to 30,000, down to 14.5 percent.

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