The Corps' newest recruiting commercial aimed at targeting minorities tackles a long-running and often-controversial debate involving black American youth and lack of swimming ability. The ad reflects the real-life story of Staff Sgt. Thomas Hill, a senior drill instructor at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., according to the Corps' recruiting Web site, our.marines.com.
The debate is not a first for the Corps. In 1993, then-Commandant Gen. Carl E. Mundy Jr. launched a storm of controversy by telling an interviewer on "60 Minutes" that whites outperform blacks in objective military tests, including swimming. "In the military skills, we find that the minority officers do not shoot as well as the non-minorities. Now how do you rationalize? I don't know. I can't explain that to you but we're going to find out," he said. "They don't swim as well. And when you give them a compass and send them across the terrain at night in a land navigation exercise, they don't do as well at that sort of thing."
