WASHINGTON- Eight years after the U.S. Coast Guard and the NAACP signed a voluntary agreement to work together to boost the number of African-Americans at its 1,000-cadet service academy, the annual enrollment and graduation figures for Blacks remain in single digits.
Seven Blacks graduated from the academy based in New London, Conn., in the spring of 2001, the year the agreement was signed.
The same number graduated from the Class of 2006, the first class for which blacks were recruited under the agreement.
Subsequently, there were seven black graduates in 2007, five in 2008 and four in 2009.
That makes 23 graduates in four years under the agreement, including the academy’s first Black female valedictorian. In the four previous years the number was 33.
Leading lawmakers have grown increasingly upset with results even as they repeatedly are told the Guard is working hard to improve diversity in a service where only 311 of its 6,787 commissioned officers are Black, with only one Black admiral.
“The Coast Guard has just not paid attention to it. It is not antipathy or animosity toward it,” said Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation Committee. “I think we’re moving in the right direction and got the Coast Guard’s attention and we’re not going to let up.”
