CNO: Future Navy needs more minority admirals

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CNO: Future Navy needs more minority admirals
By Philip Ewing - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Sep 23, 2008 6:47:30 EDT

The Navy’s top admiral has set “benchmarks” for the percentage of nonwhite admirals he’d like to see in the service within 30 years, according to a set of internal Navy messages that appeared Thursday on the Internet. The messages direct subordinates to use the guidelines in considering which officers to recommend for promotion.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead has set goals for an admiralty in 2037 that is 36 percent nonwhite — specifically, 10 percent black, 13 percent Asian or Pacific Islander and 13 percent Hispanic, according to an e-mail to admirals dated Feb. 27. The message was signed by Vice Adm. John Harvey, who was then chief of naval personnel. Harvey has since become director of the Navy Staff.

Capt. Jack Hanzlik, spokesman for Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. Mark Ferguson, said the benchmarks were unofficial and emphasized they are not quotas. They reflect projected trends for those groups in the U.S. population, Hanzlik said, with the idea that the makeup of the Navy’s officer corps should mirror American society.

Commanders should keep those percentages in mind as their nonwhite subordinates make career decisions, Harvey wrote, in keeping with the Navy’s larger goals of increasing diversity in the mostly white officer corps. The message tells admirals that they should know their nonwhite commanders and captains by name; asks what the recipients are doing to help the nonwhite O-5s and O-6s get promoted; and what their commands are doing overall to help promote the nonwhite officers.

A conservative Navy blogger, who posts under the name “cdr salamander,” obtained Harvey’s e-mail and posted it Thursday. Also posted was an e-mail from the office of Navy Installations Command, directing captains to pass up the names of O-5s and O-6s in a “must promote” or “early promote” status and note which ones were “diverse.”


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/09/navy_diversity_092208/$2e