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In 1940, eighty thousand Negroes had finished college as compared with three million whites, again a relative percentage of about one-fourth. But there were only fifty-four Negro mechanical engineers as compared with eighty-two thousand whites, a percentage of 1/152.^40 This does not mean that Negroes cannot be successful mechanical engineers, for some few Negroes are successfully employed in fields of endeavor. It indicates that opportunities in this and similar fields have been limited. It also means that an overwhelming disparity of civilian skills makes impossible the organization of an appreciable number of Negro units which would be effective in modern war. The impossibility of manning balanced all-Negro units with qualified individuals is inescapable. An entire generation of directed education and employment would be required for any large scale correction of this situation. 

Since the present almost-all-Negro (with white civilians) Composite Group could scarcely be duplicated without years of training for actual shortages, it is obvious that the maintenance of such a unit does not, in itself, provide a bisis for the employment of Negro manpower on the "broader professional scale" required by WD Circular No. 124. A unit which can be scarcely duplicated or expanded, due to a shortage of civilian skills, provides no basis for expansion in an emergency. The only proper basis is experience in the utilization of available and prospective available Negro civilian skills in the Air Forces as a whole. A peacetime policy incapable of wartime appli-

^40 Census, 1940