Some years back, my son, then an Air Force Colonel, and I had a long discussion about the idea of including more minority officers at the upper echelons of the military.
Evidently, research at the time was in progress to find a better way of populating the armed forces with more command officers from underrepresented racial, ethnic and gender groups.
The discussion revolved around the value of an intentional effort to find merit in such a small pool of potential candidates for leadership of this kind. The talk took me back to the books I read and the movies I saw about the making of military officers in peace and war time.
It seems to me, that much of the call to arms as a profession involves a family tradition that encourages leadership as a value beginning at an early age. Absent that foundation, achieving executive level work becomes an exception rather than a natural outcome of this orientation.
President Kennedy in Executive Order 10925 gave rise to Affirmative Action, a term coined in that order on March 6, 1961. Affirmative Action opened the door of equality to the aspirations of those from mainly racial and ethnic minority groups long marginalized by a system of preferential treatment against them in the socio-economic life of the country.
The battles fought under that mandate were designed to achieve a measure of equal opportunity to excel in the workplace, education, business development and in the military among others. In time however, the term seemed to take a turn away from the notion of equality of opportunity to achieve to more of an expectation in the form of goals, quotas and percentages.
The term also expanded to include women, LGBT and the disability communities that sought a place in the evolving definition of that space. Out of that reorientation away from equality of opportunity came something called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).
Diversity expands the identity concept to include gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, age, culture, class, religion and opinion. Equity goes beyond “equality of opportunity” to results orientated allocation of resources for the benefit of these groups.
Inclusion refers to corporate training that forms an important part of the drive toward workplace inclusiveness.
DEI reached its high point in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. But, even before that, major efforts led by states have sought to denigrate DEI as was the case with Affirmative Action.
One of the major pillars missing from the discussion of Affirmative Action or DEI matters is the responsibility of families to prepare their children to take advantage of opportunities for success in America. Effective parental involvement combined with informed expectations and active support of the children and their activities in the early years is key to their preparation for leadership.
Generally, a successful entrepreneur, corporate executive, higher education intellectual or high ranking military officer does not come to that success without a rich foundation of development beginning in the early years and a history of hard work. To insist on the benefits of position and responsibility without that foundation is a recipe for disaster for the individual and more importantly, for the country.
The practice of politics in this area can only get us to open the door of opportunity. Beyond that is the real test of sustaining a community based focus for the success of the next generation.
There are no shortcuts to the achievement of success. The preparation for high rank and leadership begins at home, including a school activity schedule.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of LaVozColorado. Comments and responses may be directed to News@lavozcolorado.com.
