A sharp letter to the editor in this month's issue of The Atlantic catches historian David Kennedy making a common demographic error:
In the excerpts from the Aspen Ideas Festival (October Atlantic), the historian David M. Kennedy is quoted as follows: “Another asymmetry of very troubling proportions, it seems to me, is [in] the nature of today’s armed forces; 42 percent of today’s Army enlistees are ethnic or racial minorities—42 percent.”
Kennedy should be aware that the census shows that among U.S. residents under age forty, nonwhites are approximately 40 percent of the population. Since most members of the military are under forty, the “nature of today’s armed forces” does reflect the population at large, rather than a disproportionate number of “minorities.”
Mike Burns
Bakersfield, Calif.
The younger generations of Americans are increasingly diverse due to higher birthrates among some minority groups and immigration. But many people, like Kennedy, mistakenly compare minority representation to their proportion of the general population rather than the relevant age cohort. This error can have pernicious effects. In Kennedy's case, it falsely suggests minorities are overrepresented in the military. And in the case of higher education, it means that minorities are more underrepresented in elite colleges and universities than people often realize (since they tend to compare student populations to the US population as a whole, rather than 18-22 year olds).
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