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11/09/2005:

"Racial Divide Evident in Military"

Last year, as U.S. casualties mounted in Iraq, only three residents in two neighborhoods of Manhattan's upper East Side - the city's richest area - joined the Army, Air Force or Navy.

Just a few blocks farther north, in a swath of East Harlem, 45 people enlisted.

At the same time, an astounding 113 joined in the Morrisania and Highbridge sections of the South Bronx.

Meanwhile, in two zip codes of Brooklyn's poverty-stricken East New York, 116 men and women joined the military.

And in the immigrant neighborhoods of Elmhurst and Corona in Queens, 73 signed up.

That's all according to the Pentagon's own personnel records, which were obtained under a Freedom of Information request and released for the first time last week by the nonprofit National Priorities Project.

The records track military recruitment by state, county, zip code and racial and ethnic group - even by high school. The Marines weren't included because they did not provide sufficient data to track recruits' place of residence.

The national figures show what you might expect: Youth from low-income areas are far more likely to end up in the military.

This is the most convincing proof yet that as the war drags on - and without a compulsory draft - our battle-weary military has become a ghastly dividing line between rich and poor and black, Latino and white.
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