#Deja vu all over again full#

But DOD leadership need not wait for all the data to come in – it must to continue on listening tours of not only enlisted personnel and officers, but, as the task force did in 1972, speaking with chaplains, medical officers, and visiting small business owners and other community members to get a full picture of military life for minorities on and off-base.

#Deja vu all over again how to#

This past June, nearly 50 years later, the House Armed Services (HASC) Military Personnel Subcommittee held a hearing entitled, “Racial Disparities in the Military Justice System: How to Fix the Culture.” One of the principal takeaways from the hearing was that a lack of reliable, consistent data stood in the way of pinpointing the root causes of these disparities. Robinson, one of the authors of this piece, was an Air Force JAG officer assigned to the task force.)

The 1972 DOD Task Force on the Administration of Military Justice in the Armed Forces was able to reach these conclusions despite being hampered by a lack of statistical information regarding race and ethnicity as kept by the services. The task force found that the key factors driving the disparities included inadequate educational and advancement opportunities and the resultant lack of diversity in the leadership corps. In 1972, a task force commissioned by President Richard Nixon’s defense secretary sought to determine the nature and extent of racial disparities in the military justice system. We know we’re not immune to what is happening in broader society, that society that we serve.” Despite his characterization of this moment in American race relations as a “wake-up call,” the United States armed forces have been mired in a maddening loop of racial disparity with respect to its own military justice system for over half a century. Defense Secretary Mark Esper recently came to the realization that, “the murder of George Floyd was a wake-up call ….