The African-Americans who do become officers are often steered to specialize in logistics and transportation rather than the marquee combat arms specialties that lead to the top jobs. The elite service academies that feed the officer class - the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs - have increased their enrollment of minority recruits in recent years but remain largely white. A 1925 guidance for Army officers stated that black service members were a class “from which we cannot expect to draw leadership material.” The armed forces were not fully integrated until after World War II, a legacy that has left African-Americans without the same history of generations of family service shared by so many white enlistees. The reasons there are so few people of color at the top lie deep in the history and culture of the United States military. Maryanne Miller, the chief of the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command, who is white.

There is only one woman in the group: Gen. Townsend, the head of Africa Command and the son of a German mother and an Afghan father, as a minority commander. Nakasone, whose father is second-generation Japanese-American, leads the United States Cyber Command. Brown Jr, the commander of Pacific Air Forces. Garrett, who leads the Army’s Forces Command, and Gen. Of the 41 most senior commanders in the military - those with four-star rank in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard - only two are black: Gen.

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