The longer road home

By: Michelle SiberyThe news: In April, the U.S. Department of Defense extended the length of deployment from 12 to 15 months for all but two active Army units serving in or being deployed to “the Central Command area” that includes Iraq.

Behind the news: The new policy will affect 49,000 active-duty Army members, of which a disproportionate number are African Americans. The latest Army figures show that 21.6 percent of Army members are black, far more than their share of the U.S. population.

Since fiscal year 1995, however, black representation in the Army has decreased by more than 5 percentage points. Latinos, meanwhile, have increased their share in the Army from about 5 percent to about 10.5 percent in the same period, while making up 14.5 percent of the U.S. population in 2005.

Black recruits were also more represented in the Chicago Recruiting Battalion, a region that includes all of Illinois north of Peoria. African Americans made up 21.2 percent of 1,676 people who enlisted in the region, while Latino and white recruits represented 13.7 percent and 61.6 percent, respectively.

The overall population of the corresponding region was 17.4 percent African American, 15.9 percent Latino and 60.7 percent white.