The U.S. Army on the Civil Rights Frontier since World War II

Although the U.S. Army regularly surveys its personnel, none of the surveys has been comparable in scale to The American Soldier: Adjustment during Army Life, conducted in the 1940s and encompassing the views and opinions of more than half a million military personnel. No comprehensive overview exists of how the Army’s attitudes toward its ethnic and racial composition have developed or of the subsequent organizational transformations. How does the Army react to demographic changes and to evolving attitudes toward inclusion in American society? How can it continue to serve as an effective institution while addressing new forms of diversity and integration? Jason Dempsey and Isaiah Wilson of the 10th Mountain Division, U.S. Army, and the Department of Social Sciences, U.S. Military Academy at West Point, will conduct an inventory of literature and data—available in military databases—on how the Army as an institution has approached diversity. Their research will focus on the motivations and consequences of institutional change, as well as the methods and measures used to address diversity. 

Dempsey and Wilson will detail which surveys exist and are publicly available, as well as the data in the surveys and how they can be accessed. This will include surveys focusing on diversity, such as those conducted in compliance with Equal Opportunity directives, and more general surveys containing information on perceptions of diversity and discrimination, morale and unit effectiveness, (the Sample Survey of Military Personnel, for example), and surveys of recruiting-age youth to assess propensity for military service. The investigators will use databases available at five U.S. Army Centers of Excellence and will have access to additional information sources, such as the Army’s Diversity Office, Demographic Office, and Research Office. Dempsey and Wilson will then create a reference database for classifying and analyzing the collected data and materials through clustering and taxonomy, identifying gaps in information, major themes, and trends. They will present their results in a report on the gaps, an annotated bibliography of existing literature and databases, and a survey article summarizing major issues and debates that have defined research on this topic. How the Army has been either proactive or reactive in facing challenges related to racial and ethnic diversity will be of particular interest.