Let me preface this with I retired almost 2 years ago from the Air Force. My thoughts are based on experience and common sense. However, this current administration is stupid and I may end up 100% wrong.
Eventhough most of the people who have shaving waivers are black, this will target non-black people more. Standards did become looser all around in the past couple years, mostly because recruiting numbers decreased. Shaving waivers were given out more to non-black people who didnt need it. They just wanted to grow a beard. One tactic I heard is they would shave the opposite way for a couple weeks before their appointment to generate the “proof” that they needed one. I’m thinking this is the primary reason why they are going after shaving waivers.
The whole people can be discharged for having waivers that exceed 2 years, has been a thing for my whole career. It is targeted towards people who have a medical condition that disqualifies from someone one from deploying for two years. This can range from a severe injury or illness that if they can’t get a stable treatment plan, they will medically retire you. The most common tactic that people use to get out of deploying is starting new medications. If you start a certain type of medication, such as blood pressure meds, they usually put you on 90 day, no deployment order to make sure you don’t have any adverse reactions to the medication and to stabilize your condition. I’ve seen people switch from antidepressants to antidepressants just to avoid deploying.
The one positive for this policy is that it will make it easier for black men to get laser treatment. I’ve only known 1 person who was able to get it through the military. Everyone else, including myself, got denied for it. Other than that, I foresee it going back to what it was the majority of my career which was the hair can only be grown to a certain length, can’t looked groom, and have to be re-evaluated every X amount of days. The article in OP’s post states it up the person’s commanding Officer to determine if the person should be kicked out. I don’t see much people getting kicked out unless they have a a lot of disciplinary issues in their record and this is easy way to kick someone out. I’m thinking the black men that would be at risk of being discharged would be the ones who got super comfortable and wouldn’t want to trim their beards and the people that faked their way to a shaving waiver and don’t want to get rid of it.
Again, I can be 100% wrong since DEI hire, Drunk Pete, is championing this, but I can’t foresee them reducing a significant population of the force just because of a shaving waiver
