Laith Shannon said he was used to being among the few non-white officers during his military career, thinking that “at the end of the day, we were all Marines and we all wore the same uniform.”
Still, it was a “phenomenal experience,” he said, to serve three years as a company commander at the Naval Academy.
“I got to see myself represented by the senior officers, because Annapolis has a diverse officer corps, and be an example to the midshipmen,” said Shannon, 33, who is biracial. “It was very encouraging to see the fabric of America represented in a service academy.”
How to maintain and grow that diversity is at issue in a trial that is entering its second week in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.
The Naval Academy has been sued by an anti-affirmative action group, Students for Fair Admissions, over its use of race and ethnicity as a factor in admissions. The same group successfully sued Harvard and the University of North Carolina, leading to the Supreme Court striking down those schools’ race-conscious admissions policies.
But the landmark ruling left open whether the nation’s service academies have “potentially distinct interests” that should allow them to continue considering race and ethnicity in deciding whom to admit to the elite institutions, which often serve as pipelines to the highest leadership positions in the military.
Shannon did not attend the academy, rising to the rank of captain via a different route before retiring from the Marines last year. Like others interviewed for this article, he is careful to note that he speaks as a private citizen, and not for his former service. But he is among many in the larger military community with an interest in the trial’s outcome, and how it will shape the nation’s armed forces in the future.
“We need the military to look like America,” said Clara Adams-Ender, 85, who retired as a brigadier general and commanding officer of Fort Belvoir in 1993. “I hope the Navy keeps doing what they’re doing.”
Adams-Ender, who is Black, calls her more than three decades in the Army “grand and glorious” despite the lingering vestiges of segregation and discrimination that she faced. In need of nurses, the Army gave the daughter of North Carolina sharecroppers a college scholarship to get her degree, launching a career that would earn her multiple firsts and leadership positions at facilities including Walter Reed Medical Center and Fort Meade.
But it wasn’t easy, she said, and there are still hurdles for the current and retired service members she continues to mentor today.
“I was born Black. I was born a woman,” said Adams-Ender, who lives in Northern Virginia. “I was not going to make that my problem. If that was a problem, it was going to be someone else’s problem.
“Everybody deserves to be treated with dignity and respect at all ranks,” she said.
Adams-Ender is among the longest-standing members of the National Association of Black Military Women, among the groups that filed a brief in support of the Naval Academy in the current trial. The groups, which include the ACLU and its Maryland branch and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, say the academies can’t be held to the same admissions policies as other universities because they’re training an officer corps that will wield much broader authority over those beneath them than in a civilian workplace.
“Today’s military is racially diverse within the enlisted ranks, but disproportionately white within the officer class, particularly at the highest ranks,” the brief noted.
Black people make up about 20% of the Navy’s enlisted ranks but just 8% of its officers, the brief said, citing Defense Department statistics.
The Naval Academy, with the backing of the Biden administration, has said that having a less diverse officer corps threatens unit cohesion and the military’s legitimacy both at home and abroad, posing consequences for readiness and national security.
Students for Fair Admissions, which has filed a similar suit against West Point, argued that having a more diverse officer corps, or making it mirror that of the U.S. population as a whole, is unrelated to the military’s effectiveness.
At the trial, which began last Monday, the military community is well-represented in the courtroom.
“Thank you for your service,” Judge Richard D. Bennett said to SSFA’s first witness last week, retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Christopher S. Walker.
“Thank you for your service,” Walker responded to Bennett, who served more than 20 years in the U.S. Army Reserve and Maryland National Guard.
Walker, who is Black, detailed a four-decade career in uniform in which he said racial diversity was not a factor in unit cohesion or success. Rather, it was good leadership and the “tried and true crucible” of going through hard training together, he said.
Walker said everyone should be held to the “same high standards” and “the diversity they seek will happen on its own.”
Naval Academy leaders have said that race and ethnicity are considered only as part of a broader range of admissions criteria. Like other branches, it has sought to cast a wider net, such as by offering summer camps and other outreach programs to high school students, to bolster a process that relies on congressional members nominating candidates.
An affiliated group, the National Naval Officers Association, emerged in the 1970s to help the academy in its efforts to recruit more minorities. Shannon is a member and previously served as president of the Annapolis chapter.
Younger veterans say they have benefited from how today’s military is more diverse than in the past.
“I was fortunate I got to work with some high-ranking women,” said Phoebe Thurman, who is in her mid-40s and retired as a technical sergeant after a more than 20-year career in the Air Force. She served on ground crews that provided support for radar surveillance aircraft and tanker units.
“I felt I always had good support, from both male and female leaders,” said Thurman, who is multiracial and lives in Baltimore’s Woodberry neighborhood.
It’s something she said she tried to offer to the “pretty diverse” members under her supervision, making sure all of them knew they could come to her with any personal or professional concerns.
“More diversity is good for a unit and for morale,” Thurman said, “and to be a better fighting force.”
The experience of military service has helped in the civilian world as well, she and others said.
“I’m a veteran, that’s kind of what I lead with,” Shannon said. “I think that garners more merit than being Black or white or Hispanic or Asian or XYZ.”
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