EthnicMajority

(Kansas City Star) The Army filed charges Wednesday against eight Alaska-based soldiers in the death of a 19-year-old Army private, in a sign that the military is investigating whether racial harassment could have led him to commit suicide.

Pvt. Danny Chen's body was found in a guard tower in Afghanistan's Kandahar province in October, two months into his deployment. The New York native died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, but Chen's family and the Chinese-American community pressed the military to explain what led Chen to kill himself. The New York Times later reported that investigators had told Chen's family that superiors had abused him and taunted him with ethnic slurs.

"There was some serious misconduct in this situation," said Jacinta Ma, the deputy director of the Asian American Justice Center, who was part of a group of Asian-American organizations that met with Pentagon officials this month on behalf of Chen's family to discuss their concerns that Chen's case is not an isolated incident.

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(Reuters) Racial slurs and a noose strung up outside his barracks were among the alleged harassment an African American war veteran said he was subjected to while serving in Afghanistan, according to a complaint filed this week.

Specialist Adam Jarrell, the only African American in a unit of 216 soldiers of the New Mexico Army National Guard, told Reuters on Tuesday that his complaints to superiors were not only ignored, but resulted in increased harassment.

“It’s dangerous when the only people you can count on are the people hanging nooses outside your room, telling you they hate you because you’re black,” said Jarrell, 23, a Sheriff’s deputy in Hobbs, New Mexico, who has been with the National Guard since 2006. He arrived home in New Mexico a year ago.

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico filed the racial discrimination complaint with the federal Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice asking for an investigation.

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(NPR) In the U.S. Army, Asian-Americans have typically volunteered at the lowest rate of any ethnic group. They make up 4 percent of the population, and only 1 percent of military recruits.

But that seems to be changing. Something is suddenly drawing Asian-Americans in California into the Army at a remarkable rate. And there have been similar increases in other Asian-American population centers, like Seattle and New York.

In Los Angeles County last year, 22 percent of Army recruits were Asian-Americans — almost twice their proportion in the population. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the sign-up rate is also spiking. The proportion of newly enlisted soldiers who are Asian-Americans this year is nearly double that of last year.

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