What constitutes being "old school" in the military?

Hi Lawrence,
In my recollection of news stories at that time, the "quotas" you're referring to actually weren't quite as simple as it seems you're saying - they applied allegedly to women/minorities who were "otherwise equally qualified compared to their male/white counterparts", meaning that those who received priority consideration due to the court orders actually did not "lower any bars", but were given preferential consideration only if comparably as qualified as all other average applicants, and the court orders were not "across the board", but rather only if the section, division or dept. in question actually had gender/race deficits not relative to the population makeup of same area. Correct me if I'm wrong Lawrence, but in my opinion it's more informative if you include all the details. I don't claim to be an expert however - I just have a different memory of the press reports of the time. Thank you very much for your service!
Warriors Forever!
-Ed Boles

Hi Ed: Well, it's a tricky thing to follow up on really. How legitimately these court orders were enforced has always been a matter of debate. I just have personally seen (in a couple of situations) where the application was NOT based on being able to do the job, but was, in fact, just to fill a quota. The aim may be good, but big organizations just care about fulfilling quotas and goals and not the fairness of how these are reached, For instance, some military officer may feel the need to have as many people under his command buy U.S. bonds because there is some unstated ( but real) competitive / compliance question where the people serving under him will be pressured to do as he wishes or face negative consequences. People who are hiring minorities will be just try to fill the quotas so they can day they have fulfilled the court ordered stats. Also, in civilian areas, I have seen totally unqualified quota people who behave terribly because they know they aren't going to be fired even if their performance is inadequate. In other cases, there is a obdurate resistance to any change in the status quo and those with that attitude will find any reason to not accept people who have been hired because of the court order. In the FDNY, for instance, this has led to cases of gross harassment or alleged harassment of people hired under quotas. The question is, do these new hires really merit being hired? There has been an enormous amount of rancor about this, with Donald Trump being the main beneficiary because of so much discontent about the issue. That's a pretty blunt statement, but that's how it looks to me.

Hi Lawrence, I agree it's a tricky subject that's not easy to track. I can see how if you have direct experience with areas where the intended effect of such court orders failed how you would be skeptical, and big organizations horning in on everything definitely doesn't help - solutions need to be pragmatic, and address the root causes, not just stop-gap solutions that weren't developed locally. As far as for this administration...I wouldn't touch any analysis of our present national division politics with a ten-foot pole, other than to say I pray we get back to a day where we can disagree and not have to be enemies because of it.
Warriors Forever!
-Ed Boles