In June, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the race-conscious admissions program policies—called affirmative action—that had been embarked on after the civil rights uprisings of the 1960s and 1970s. A key feature of the affirmative action decision  is that military service academies are exempt.

In his article, "The United States Military, White Supremacy, and Affirmative Action," published in CounterPunch, Professor of Political Science Horace Campbell writes, "This contradiction of diminishing equity in access to higher education while maintaining the recruitment of non-whites to fight to defend the system of white racism is a contradiction that is coming to the fore in the United States."

"Of the 1.3 million forces under arms in the U.S. military structures, 43 percent are nonwhite citizens. Yet only 19 percent of the top officer corps are nonwhite," he adds.