Are army recruiters targeting Latino young people?

Social justice news
June 2005

Americans strongly oppose human cloning
Are army recruiters targeting Latino young people?
A nuclear power comeback?
Black Catholics fight abortion and violence against women
Is adequate housing a human right in Chicago?
Nuclear weapons targeted for the scrapheap of history
UK cloning research challenged by lawyers' group

Are army recruiters targeting Latino young people?
As the war in Iraq grows bloodier by the day and with recruitment goals regularly passing unrealized, some in Chicago worry that the U.S. Army has been even more aggressively targeting the city's low-income, African American, and Hispanic high school students in an effort to restore its ranks. Bill Lamme teaches history at Thomas Kelly High School, where more than 90 percent of students are Hispanic.

"They see our students as easy pickings because they don't have as many alternatives to choose from after high school," Lamme said. Lamme estimated that a military recruitment officer of some kind visits his school about 20 times per month, usually approaching students in uncontrolled settings such as the cafeteria or hallway.

Recruiters make military life look appealing by promoting half-truths about educational and job training perks, said Ray Parrish, a veteran and military counselor at Vietnam Veterans Against the War. "For example, they don't tell you that you can only get the educational opportunities afforded by the GI Bill if you get an honorable discharge from the military. They don't tell you that though you're getting training to be an electronic technician, you'll end up driving a truck in Iraq. And the list goes on."

Douglas Smith, a public information officer for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, denied that army Recruiters intentionally target low income or Hispanic students. "We have been an all-volunteer force since 1972, and we go to every high school and take every opportunity to recruit," he said. "But at the same time, it makes more sense that our recruiters will spend more time in high schools where they can be successful, so they might choose to go in the city rather than concentrate their efforts on the suburbs."

Demographically, most U.S. military recruits come from the lower middle class or middle class and not the poorest and richest segments of the population, Smith said, and he military tries to recruit a population that's representative of the American population.

"Because of the growing Latino population, there has been a push to recruit more Hispanics over the past 10 years, and overall this campaign has been successful," Smith admitted. Recruiters are trained for several weeks on proper recruitment technique and should not be giving out misleading information, Smith added. "They recruit others primarily by reflecting on their own experience, which could not be false."

Students should be exposed to the pros and cons of military life before they make a decision to join the military, said Chuck Hutchcraft, the Chicago area coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee. To help better educate students, his organization sponsors citywide meetings of counter-recruitment efforts and plans to have a Counter-Recruitment Institute for Youth this summer.

Students also need to be informed about other career and educational opportunities that are available to them after high school. "Companies like UPS and Fed-Ex hire high school graduates. They also offer educational opportunity benefits for its employees that are comparable or better than those offered by the GI Bill, for example. And you don't have to worry about potentially getting killed or taking another man's life on the job," Parrish said.

Many students also don't realize that the No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to give students' contact information to military recruiters. But students can waive this requirement with parental permission. Before the career fair, Lamme passed out opt-out forms and military life information packets before the career fair, where every branch of the U.S. military was represented.

"And it was great, because the students took the pamphlets and began quizzing the recruiters about them," he said. "We're getting the information out there, and it's starting to make an impact."—Kelly Nolan

Back to page top