How do Generals get to be Generals?

Actually it isn't, and was never intended to be a quota system. Get a copy of Hugh Davis Graham's The Civil Rights Era; it's a very comprehensive and detailed timeline of who did what and when, as well as the policies themselves. Affirmative Action was a way of making merit the primary consideration, and eliminating race as a determining factor; part of that was attempting to raise education levels and pay to be equivalent and thus qualifications, not social promotion and quotas, which are just the opposite and were implemented by Nixon. the biggest battles were between liberals like Moynihan and Humphrey going against left wingers and the Black Caucus, who wanted government contracts parceled out according to race, and awarding no bid contracts to black contractors and the like. Moynihan's liberals won, only to see Humphrey lose the election and Nixon trying to steal black and minority votes back to the Republican Party by pandering to the Black Caucus. The 'War On Drugs' was also a Black Caucus lobbying effort Nixon went for. Nowadays nobody will talk about where the War On Drugs' came from, or the quota system.

 

AA is a positive discrimination system. As such, it applies a quota system.

The idea that merit should be the primary consideration is embodied in the Equal Opportunity Act.

 

No, it's just the opposite, its intent was to eliminate racial discrimination, not increase favoritism according to race, sex, and ethnicity. It was deliberately junked in favor of quotas, which have nothing to do with Affirmative Action; just because they avoided calling it a quota system and keep calling it AA doesn't make it the same thing, any more than the Soviet Union's Constitution reading almost exactly like the U.S.'s means they were practicing liberalism like the U.S. did, or the 12 or so 'Fair Tax' bills that have been proposed actually really are fair tax bills.

 

The method used to eliminate racial discrimination by AA is in fact a quota system. If you are referring to some other set of programs, perhaps you could provide a link that supports your claim. This would ensure we are talking about the same thing. My definition comes from http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/affirmative+action

 

I'm referring to the AA legislation passed in the 1960's. The quota system was implemented by Nixon, in direct opposition to AA. You can call the quota system Electric Pizza Alarm Clock or whatever you personally feel like calling it, quota systems are not even remotely affirmative action, just the opposite. As for 'links', I don't do 'links', I named a very detailed and comprehensive book and its author; its up to you whether you read it or not.

 

It's largely based on merits and education, while sometimes family connections are also taken into consideration. There are currently a few black or female four-star generals but 90% of them are white males.

 

Well, that's the demographic that values education and the Protestant work ethic the highest, with the Asian and Indian immigrants closing that gap rapidly, so yes, they're going to be heading the list on merit based positions and will for a few more years in the military, as Indians and Asians focus on making money in the tech and business sectors and don't flock to the Military the way whites do; their families have no traditions of service to the country, having almost no generations who served in the past and don't pass patriotism and service on to their children for generations, and it's not likely they ever will. Whites are over-represented in combat units for that reason; for other ethnic groups it's just a jobs and education money program, not a career.

As for criticisms of the 'good old boy' network, it worked just fine in the run up to WW II, with 'good old boys' like Patton taking advantage of it to get their commands, and it also made it possible for Ike to leap frog through the ranks to Supreme Allied Commander based on those 'good old boys' knowing about him and his talents instead of his being stuck in the 'system', which saved a lot of time during a crisis, which certainly worked out very well at a critical juncture.

Yes, it has its faults, but it also makes corrections and saves time far more often. Even the 'good old boys' aren't going to suffer an incompetent during wartime. It didn't work quite as well where our foreign service was concerned, but it wasn't a total failure there, either, considering we had no real state dept. and no real foreign intelligence network to speak of until WW II, and those glaring deficiencies corrected. Small clubs know each others' strengths and weaknesses, which is better than knowing nothing at all about some political appointee nobody ever heard of.

It doesn't need to be 'fair', it needs to work. Quota systems are guaranteed to fail, and fail critically.

 

There has never been a bad Second Lieutenant ever in the history of the American military. That is where the real leadership is.

Seriously.


Maybe.


Possibly.

 

I talked to an African-American chicken colonel about this one time. He said he didn't really feel like it was racism so much as by the time you get to that point, most people just want to keep their heads down as you had to really want and work at becoming a General and a lot of people have just settled and don't want the hassle of the job or to expend the energy getting it. He said he felt racism more when he was further down the ladder but not really at the level he was at then.