While African Americans have fought in every American war from the Revolutionary War on, their advancement to the top ranks of the military has stalled. “Some 43 percent of the 1.3 million men and women on active duty in the United States military are people of color. But the people making crucial decisions, such as how to respond to the coronavirus crisis and how many troops to send to Afghanistan or Syria, are almost entirely white and male.”  In her New York Times article, Helen Cooper specifies the absence of multi-generational family tradition of military service and lack of mentors, the low numbers of  African American students in military academies, being  steered to logistics and transportation rather than combat arms specialties, and the rise of racism as causes of the discrepancy.  To read the complete article, click here.