After reading my classmates' response to my letter "Minority soldiers killed in combat at high rate" (April 14), I checked the Department of Defense Web site, and the number of minority military enlistments is in fact 37 percent. The site I obtained my information from is not as reliable as the Department of Defense, and I apologize.

This still raises a serious question though. If the population of blacks and Latinos in the United States, according to the 2000 Census, is 24 percent then why do they make up 37 percent of the armed forces?

Obviously, the military is taking advantage of the financial aid and skill training that they offer to recruit disadvantaged minorities.

Over 50 percent of the soldiers on the frontlines in the Gulf War were soldiers of color. In Vietnam, 28 percent of the soldiers killed were Latino (go look it up on the wall), where in this era they only consisted of 9 percent of the U.S. population.

Even though the number of minority soldiers enlisted may appear to be close to the number of reported fatalities, their usage as front-line soldiers in the military continues and their recruitment for such positions remains strong. The deaths of soldiers of color remains strongly disproportionate to overall population figures (Again, check Census 2000).

In a country where all are perceived to have been created equal, exploitation of the disadvantaged still exists. It doesn't take a Ph.D. in statistics to understand this.