Washington, D.C.— Today, Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland (WA-10) joined a House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Military Personnel Subcommittee hearing where she confronted attempts by several MAGA members of the House GOP conference to diminish the importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies to recruiting and retention in the Armed Forces. She also called out Republican Leadership’s attempt to play politics with the military and advance their personal “anti-wokeness” agenda and stoke culture wars. Rep. Strickland’s remarks are below, and a video of the full subcommittee hearing is available here.
Strickland: When we talk about recruiting and retention, we know that when the economy is strong, when unemployment is down, when wages are up, in addition to the challenges that we face in the military–housing, childcare, pay, spousal employment–that all has an impact on whether or not serving the military is attractive. And it’s a little troubling to me that instead of addressing this national security issue, that we have some folks on this panel who are obsessed with tweets, which by the way, if you’re going to be obsessed with tweets that say things that are inappropriate, a lot of people that we serve with will be disqualified from public service. But I digress.
My first question is for Miss Schaefer. I understand that the training pipeline to become part of infantry includes about two hours of equal opportunity training between basic and one station unit training. Does that sound accurate?
Agnes Schaefer, Assistant Secretary for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, Department of the Army: It does.
Strickland: And I also understand that over that period of time, the same trainee will get over 250 hours of rifle marksmanship training. Is that more or less correct?
Schaefer: Correct.
Strickland: So Miss Schaefer, do you think that this disparity – two hours of DEI training versus 250 hours of rifle training – represents something that is going to contribute to the decline of the effectiveness of the army?
Schaefer: No, and I would clarify that the two hours of DEI training is actually one hour depending on which part of basic training you go through that is actually statutorily mandated MEO and EEO training.
Strickland: Great, thank you. Evolving national demographics mean that almost half of the 70 million or so Generation Z Americans are racial minorities. And almost a third are immigrants or children of immigrants. RAND studied this on behalf of the army and their research shows that individual recruiter characteristics such as gender and race are directly related to recruiter productivity. In other words, young Americans are more likely to join the military if their recruiters look like them.
Mr. Cisneros, can you please describe how changing demographics inform the department’s long-term approach to talent recruitment and retention?
Gilbert Cisneros Jr., Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Department of Defense: As you stated, right, the demographics of the nation are changing. Eventually, one day, we’re going to be a minority-majority nation. Not only [is] the minority population increasing, but it’s also spreading out through different parts of the country as well. Being Hispanic – Hispanics are typically part of the Southwest – but now they’ve kind of moved into other areas of the country down in the South and the Northeast as well. But looking at this, or what we want to do is really kind of ensure as you said, right, we want to be ensured that we can show that individuals, you know, when somebody is being recruited that they’re looking, they can see people that look like them, and they can imagine that hey, I can do this as well one day. And so it is important there to make sure that individuals are able to see themselves in this career field. I think the personal touch is very important. And when I first took over this job, I met with the commanding officer recruit command in the army. You know, we have to be sure that we set for people I’ve tested for success and he told me a story about how they had an Asian service member who was from Southern California, but they put him to recruit in the Bronx in New York. So they quickly realized their mistake and they moved him back to the community where he was from so he could appeal to those individuals. Now, that doesn’t mean our recruiters can only recruit people that look like them. But, you know, I think when we go after certain communities, it is important that they’re able to see someone like themselves, that they can picture that in the future.
Strickland: Great. Thank you and I just want to share something about diversity training in 2017 the DOD did an equal opportunity survey. And here’s what we discovered. Diversity training is effective and popular. 82% of service members reported diversity is important to building a high-quality workforce, 83% supported their services’ diversity efforts and 75% reported that diversity initiatives positively affected their service. 92% said that training was effective in reducing or preventing harassment and discrimination. So the people who are serving, the vast majority of them say that DEI efforts are in fact, effective, I yield back.
U.S. Representative Marilyn Strickland serves on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. She is the Congressional Black Caucus whip, a member of the New Democrat Coalition, one of the first Korean-American women elected to Congress, and the first African-American elected to represent the Pacific Northwest at the federal level.
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