It’s no secret that the U.S. military has been struggling to meet its recruitment goals during the Biden years. Last year, for example, the Army fell roughly 10,000 short of its recruitment target. Furthermore, all military branches have seen their total number of personnel drop over the last three years, with the Army’s numbers down more than 8%, or some 40,000 soldiers.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon continues to deny that the pushing of woke DEI policies has anything to do with the drop in numbers. Instead, the Pentagon has focused on other factors, such as the growing child obesity rate across the country, which has resulted in a smaller number of young people fit enough to serve.

While there is no question that increasing obesity rates have been a contributing factor, there seems to be a much clearer and more glaring problem associated with the Biden administration’s focus on DEI.

The number of white recruits the Army has pulled in has decreased steadily and significantly. Back in 2018, roughly 44,000 new recruits were white. However, the overall number of white recruits has been steadily dropping in each of five consecutive years. As of 2023, the total number of white recruits had fallen to just over 25,000. Call it blowback.

Meanwhile, the total number of both black and Hispanic recruits has remained relatively flat. Yet the overall percentage of black recruits has increased from 20% in 2018 to 24% by 2023, and Hispanic recruits have risen from 17% to 24%. But these percentage increases are due almost entirely to the decrease in white recruits.

The cause is both apparent and understandable: the woke focus on an ethnically and racially diverse military rather than on a colorblind military.

The question the Pentagon should be considering is that which makes for the best fighting men and women, not the color of their skin. The uniform and common cause of any military organization should always be, first and foremost, the defense of the homeland. The U.S. military’s mission should thus be focused on being the best and most lethal fighting force on the planet.

The warrior’s primary commitment is to serve his nation, which requires the willingness to fight and die. A commitment to diversity for diversity’s sake distracts and is counterintuitive from this mission, as it elevates an individual’s differences as ultimate rather than uniformity in cause and purpose.

To make matters worse, the woke commitment to DEI is, at its core, antithetical to the American founding ideal of all men being created equal. Individuals are to be judged not by their social, racial, or ethnic group but on their individual merits.

The promotion of such inherently racist concepts as “white privilege” and “microaggressions” likely has a lot to do with why fewer young white folks are signing up to serve. Think about it: Who would want to serve and possibly die for a country that tells white people they are its primary problem?

When we teach our children that America is inherently racist, sexist, bigoted, and greedy, this is the bitter harvest we reap. Is it any wonder that recruiting numbers have been steadily falling?

Pride in our good nation and a commitment to colorblindness are what is needed to reverse the downward trend.