Air Force Diversity

From the desk of Deborah Lee James, the 2015 Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Initiatives:

Promotion Board Memorandum of Instruction (MOI):  Through a MOI, the Secretary of the Air Force provides specific instructions to board members for every officer promotion and federal recognition board to ensure only the best qualified officers are selected for promotion or recognition.  In addition to seeking officer demonstrating commitment to the welfare of our Airmen and to our core values of Integrity, Service, and Excellence, board members are instructed to find officers who have demonstrated that they will nurture and lead in a diverse and inclusive Air Force culture.

I’m skeptical that Ms. James really believes her service lacks leadership.  I suspect that she is looking for an end run around the legal precedents from the 1990s that limited racial quotas in promotion boards.  I suspect that participation in various Diversity Days will be taken as evidence for the ability to “nurture and lead in a diverse and inclusive culture”.  Since these ceremonies are radioactive to healthy white men by design, they become a screening tool for minorities and self-hating liberals.

Increased Female Officer Applicant Pool:  Despite a rich pool of talent across our Nation, our female officer applicants typically comprise only 25 percent of our applicant pool.  Therefore, we have set an applicant pool goal of 30 percent for our officer accession sources.  This goal will encourage our accession sources to more aggressively compete for our Nation’s top female talent and encourage the next generation of innovative leaders to apply for our officer corps.  The female officer population was selected as a starting point, as it is a smaller group than the enlisted force on which to focus efforts.

This is pushing responsibility for the quota game downward.  I’m not sure what “aggressively compete” means in this context, but I’m sure that if it goes legally sideways, Ms. James will insist that she never TOLD her recruiters to discriminate against white men.

Post-Pregnancy Deployment Deferment:  some of our most talented Airmen are choosing to leave the Air Force because they are struggling to balance deployments and family issues, especially soon after childbirth.  Since our families are a source of strength and resilience for our Airmen, we are looking to increase our current six month Post-Pregnancy Deployment Deferment to one year.  According to analysis at the aggregate level, the overall impact on manning and deployment levels will be negligible.

“Overall”, perhaps.  But the impact won’t be “negligible” on the men who now have to spend 15% – 20% more of their careers deployed than they did before to take up the slack.