Heartbreaking: Here's what a U.S. soldier said when asked to justify the war on terror

[KittyWampus]

101. You are wrong. The majority do not sign up because of romance/duty/patriotism.

It has been called a "Poverty Draft".

Lutz’s study also looks at the history of participation of the three largest racial and ethnic groups in the military — whites, blacks and Latinos — and examined ethnicity, immigrant generation and socioeconomic status in relation to military service. It concluded that significant disparities exist only by socioeconomic status, finding “the all-volunteer force continues to see overrepresentation of the working and middle classes, with fewer incentives for upper class participation.”


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In 2011, a study by the Pew Research Center found that black women are enlisting in the military at far higher rates than are white or Hispanic women, and they now represent nearly a third of all the women in the armed forces. And women are joining the military in record numbers at the same time that the military is seeing less people enlist overall.

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The study, which utilized demographic data collected by the Defense Department, found that of the 167,000 enlisted women in the military, 31 percent are black, which is twice their percentage in the civilian female population. Black men represent about 16 percent of the male enlisted population, which is proportionally equal in the civilian population.

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Asch alluded to the fact that “the military tries to attract high school graduates who are looking for job training, good benefits and help with college tuition — and that a high percentage of black women fit that bill, as a possible explanation of the discovery.

“That is the group the military targets,” Asch said.

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The military also seems to be drawing recruits who have less education, as a recent report documented the percentage of new recruits entering the Army with a high school diploma dropped to a new low.

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“Once again, we’re staring at the painful story of young people with fewer options bearing the greatest burden,” Greg Speeter, the project’s executive director, told the newspaper.




http://www.mintpressnews.com/whos-joining-the-us-military-poor-women-and-minorities-targeted/43418/