{"id":56634,"date":"2014-08-21T20:30:06","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T04:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=56634"},"modified":"2014-08-21T20:30:06","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T04:30:06","slug":"special-forces-lack-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=56634","title":{"rendered":"Special Forces Lack Diversity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.ourmidland.com\/import\/special-forces-lack-diversity\/article_3baec562-c37c-55ac-8d22-ae87a275d838.html\">Ron Kampeas reports<\/a>: That applies especially to swimming, where some blacks fare poorly. SEALs candidates must swim 500 yards in 12 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t want to be next to a guy who&#8217;s `not sure&#8217; he knows how to swim across a flowing jungle river,&#8221; said retired Army Maj. Andy Messing, who is white.<\/p>\n<p>Messing says any difference _ being black, Hispanic, Jewish or even overtly religious _ exacerbates existing tensions in the grinding training regimen for special forces.<\/p>\n<p>Bill Leftwich, who was the top Defense Department diversity official in the Clinton administration, said a military career is tough enough by itself and some blacks don&#8217;t want to take on the added burden of dealing with racial attitudes in the special forces.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Folks ask, `What degree of difficulty do I want to add to my career, do I really want more than there already is now?'&#8221; said Leftwich, who is black.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ron Kampeas reports: That applies especially to swimming, where some blacks fare poorly. SEALs candidates must swim 500 yards in 12 minutes. &#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t want to be next to a guy who&#8217;s `not sure&#8217; he knows how to swim across &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=56634\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29632,36,29594],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-army-2","category-race","category-whites"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56635,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56634\/revisions\/56635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}