Marine Corps sees a rise in black recruits

Marine Corps sees a rise in black recruits
By Tom Philpott, Special to Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, October 27, 2007

The proportion of black Marine Corps recruits jumped by 40 percent over the last 12 months, halting a seven-year slide that has worried service leaders.

In fiscal 2007, which ended Sept. 30, blacks were 10.9 percent of Marine recruits, up from 7.8 percent in 2006, the smallest proportion of black recruits for the Corps since the all-volunteer force began 33 years ago.

The increase is timely, given a Marine Corps plan to expand its active force by 27,000 over the next five years in response to protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other worldwide commitments.

All active services met numerical recruiting goals for fiscal 2007.

Only the Army missed a key quality benchmark.

Twenty-one percent of its recruits in fiscal 2007 did not graduate from high school.


Rest of article at: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=49811