Are the Biden administration’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies truly good for the military? House Republicans seem to think otherwise.
From Breitbart. Biden Pentagon officials in charge of military personnel policy defended pushing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the United States military during a House hearing on Thursday, arguing that it would make the military stronger, not more divided. However, they were short on data to back up their arguments.
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Gil Cisneros, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, argued, “Diversity, equity and inclusion are essential to unit cohesion and trust.”
The Army’s Assistant Secretary for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Agnes Schaefer argued, “A diverse and talented force of trained and cohesive teams is the most important indicator of our readiness.”
The Navy’s Assistant Secretary for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Franklin Parker argued that diversity would increase “our military readiness and maritime dominance by accessing the full range of our nation’s talent.” …
Yet, as House Armed Services Subcommittee for Military Personnel Chairman Jim Banks (R-IN) noted, the officials did not provide any data to back up their statements. Banks, who is a Navy reservist, stated at the end of the hearing:
The [Department of Defense] expended 5,359,311 man-hours for [Defense Secretary Lloyd] Austin’s extremism stand-down and an additional 529,711 man hours for DEI-specific training … None of you today have defended with any empirical evidence, any studies at all that defends a single man hour [or] over 6 million man hours of DEI training in the United States military. …
And while each Biden official said emphatically that DEI was a “positive” thing for military recruitment, there was a moment of awkward silence when Rep. Jack Bergman asked why the military was struggling with recruitment. …
House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) slammed the DOD for responding only three hours before the hearing to her query about the former DEI chief for the DOD schools, Kelisa Wing, whom the DOD investigated and reassigned to another position after she was caught denigrating white people in several tweets.
Cisneros apologized to Stefanik for the overdue response but still would not commit to providing her information about what the DOD found in its investigation. …
Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), another veteran on the committee, argued the military was already diverse, and DEI training only divided troops:
I’m a very proud United States Army combat veteran, spent of a lot of my time overseas — happily spent a lot of that in Fort Bragg in the 82nd Airborne Division where I served with a Cambodian gentleman who was born in Cambodia and lived in Los Angeles. I served with a black gentleman who was born in Brooklyn. I served with a Caucasian gentleman who was born in Lombard, Illinois.
There was quite a bit of diversity. We came from different walks of life. But what brought us together was not DEI and critical race theory-based training. It was cohesive training and understanding what it was to have increased lethality and bring us together knowing that we would be there to fight and protect one another.
“Diversity in our military is a good thing, and we can all agreed to that,” he concluded. “Allocating additional training time and starting to identify and ensure that we drive a wedge as opposed to cohesiveness is not a good thing.”
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(Excerpt from Breitbart. Photo Credit: Canva)