Tanya Wood lives in San Antonio, Texas, working in IT for the Defense Department. "By leveraging our diverse talents, no one is going to be left out. "Inclusion is not a zero-sum game," Baker said. Baker said the Space Force is fostering a culture where a warfighter can speak to superiors about their concerns without fear of retribution. And she pointed to several different efforts: outreach initiatives targeted to recruiting women and people of color, mentoring panels to help those servicemembers advance, and a "heavy emphasis" on training senior officers to recognize unconscious bias. As discrimination reports move up the chain of command, she believes senior officers don't have the proper incentives to act on the charges and instead seek to suppress them to avoid looking bad themselves - a pervasive problem she said requires a fundamental change to the force's command and reporting infrastructure.īaker argued the recent staffing announcements from the Air Force and Space Force go "beyond window dressing." She said starting the force from scratch so recently gives top leaders a chance to set a new standard of zero tolerance for racial and gender bias. She said problems with gender and race discrimination come down to how the military is organized. Pacheco lives in New Jersey now, but still has a 719- cell number, a reminder of time serving with Peterson Air Force Base. So, don't complain anymore, OK?'" Pacheco said. Pacheco looks at the Space Force announcements, as well as recent news of the first Black Air Force Academy superintendent and the first Black Air Force chief of staff as positive, but ultimately hollow, developments. She dismisses recent high-profile appointments of African Americans in the Air Force as a "photo opp." Yvonne Pacheco had to go to court to get her rank reinstated after a dispute over sick leave.
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Her rank was reinstated post-retirement and she is now receiving full disability payments for her PTSD. The experience led her to reach out to Protect Our Defenders for legal help. She said a senior officer told her the command was "making an example out of her as a Black woman." Pacheco identifies as Hispanic. She was the only woman of color in a command role in her battalion, but lost her rank and command when superiors opposed her taking time off for a hysterectomy surgery and inpatient PTSD therapy. Military Entrance Processing Command in Chicago. Yvonne Pacheco recently retired after a 22-year career in the Air Force, a career which culminated in a posting as a commanding officer with U.S. For example, the concept is not included in the recently-released 41-page Space Force doctrine, considered a critical founding document for the service. Regardless, Christensen said he has not yet seen any substantive action from Space Force leadership indicating diversity is a true priority. Protect our Defenders obtained that data after years of the Air Force blocking its release.
The Air Force's own data indicates the problem has been getting worse in recent times, not better. As the American Homefront Project reported, the group found Black airmen were about 70% more likely to be court-martialed or face other punishments than their white counterparts.
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Currently, the vast majority of Space Force personnel are Air Force transfers.Ī series of reports from Protect Our Defenders, a nonprofit focused on reducing gender and racial discrimination in the military, concluded that the Air Force has the worst problem with racial bias among the military branches. Marine Corps rests within the Department of the Navy. The Space Force, though an independent branch, still resides within the Department of the Air Force in the same way the U.S. Space Force into law back in December, creating the first new military branch since 1947. However, some critics worry these public steps only serve to obscure larger systemic problems the Space Force has inherited from the branch of the military it grew out of, the U.S. "We must build diversity and inclusion into our 'cultural DNA' - make it one of the bedrock strengths of our Service." "We have an opportunity to get this right from the beginning and we are committed to doing so," Raymond wrote.
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