Minorities in U.S. Population and Enlisted in Military

I'd like to see military enrollment by education levels (high school, college, etc.) vs. education levels for the general population.

After Kerry's comments over the summer, many people asserted that members of the military are well educated. I'd like to see if the facts support that.

... also a definition of "well educated". Are we talking completed High School or College Grad? How about just IQ level. Also, the military does tech people and train them, but usually for only one specific thing. Such as, mechanical training might just be working on Humvees. It might not be a Mechanical Engineer type training. It would be interesting to see how someone's reasoning and IQ skills are before and after going to war. Do more educated soldiers come back smarter, less smart or the same and vice versa for lower IQ soldiers? This is of course not taking into consideration mental trauma due to war.

Look no further than the above URL.

"...recruits in 2004 and 2005 came primarily from middle-class areas. Poor areas are proportionally underrepre­sented in the wartime years (2003–2005)."

Don't believe the hype...

http://www.heritage.org/Res...

My pre and post military ACT scores:

pre-military(age 17)
Eng-19 Math-25 Reading-24 Sci-23 Comp-23

post-military(age 23)*
Eng-25 Math-25 Reading-29 Sci-24 Comp-26

I do believe the military forced me to improve my reading and writing skills. Also, I had a lot of time to read, and you must read the manual to succeed in the military. I completed one year of college prior to my enlist with an approx. GPA of 2.5.

*take during last month of 4 year enlistment

My pre and post military ACT scores:

pre-military(age 17)
Eng-19 Math-25 Reading-24 Sci-23 Comp-23

post-military(age 23)*
Eng-25 Math-25 Reading-29 Sci-24 Comp-26

I do believe the military forced me to improve my reading and writing skills. Also, I had a lot of time to read, and you must read the manual to succeed in the military. I completed one year of college prior to my enlist with an approx. GPA of 2.5.

*take during last month of 4 year enlistment

We are consistently bombarded with comments from persons such as Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY) that the military is disproportionately represented by minorities which the data would seem to suggest. Rep. Rangel continues to tout this as his justification for introducing legislation to reinstate the draft "to make it clear that if there were a war, there would be more equitable representation of people making sacrifices."

While I admire the Representative for his desire to make the military more equally represented from an economic and racial perspective, there is an interesting data point that is missing, the breakdown in percentage of minority vs. white KIA in Iraq. The most recent Iraq Index report from The Brooking Institute indicates that the current percentage of white soldiers killed is 75.6% leaving 24.4% of various minorities. So for such a disproportionate number of minorities in the military, a larger percentage of those killed have been white.

I want to see equal represention on the whites part in the military if african americans have fulfilled the amount needed for the draft. Than Its time for the whites to do the same. Whites have always made the rules now show no fear, stand up and take your place.