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Navy must add minority officers, group says

NAVAL BASE CORONADO, Calif. — Bernard L. Jackson was a junior naval officer with plans for a short career when he happened on a professional conference in Memphis, Tenn., an annual meeting of the National Naval Officers Association.

It became a life-defining moment.

At that conference, Jackson met Navy and other sea service officers of different races and ethnic backgrounds. Among them were senior officers wearing eagles and stars on their collars. Jackson, a black officer, saw himself in them.

“They looked like me walking around, and they talked to me,” said Jackson, now a captain. “They talked to me, and that made a difference.”

At the time, Jackson planned to leave the Navy, which had provided him global adventures and money for college. But seeing minorities leading sailors and commanding ships convinced him to plot a new course.

“I saw this confidence. I saw how these guys that had command, that were going to command ... and I said, ‘I could do that.’”

In 28 years in the Navy, Jackson has been a skipper commanding the destroyer McFaul and commodore leading Destroyer Squadron 14. His latest mission as national president of NNOA, meeting this week in Coronado, is to propel the organization through rough waters.

The nation’s growing unease about the war in Iraq and uncertainty about deployments continue to discourage recruiting among many young people and their families, recent studies show. Enlisted recruiting remains solid — “we are well represented by America,” Jackson said — but officer recruiting has fallen short in drawing minorities. The short-term outlook isn’t good.

In welcoming remarks Tuesday to a crowd of Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard officers, Rear Adm. Len Hering, who commands Navy Region Southwest, asked each attendee to get involved with local youth organizations, such as the Urban League, and reach out to youngsters and excite them about the Navy as a future career option.

Hering told the conference that NNOA can help in those efforts to diversify its force and expand the professional development of junior leaders.

“You are very, very important to make that happen,” he added.

Rear Adm. Joseph Kilkenny, commander of Navy Recruiting Command in Millington, Tenn., had this message to the conference: “We’re all recruiters.”

“We are in a very tough market today. But [the youth] don’t always know what the options are,” Kilkenny said during a break Tuesday between panel sessions. “I think it’s very important for them to know that they have an active role” in helping recruit more minorities, he said.

Jackson said exceptional minority men and women often are looking past the military services for other career options.

“We are in a war for talent,” he said.

His own son and daughter, he noted, went on tracks into the business world, his son turning down a service academy appointment for a job with a major U.S. company. Both are advancing in jobs and moving up within corporations that invest heavily in having a diverse professional work force, Jackson said.

“There’s a lot of power in having a diverse work force,” he said. “It allows your work force to bring a piece that you don’t get from having a homogenous group.”

Jackson said outreach is one of his priorities this year, and he wants NNOA’s members to reach out to more minority youths and partner with other groups within and outside the Navy. Members of the current “millennial” generation “are patriotic. They’re different than the baby boomers and the Gen-Xers,” he said. “The millennials, they want structure and they want connections.”

Jackson said he also wants to expand officer professional development and improve opportunities for advancement and leadership roles, including command. He also wants them to mentor more junior officers. His goal: To see NNOA’s membership rolls grow by 35 percent.

And it’s not just mentoring minority officers, he added, saying, “We all have to mentor our entire force.”

Recruiting officials are looking at a public relations campaign to market the Navy’s job, career and leadership opportunities to the so-called “influencers.” Those parents, grandparents, counselors, teachers and others, Kilkenny said, “are less inclined to recommend military service today because we live in a very dangerous world today and they are afraid of the well-being of their children.”

Kilkenny said many don’t fully understand what the Navy is about. During his travels to “middle America,” he’s often mistaken for an Army general.

“I think lots of times, the Navy sometimes has an identity crisis,” he said. “We contribute in different ways to the defense or our country, and I think we need to get the word out.”